The world came back in pieces.
First, the ache in his bones—a deep, grinding pain that meant he'd forced the shift back too fast. The wolf didn't like being caged. It left his nerves raw, his skin feeling two sizes too small. He was bare, shivering in the sudden cold, the heat of the beast still steaming off his skin.
Stupid. Reckless. They saw too much.
But the other option was staying shifted, and that… that would have been worse. Questions were a knife to the throat in a place like this. Better to let them wonder.
Then, the silence. It was the second thing he noticed. Not a true silence—the forest was never silent—but a stilled one. The air was heavy, tasting of ozone and something else, something clean and sharp, like the air after a lightning strike.
He finally looked.
And wished he hadn't.
The crater was… changed. It wasn't just destruction. It was erasure. The ground where Ezra's light had hit was glazed over, vitrified, like the floor of a god's kiln. The trees were bleached skeletons, their bark scorched away to reveal bone-white wood beneath. No blood. No gore. No sign of the nightmare they'd just fought.
It was as if the forest itself had been scrubbed clean by a furious, divine hand.
His eyes found the center of it all.
Ezra.
The kid was on his knees, head bowed, ash settling on his shoulders like a pale shroud. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his hands limp at his sides. And beneath his skin… a faint, golden luminescence pulsed, a trapped sunset fading slowly.
Still breathing. You crazy, world-breaking bastard. What did you do? What did you let out?
He made himself move, his steps uneven. He crouched, the movement sending fresh jolts of pain through his overstretched joints. His fingers, calloused and rough, found the kid's wrist. The pulse was there. Slow. Deep. Unnaturally steady.
Alive. For now.
He looked up, scanning the others, taking inventory the way a man counts his remaining bullets.
Cassian stood a few meters away, arms crossed, the blood on his skin already flaking away to nothing. His face was a closed door, but his eyes… his eyes were fixed on Ezra with a look of pure, unvarnished shock. He doesn't know what to make of it either. Cassian, who has an answer for everything, is speechless.
Soren leaned on his storm-humming spear, his face pale as milk. The shadows around his boots writhed weakly, as exhausted as their master. His gaze met Rowan's, and in it was a single, stark question: What was that?
Rowan had no answer to give.
Nora sat nearby, her fire completely gone. Soot was smeared across her cheek like war paint. She wasn't looking at the devastation, or at the rest of them. Her entire world had shrunk to the boy kneeling in the ash, her hand hovering near his shoulder as if he were made of glass.
Further back, the others were stirring. Rin was already moving, her voice a low, steady murmur as she helped one of the younger recruits up. Varik, the creepy old bastard, was just… smiling, leaning on his staff as if watching a particularly interesting play. The old woman clutched her cloak, her eyes darting toward the treeline, already planning the next escape.
They're all alive. We should be dead. All of us. Cheated death again. When does the bill come due?
He straightened up, the motion making his head spin. He pulled the tattered remains of his cloak around his shoulders, a flimsy shield.
"He's alive," he said, and his voice sounded like gravel. He didn't say it to anyone in particular. It was a statement for the silence, a fact to anchor them. "Drained, but alive."
No one replied. The quiet was heavier than before. He could feel their fear, a cold mist settling over them. They had seen a miracle, and it had scared them more than any monster.
Good. Be scared. Maybe scared people won't look too hard at the man who turns into a wolf. One freak at a time.
"Gather what you can," he ordered, his tone leaving no room for debate. It was the voice he used when he was hanging on by a thread and couldn't let it show. "We're moving."
Cassian walked over, his expression still unreadable. He shoved a duffel bag against Rowan's chest. "Clothes. You're a distraction."
A flicker of the old, easy mask slipped into place. A defense mechanism. "Cas, if you wanted to see me naked, you could've just asked."
"Tragic," Cassian deadpanned, already turning away.
Yeah. Tragic.
He pulled on the clothes—rough-spun pants, a simple tunic. The fabric felt alien against his hypersensitive skin. No one argued. They were too shell-shocked, too tired. They picked up their scattered, half-destroyed packs and fell into a ragged, silent line. He took the front, his body thrumming with a residual, animal alertness.
The forest… the forest was wrong.
It wasn't just the scorched earth behind them. The very air ahead seemed to shimmer. The roots under the moss, when he looked closely, were threaded with fine, hairline veins of gold, pulsing with a faint, stolen light. The shadows between the trees were deeper, heavier. They felt watchful.
It's him. It's the kid's light. It's in the soil now. In the air. We're not just walking through the forest anymore. We're walking through the aftermath.
He moved ahead, climbing a low-hanging branch with an ease that was pure instinct. From above, he could see them—a sorry line of survivors stumbling through the undergrowth. Rin's quiet encouragement. Nora, sticking close to Ezra, her posture protective. He dropped down beside Soren, landing softly.
"Anyone hurt?"
"Just tired," Soren said, but the word didn't cover the exhaustion in his eyes.
"Cassian?"
A grunt. "Fine."
"Varik?"
"Still breathing," the old man chuckled, his eyes glinting. "Though you all look like you've seen a god and lived to complain about the weather."
Rowan didn't answer. He just kept walking, feeling the weight of their collective gaze like a physical pressure.
They're waiting for me to explain. To have a plan. I have nothing. Just more questions.
And his mind, traitor that it was, kept circling back to the one thing that terrified him the most.
The light.
It felt… familiar. It had the same texture as Silas's power. That same deep, life-giving warmth. But where Silas's magic was a gentle rain, a coaxing of growth from soil… this was a flash flood. It wasn't nurturing life; it was enforcing it. Obliterating anything that wasn't life.
It's like they're playing the same song, but Silas is humming it and Ezra is screaming it through a storm.
The thought was a dangerous, fragile thing.
If his power is real… if that kind of light can exist… then the principles behind Silas's magic are real. They're not just theory. They're a fundamental part of this damned world. And if that's true…
His chest tightened.
…then Silas has to be alive. He has to be. He's part of this. He's woven into it. A tree doesn't just vanish from the forest.
It was a hope so sharp it felt like grief.
He glanced up, through the canopy. Strands of gold light, faint as forgotten memories, were still tangled in the high mist.
Two lights. One to grow. One to… burn away the rot. What does that make us? The garden? Or the weeds?
He didn't know. But as they climbed the ridge, the decision solidified in him, cold and hard as stone.
Doesn't matter. I'm finding him. I'm finding Silas. I'm dragging Asli back from whatever edge he's walked off. I'm getting these people out of this hellhole.
The Trial could throw everything it had at them. It could break their bodies and haunt their minds.
Let it try.
That light, for all its terror, was a signal fire in the dark. They weren't finished. Not yet.