Consciousness returned not as a dawn, but as a faulty connection—a sudden, jarring click into being. One moment, there was nothing. The next, the gold-veined forest, its light seeping through the canopy like honey through cracks.
Ezra blinked, disoriented. His body was moving on its own, legs carrying him forward in a ragged line of survivors. He felt… hollowed out. A shell rattling with the echoes of whatever he'd done in the crater. His chest was a lead weight, his head a dizzy, floating thing.
He looked down. A puddle, iridescent with a faint, oily sheen, showed his reflection. His hair was streaked with white at the temples, as if frostbitten by his own light. His eyes, once a deep amethyst, now held flecks of gold that seemed to catch and hold the forest's strange luminescence. For a terrifying instant, he saw it again—the ghost of a chain, a flicker of brilliant light behind his own pupils, then gone.
"Ezra?"
Nora's voice was soft beside him. He flinched.
"You good?" she asked, her torchlight playing over the freckles dusting her nose.
He nodded, the motion too sharp. "Yeah. Just… tired." The lie was ash in his mouth.
She studied him for a moment longer, her concern a tangible pressure, before letting it drop.
The group was a silent, weary procession. Rowan led, a predator's silence in his steps, his senses seemingly stretched to the horizon. Soren followed, the unconscious Atlas a dead weight in his arms, the boy's head lolling like a broken doll's. Cassian's muttering was a low, constant counterpoint to the oppressive quiet, a litany of navigational doubts.
They had been walking for what felt like days. The forest was a repeating tapestry of gnarled roots, weeping moss, and fog that clung like cobwebs.
Cassian stopped dead. "We passed that tree already."
Rowan halted, turning slowly. "You sure?"
Cassian pointed a blade at a thick oak, its bark freshly notched, sap weeping from the wound. "Carved that myself. A lifetime ago."
Ezra's gaze swept the identical trees. The mark was undeniable. Fresh. Accusatory.
Rowan went preternaturally still. His ears twitched, a subtle, animal tell. He tilted his head, listening to a frequency only he could perceive.
"What is it?" Nora whispered, her voice swallowed by the trees.
"The wind's wrong," Rowan murmured, his eyes narrowed. "There isn't any."
He crouched, pressing his palm flat to the soil. A faint, rhythmic tremor vibrated up through his arm. His brow furrowed.
"We're in a loop," he announced, the words final. "The forest is folding us back on ourselves."
Varik let out a dry chuckle. "Perhaps it finds our company delightful."
"Shut up," Cassian said, without heat.
The air grew heavier, pressing in on them. It didn't feel empty anymore. It felt occupied. Observant.
They walked on.
The same roots. The same skeletal bird. The same suffocating silence.
Ezra's skin prickled. "We're still in it, aren't we?"
Rowan didn't look back. "Yes."
A rasping breath cut the silence. Atlas stirred in Soren's arms, his head lifting weakly.
"Don't stop walking," the seer whispered, his voice a dry leaf scraping stone.
Soren froze. "You're awake."
"Stopping makes it worse," Atlas breathed, his eyes screwed shut as if against a blinding light.
Rowan was instantly there. "What are you seeing?"
A soft, broken laugh escaped Atlas's lips. "Always something."
Ezra moved closer, a cold dread coiling in his gut. "Something like what?"
Atlas's eyes opened. They were not clouded with fever, but terrifyingly clear, focused on a point somewhere beyond Ezra, beyond the trees, in a future only he could witness.
"You die."
The words landed like a stone in still water, the ripples freezing the air itself.
Ezra recoiled. "What?"
"You die," Atlas repeated, his tone flat, factual, as if reading from a settled text. "You're on your knees. The air is smoke and gold. Light is bleeding out of you—not healing, just… leaking. You try to hold it in, but it pours out faster. And when it touches the ground…" He paused, his gaze drifting. "Everything burns clean."
Nora's knuckles were white on her torch. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Atlas seemed not to hear her. His voice softened, taking on a dreadful, intimate quality.
"There's someone with you. Their hand is reaching out. You're smiling, but not really. I can't tell if you're forgiving them, or yourself."
A cold fist closed around Ezra's heart. "Stop."
"You're bleeding gold," Atlas continued, relentless in his trance. "It's beautiful. Awful. Like watching the sun be extinguished."
"Atlas." Rowan's voice was a whip-crack.
The seer only sighed, a sound of infinite weariness. "It's all right. He doesn't scream."
Ezra stumbled back, the world tilting on its axis. He could see it. Smoke stinging his eyes, the metallic taste of his own power choking him, a final, futile reach…
"Say you're joking," Nora pleaded, her voice thin.
Atlas's head lolled back onto Soren's shoulder, his focus dissolving. "It's not a joke if I've already watched it happen."
The silence that followed was a physical weight.
Cassian was the one to break it, his voice low and devoid of inflection. "His visions don't miss."
Ezra whirled on him. "Don't— don't say that."
Cassian met his gaze, his own eyes hard. "You asked."
"Cassian, shut up," Nora snapped, a tremor in her voice.
"He's not lying," Soren said quietly, his jaw tight. "The last time Atlas saw something this clearly… they found the boy from Unit Six exactly as described."
Ezra's breath hitched. "That doesn't mean—"
"It means don't prove him right," Rowan cut in, his voice a low growl that brooked no argument. He scanned the group, his gaze a command. "We keep moving. Visions are just possibilities. This place feeds on fear."
But the damage was done. As they began to move again, the space around Ezra widened by an inch. Gazes that once sought his now slid away, avoiding the condemned. Footsteps near him faltered, as if his very presence was now a contagion.
He wanted to rage, to deny it, to scream that he was not some character in a pre-written tragedy.
But beneath the denial, a colder, quieter truth echoed in the hollow of his chest.
You felt it. You felt the light tearing its way out. You know what it costs.
Time lost meaning. The forest's golden hue deepened to a sickly, jaundiced amber. The air grew thick, resistant.
Once, Nora's hand brushed his arm in passing. Where her fingers touched, his skin bloomed with a faint, lingering luminescence. He jerked away, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, refusing to meet her startled eyes.
Cassian paused, pressing his palm flat against a tree trunk. "It's warm," he noted, a frown creasing his brow.
Rowan's head snapped up. His ears twitched violently. "Don't touch it."
"Why?"
Rowan didn't answer immediately. His entire body was taut, his focus locked on the deep, shifting shadows between the trees. His voice dropped to a subvocal rumble.
"We're being followed."
"Another creature?" Nora whispered, flame sputtering to life in her palm.
"No," Rowan said, his eyes narrowed to slits. "Someone."
Ezra turned, his heart hammering against his ribs. The fog coalesced, thickened.
And there, between the boles of two ancient oaks, it stood.
A figure. Tall. Utterly still.
A white, expressionless mask. A dark coat that seemed to drink the light.
It held for one impossible, breathless second—long enough to see the faint, cold gleam of metal—and then it was gone, dissolved back into the gloom.
Ezra's breath caught. "Rowan—"
"I know," Rowan said, his voice dangerously calm. His hand rested on the hilt of his blade. "Don't stop. Don't look back."
No one argued.
The forest no longer whispered.
It listened. And now, something else was listening with it.