When they emerge from the choking smoke, dawn is bruising the edge of the sky — thin pink veins behind the veil of drifting soot. The fire behind them groans and spits sparks, collapsing old roots and rotten trunks into hissing heaps of ember and steam. The hush, so greedy and endless in their nightmares, is nothing now but smolder and ruin.
Rafi collapses first. His knees give out and he sinks into blackened leaf litter, coughing up flecks of soot that taste like burned memories. He wipes his mouth with the back of his arm, leaving a streak of grey ash across his cheek. His shoulders shake — not with fear, not with grief — but with laughter, hoarse and shocked and real.
Beside him, the braid girl stands stiff for a long moment, staring at the rising columns of smoke that writhe like ghosts escaping their roots. Slowly she lowers herself beside him, legs folding awkwardly, as though her bones remember how to be a runaway but not yet how to rest.
Neither of them speaks for a while. There is only the crackle of dying fire and the whisper of a wind that no longer carries secrets. When Rafi turns his head, her braid has unraveled entirely, strands curling wild around her face. They are a mess of scratches, blistered fingers, and raw eyes — children born again from ruin, feral and free.
A branch snaps somewhere deeper in the trees. Both of them flinch. For a heartbeat, they brace for the hush to rise again, for the voices to slither into their skulls and fill the silence with old poison. But there is nothing. Just a raccoon rummaging through charred brambles, unconcerned with these two burnt children.
Rafi tilts his face to the sky, feeling the sun through the haze. It's weak, but it is real. He breathes until his ribs ache.
The braid girl plucks a coal-blackened twig from the ground and presses it into his hand. Her eyes meet his: weary but certain. They do not need words for this part. He drags the stick across a nearby tree trunk, scratching deep into the pale new bark that survived the blaze. Just one word: Free.
They leave more marks, messy and sharp, all the way back to the forest's edge. For the lost ones who may come after — for ghosts who deserve a name. When they stand again, skin salted with sweat and ash, they know they are more than what the hush made them.
They are children no more. They are ash reborn into flesh and fear and hope that stings like sunlight after a storm.
Hand in hand, they walk away from the grave of their monster — into whatever world waits beyond the charred trees.