Clara pretended to sleep. She had become good at it—at letting her breathing slow, at letting her limbs go slack, at masking the rapid flutter of her heart while Evelyn's arms cocooned her like a fragile doll. But beneath her stillness, her thoughts scraped and clawed against each other like blades in a scabbard.
She wasn't stupid. She knew what they whispered when they thought she couldn't hear. She knew the heaviness in Damien's stare wasn't protection, but measurement—like he was already weighing her life against something else. She knew Zeke's eyes never softened, never slipped from cold arithmetic. Even Evelyn, the one person who hadn't abandoned her, held her a little too tightly sometimes, as though trying to anchor herself just as much as Clara.
And in the quiet edges of the night, when the fire died to embers and her companions' vigilance faltered, she heard it. The voice.
"They don't trust you."
Yurin Crimson's whisper was silk and iron all at once, threading through her skull, brushing her ear like a lover's breath. "They already debate which of them will strike first. Shall I tell you who sharpens their blade the most?"
Her fingers curled against the ground. "Shut up," she muttered under her breath.
But Yurin's chuckle rolled through her bones. "Damien. He remembers hesitation, and he cannot forgive it in himself again. Zeke, though—Zeke would cut you with less hesitation. A cleaner death, perhaps. Evelyn? Ah, Evelyn would rather burn than let them touch you. Tell me, Clara, how long before she becomes the kindling?"
Her throat tightened. She forced her body to stay still, not daring to show a reaction. If Damien or Zeke suspected she was hearing him now, it would confirm every one of their fears.
She hated herself most of all because the voice wasn't entirely wrong. She had seen the tension in Damien's jaw, the half-finished glyphs Zeke erased before anyone else noticed. She wasn't just a risk to them—she was the test. A living countdown.
"Evelyn," she whispered, so faintly she thought it would dissolve in the air. Evelyn shifted in her sleep beside her, murmuring something incoherent, but didn't wake. Clara closed her eyes, pressing her forehead into Evelyn's shoulder, stealing warmth she knew she didn't deserve.
I don't want to be this, she thought. I don't want to be the weight around their necks. I don't want to be his tether.
The ground beneath her seemed to hum faintly, as though the land itself breathed with Yurin's presence. She bit her lip hard enough to taste blood, trying to ground herself in the pain.
That's when she felt it—an echo inside her ribs. Not Evelyn's heartbeat, not her own, but something deeper, older. A pulse that didn't belong.
She sat bolt upright, her breath catching.
Damien stirred immediately, his hand on his sword, eyes sharp. Zeke glanced up from where he still sat awake, as though he hadn't moved at all. Evelyn, startled, blinked blearily, reaching for her.
"What is it?" Evelyn whispered.
Clara swallowed, her throat dry. "Something's wrong."
Damien's gaze narrowed. "What kind of wrong?"
She wanted to lie, to say she heard movement in the woods, anything but the truth. But she couldn't stop trembling. She pressed her hand to her chest, where the pulse still thrummed faintly.
"He's closer." Her voice cracked. "Yurin. He's… he's inside the ground. Inside me."
Evelyn immediately pulled her close, murmuring reassurances, but Clara felt Damien's stare boring into her—cold, calculating, searching for confirmation. Zeke didn't even pretend. He tilted his head, watching her as though waiting for the exact moment her words became a confession of corruption.
"See?" Yurin purred inside her mind. "Even now, they recoil. You feel it, don't you? Their fear? Their readiness to cut you down if I push just a little harder."
"No," Clara hissed under her breath, her nails digging into her palm until blood welled. "You don't get to have me."
"Clara?" Evelyn's voice wavered.
Clara forced herself to meet Damien's eyes. His hand still rested on his sword, though he hadn't drawn it. Zeke's sigils glimmered faintly on his fingertips, ready to snap into lethal precision. She realized then that they weren't just watching for Yurin—they were watching her.
Her stomach twisted. But something inside her—the part of her Yurin hadn't yet poisoned—flared stubbornly.
"You think I don't know?" she said suddenly, her voice louder than she intended. Evelyn froze. Damien's eyes sharpened. Zeke's hand stilled mid-sigil.
"I know what you're thinking," Clara continued, her voice breaking. "That I'm the risk. That you're all just waiting for the moment I slip so you can… so you can end me."
Evelyn shook her head violently. "No! Clara, that's not—"
"Yes, it is," Clara snapped, cutting her off. "Don't lie to me. I hear it in your silence. I feel it in your stares. You don't even have to say it out loud. Yurin already whispers it to me every night."
The words hung in the cold air like a knife suspended above them.
Evelyn's eyes brimmed with tears, but Damien didn't move, and Zeke didn't flinch. For a single, endless moment, the only sound was Clara's ragged breathing and the pulse of corruption thrumming in the soil beneath them.
And Clara realized: the fracture wasn't coming.
It was already here.