Dawn painted the Ashlands in shades of deep crimson, transforming the endless gray into something almost beautiful. Cel stood at the crater's edge, his gaze sweeping across the wasteland spread below like a map drawn in ash and shadow.
Raven stood beside him, silent, his attention fixed on distant ruins with that same careful precision he brought to everything.
They began their circuit together, moving along the rim in wordless coordination. Cel's eyes tracked from ruin to ruin, searching for the telltale shimmer that would mark a rift. The tears in reality supposedly glowed with otherworldly light, visible even at great distances.
But the wasteland offered only obsidian stones and crumbling structures. Miles of nothing.
The bird perched on an outcropping perhaps twenty steps away. It had taken up residence on the volcano's peak as if it belonged here, settling in with the same patient stillness it showed when watching them.
Cel glanced at it briefly, then returned his attention to the horizon.
Hours crawled past. They completed the full circuit and arrived at the depression where they'd slept. Raven settled against the stone wall without comment.
"Nothing," Cel said, unable to keep the edge of frustration from his voice despite knowing it was pointless. Finding a rift had always been a matter of luck.
"No." Raven's gaze remained fixed on the horizon. "But that doesn't mean there won't be."
The logic was sound. Rifts appeared and disappeared according to patterns no one fully understood. Wandering blindly through the wasteland offered less chance than staying here - where they could see for leagues in every direction.
Cel nodded and moved to his own section of wall. The stone was cool against his back, grounding.
"We wait then."
The silence that followed felt different than the tense quiet of their first days together. Not comfortable, exactly. But less sharp. Less like two animals circling, more like two exhausted travelers sharing the same shelter.
The bird hopped closer, settling on the depression's rim. Its crimson eye tracked between them with that same unsettling intelligence.
Neither of them moved to drive it away.
***
Hunger announced itself the next morning with a hollow ache that had become too familiar.
Cel's stomach twisted, the divine body reminding him that resurrection hadn't eliminated basic needs.
Raven shifted against his wall, one hand pressed briefly to his abdomen. The gesture was subtle but telling.
"I told you," Cel said, not looking at him. "We should have brought some of the Ashlurker."
Silence answered him. Long enough that Cel glanced over.
Raven's expression had gone carefully blank. "We'll find something else."
"Where?" Cel's gaze swept the barren peak, then stopped on the bird. It sat motionless on the rim's edge, black feathers catching the crimson light. "There's nothing here but stone, ash, and—"
"No."
The word came sharp enough to make Cel's attention snap back to Raven.
The young man's jaw had set, his crimson eyes fixed on Cel's face with sudden intensity. "Don't."
"I wasn't—"
"You were." Raven pushed himself upright, movements controlled but deliberate. "And the answer is no."
Cel held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. The bird remained on its perch, utterly still, as if it hadn't noticed the exchange at all.
"We search," Raven said, his tone returning to neutral.
They started with the volcano's outer slope.
Raven moved down the weathered stone with practiced efficiency, his hands finding holds, his eyes scanning every crack and crevice. Cel took a parallel path some steps away, checking places where shadow pooled deeper, where the stone had fractured in ways that created shelter.
The first dozen spots yielded nothing. Just bare rock, sometimes damp with condensation but empty of life.
Raven continued downward, patient and methodical. He tested each promising gap, peering into darkness, running his fingers along surfaces Cel would have dismissed as barren.
Halfway down the slope, Raven paused at a split in the volcanic rock. The crack was perhaps as wide as Cel's forearm, running diagonally where two sections had separated.
Raven knelt, his body blocking Cel's view as he reached into the gap.
When he withdrew his hand, something clung to his fingers. Green-gray. Almost luminescent against the dark volcanic stone.
"Found something," Raven stated.
Cel crouched beside him, studying the growth. It looked like moss but wrong somehow - the texture too uniform, the color too vivid against the dead stone.
Raven scraped a portion free with his fingernails. The material came away in damp clumps that left his fingers stained.
He brought it to his mouth. Chewed. His jaw worked slowly, deliberately, as if forcing himself through the motion.
Swallowed.
His expression suggested the experience was approximately as pleasant as eating the stone itself.
"Edible?" Cel asked.
"Barely." Raven's voice came flat. "Still better than raw Ashlurker."
"Is it?" Cel shrugged. The difference was lost on him. Both were just fuel that kept him alive.
He reached into the crevice and harvested his own portion. The texture was spongy, almost slimy, collapsing under his fingers like rotted fabric. When he bit down, the material scraped across his tongue - foreign, wrong, but fuel nonetheless.
He chewed anyway. Forced it down.
His body had stopped caring what he fed it a long time ago. The moss slid into his stomach without complaint.
They stripped the crevice clean. The patch had been perhaps the size of Cel's palm - enough for a few mouthfuls each. Not enough to satisfy the hunger, but enough to dull its edge.
"There'll be more," Raven said, already moving to the next potential spot.
They spent hours searching. Found another patch in a sheltered alcove. A third where two flows of dried magma had met at awkward angles, creating a pocket that held moisture.
By the time they returned to the peak, Cel's stomach had stopped complaining. The moss sat in his gut like a stone - heavy, present, but unsatisfying.
Raven settled against his wall, his movements slower than before. The search had cost him more than it had cost Cel.
The bird watched from its perch, head tilted, as if curious about their scavenging.
Cel created ice and crushed it, offering fragments. They ate in silence, the cold washing away moss residue as it traced paths to their stomachs.
Neither spoke about the next day's search. Or the day after that.
But the understanding hung between them - this was survival now. Moss and ice. Stone and patience. Waiting on a dead volcano for a rift that might never appear.
Days bled together.
Each morning brought the same routine: wake, scan the horizon for rifts, descend to search for moss. The patches were scattered, small. Sometimes they found three or four. Sometimes none.
The hunger never left completely. Just became background noise - constant, manageable, familiar.
Cel created ice whenever thirst became too insistent.
The bird remained. Sometimes perched on the rim. Sometimes circling overhead in lazy spirals. Always present, always watching.
It stopped feeling threatening. Just became part of the landscape - another fixture of this dead world.
The silence between them evolved gradually. Lost its sharp edges. They spoke when speech served purpose, stayed quiet when it didn't. The spaces grew comfortable rather than tense.
On the eight day, Cel woke from another nightmare to find Raven already awake, his crimson eyes tracking the horizon with that same patient calmness.
"Bad one?" Raven asked without looking over.
"They're all bad."
"Yeah."
The single word carried weight. Understanding. The acknowledgment of someone who knew exactly what kind of horrors lived in sleep.
Cel pushed himself upright, joining the watch.
On the eighth day, as evening settled across the Ashlands and moonlight began to filter through the darkening sky, a sound broke the perpetual silence.
Thunder.
Distant. Rolling. The deep rumble of a storm in a realm that had never known weather.
Cel's head snapped toward the source. His body went rigid, every sense suddenly focused.
But it was Raven's reaction that made his pulse quicken.
The young man had gone completely still. Not the careful stillness of someone maintaining composure, but the frozen paralysis of genuine fear.
His crimson eyes were wide, fixed on the horizon where the thunder had originated.
"Raven?"
No response. Raven stared at that distant point as if seeing something Cel couldn't perceive. Something terrible enough to crack through the careful neutrality he maintained like armor.
Thunder rolled again. Closer now. Louder.
The bird lifted from its perch and took flight, wings cutting through the air as it rose toward the darkening sky.
Thunder cracked—
—and she was there.
A figure appeared between one heartbeat and the next, hovering in the air as if gravity didn't exist. The bird hung motionless in her grip, its wings still spread as if frozen mid-flight.
Massive wings arched from her back - white feathers edged in silver seemed to glow against the crimson sky. Her armor was dark, form-fitting, practical yet elegant. Ash-white hair cascaded over her shoulders. Even from a distance, Cel could see the terrible beauty of her face, sharp and cold as winter itself.
The bird trembled in her grip, utterly still. Waiting.
Then, her fingers closed.