The third night bled into morning.
When I woke, I didn't know how much time had passed.
The world had turned pale, like the color had been drained from it.
The air was still, the silence complete.
I felt hands on me again — softer this time, but distant, like I was underwater.
Someone was shouting above me, their mouth forming shapes I couldn't read.
A man's voice.
My husband's.
He was crying.
For a moment, I thought he was weeping for me.
But when I turned my head, I saw them.
The Mistress. The boy.
Alive. Whole. Smiling.
Their clothes were dusty but clean. The boy clutched a ranger's badge.
People were laughing, crying, holding them, touching them as if they had risen from the dead.
The Mistress's hands trembled as she spoke. She was explaining how they had lost their way after sunset, how they spent two nights in a ranger's cabin until the search party found them.
They were fine.
Perfectly fine.
No one looked at me.
No one asked where I had been.
I tried to lift my hand, but my body refused.
The air pressed down like a stone.
I thought of screaming, but my throat only made a soundless rasp.
The boy turned once—his eyes brushed over me—but he didn't recognize me.
Maybe he couldn't.
Maybe he didn't want to.
My husband fell to his knees before them, holding both in his arms.
He kept saying something, his lips moving fast. Thank God. Thank God.
And I realized then what kind of God he believed in.
One who saves the living and forgets the innocent.
Later, when they found me in the basement, my body was cold, my skin bruised purple.
The doctor's face twisted in horror, but everyone else went quiet.
There was a silence that filled the air — not mine, but theirs — thick with shame.
No one said what they had done.
They carried me out like a broken doll.
Someone whispered, "She'll live."
But no one said sorry.
At the hospital, I lay still while they worked around me.
I couldn't hear them, but I saw their lips move — quick, urgent.
Sometimes I saw my husband's shadow in the doorway.
Sometimes the Mistress's reflection in the window.
She never came closer.
And when she finally did, her smile was small and trembling.
She whispered something, pressing her hand to my forehead.
I read her lips: Thank you.
For what?
For being her scapegoat?
For dying quietly so she could be forgiven?
Her perfume lingered after she left — the same scent she wore that day on the mountain.
It made my stomach turn.
The doctor said my body was healing, but I knew better.
Something deeper had already rotted.
Every night, I closed my eyes and waited not to wake.
But life, cruel as it was, refused to end.
On the fourth day, I dreamt I was standing again by the slope.
The wind was warm, carrying the sound of the boy's laughter.
The Mistress waved at me from afar, her arm around my husband.
I waved back — but my hand was fading, transparent under the sun.
Then I turned, and there was another woman standing behind me.
Her face was soft, unfamiliar, but kind.
She smiled at me like she knew me.
Like she was waiting.
And when she took my hand, the silence cracked open —
and light poured through.