The walk to the heart of the camp was a slow, shared burden. Kael, leaning on August, moved as if his body had forgotten how to walk. The air was heavy with the scent of burning wood and a sorrow that had no tears left to shed. No one spoke as they passed the clusters of survivors, but an older woman, her face marked by years of grief, silently handed Kael a sturdy wooden crutch. He took it with a grateful nod, shifting his weight off August. The gesture was small, wordless, and deeply understood like a grim ritual performed countless times.
With Kael now able to support himself, August was an observer, an outsider looking in on a community bound by a shared, recurring nightmare. Kael gestured toward a smaller, less crowded fire away from the main huddle of survivors. "Let's sit," he said, his voice raspy. "You need answers. And I need to feel my feet again."
They sat down on a fallen log, the fire a token effort against the deeper cold pressing from all sides. Kael began the slow, painful process of rubbing life back into his calves, his groans low and constant. The meager warmth of the campfires did little to push back the oppressive chill of the world. It was a false comfort, a flickering illusion of safety in a land steeped in sorrow.
The camp moved with quiet coordination, held together by the smallest hands. Children, some no older than five or six, moved swiftly between tents, their faces smudged with dirt but their movements efficient. They distributed blankets, checked on the younger ones, and spoke in low, serious tones that didn't belong to ones so young. They were the camp's lifeblood, the gears that kept this fragile machine running while the adults recovered from their stony prison.
In the shadow of the firelight, a memory not quite his own slipped through August's mind—It was of small hands, restless and hungry, crouched beside a fire much like this, sharing bitter roots as night gathered its weight. Around them, adults sat unmoving, carved from silence and smoke. He blinked, and it was gone, leaving a phantom taste of soot and fear on his tongue.
Kael followed his gaze. "The children learn fast," he said, his voice a low rumble. "They have to. On No-moon Night, they're the only ones left moving. They keep the fires lit, guard the statues, and watch for predators—both beast and human." He took a slow sip from his own cup. "Some say it's a blessing they're spared. I think it's just a different kind of curse."
August nodded, distracted.
A young boy, maybe ten, approached an altar of stone fragments. He knelt, gently placing a piece of a shattered hand upon the pile, lips moving in a prayer or perhaps a memory. Dozens of such relics already rested there—a mosaic of loss and unfinished lives. August shivered, feeling grief brush against nerves shaped by two different lives.
"What happens now?" he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
"Now? We survive the dawn," Kael replied simply. "We count who we've lost, tend to the sick, and see what the night left behind. Tomorrow, we might move on. Or we might stay. Depends on the water, the food, and the whispers." He gestured vaguely toward the desolate plains beyond the camp's flickering reach. "This is a nomad's life. We follow what we need. Stay too long, and you lose everything anyway."
As he spoke, August's mind hiccuped with another borrowed recollection: a dawn after No-moon, the air heavy with the stink of fresh stone dust, a dry-throated chant
—"Breathe, count, touch the earth." It slipped away before he could grasp it, leaving only a sense of ritual and endurance.
A flicker of movement at the edge of the firelight caught August's attention. A boy, older than the others, was speaking animatedly to a small group. His name was Lyon, and his gestures—stern and sharp—seemed too practiced for someone so young. August watched, part of him analyzing the signals of authority, while another part, older and raw, counted how many children could still stand on their own legs tonight.
August blinked, and a flash of memory intruded: squaring off in a tight circle, back braced against a friend—no, a brother—as older teens argued over how to secure the perimeter before darkness claimed them. It left an echo of muscle memory, the sense of a wooden staff gripped tight in anxious hands.
Kael noticed August's focus. "Lyon," he said. "His father led this camp. Once." The pause that followed said the rest. "He's trying to hold things together."
As if sensing their attention, Lyon glanced over, his sharp eyes narrowing. He exchanged a brief look with Kael, then gestured for him to step aside. "Stay here," Kael murmured to August, his tone low but firm. August nodded, distracted by the flickering firelight and the weight of his own thoughts.
Kael and Lyon moved a few paces away, their voices hushed but tense. August caught only fragments— "the curse," "he helped me," and "we can't risk it"—before the two returned, their expressions unreadable.
Lyon strode over, his suspicion now fully directed at August. "You," he said, his tone sharp. "You were up before anyone else. Walking. Talking. Kael says you don't know the curse."
"I don't," August said. He felt the truth and its lie twist side by side inside him—he knew the curse's effects, felt its echo in this borrowed flesh, yet his conscious self recoiled from truly owning those memories. He met Lyon's gaze, another memory flickering— standing before a makeshift council, defending a mistake as eyes judged every word.
"Liar," Lyon spat. "No one survives their first petrification without screaming. No one just gets up. What are you?"
Kael interrupted, calm but resolute. "He helped me. That's all that matters tonight."
"it matters if he's a threat," Lyon insisted, hand drifting to the hilt of a knife. "Six came back... wrong tonight. Their families had to..." Lyon's voice faltered, haunted, as the crowd grew behind him, shadows swallowing fear and hope alike.
Beneath the surface, a gentler recollection surfaced, achingly warm: a woman's hand on his brow, her voice a gentle warning. "Don't meet anger with anger. Hold yourself, even if they turn against you."
He closed his eyes for an instant, drawing a steadying breath. "I'm not your enemy," August said at last, his voice rough with exhaustion and a trace of unshaken resolve. "I don't know why my memories before the petrification are so fractured, but I know this—I'm not here to harm you."
"Prove it," Lyon challenged, eyes narrowing. "The southern perimeter went dark. The kids watching it haven't come back. Something took out the torches. Go find out what happened. You handle it, we know you're not the problem. Or we'll know what to do with you."
The crowd's tension was a physical weight. August braced himself, feeling yet another layer of memory slip forward—being named hunt-leader, the expectation that he would walk toward danger and bring word back, no matter the risk. "Earn the trust of the night. Or lose it for everyone," a memory-voice warned, and August felt it wedge itself deep in his chest.
Kael stood, staff in hand. "I'm going with you," he said, making the point non-negotiable.
Lyon hesitated, then nodded. "Just find those kids. Or what's left of them."
As they left behind the fire and voices, the cold grew. August found himself remembering how it felt to stand guard on the far side of a ruined wall, alone except for an icy breeze and the promise that monsters might come clawing from the dark. Was that memory his own—his own from a life he'd lived here before—or merely the echo of another's dread? It hardly mattered now.
"He's sending us to our deaths," August said quietly once they were far enough away that no one could hear.
"Probably," Kael agreed. "Lyon's desperate. Desperate leaders gamble with other people's lives." Another echo surfaced within August—a knowing certainty, half-glimpsed in a fractured childhood lesson. "The ones who lead in fear always test the stranger first," the older voice whispered in his mind.