Morning arrived wrong.
The light was thinner, strained, as if the sun itself was uncertain about touching the clearing. Shadows lingered where they should not, clinging to the stones and trees like memories that refused to fade.
She woke with a sharp ache in her chest.
Not pain exactly.
Absence.
The fire that once roared inside her now felt distant, restrained, as if separated from her by glass. It responded when she reached for it, but slowly. Carefully. Like something that had learned fear.
She sat up abruptly.
Elion.
He lay where she had left him, breathing more steadily now. Color had returned faintly to his face. The wound at his side no longer bled, the skin strangely sealed, as if time itself had pressed pause around it.
She stared, dread creeping into her bones.
That was not her doing.
He stirred and opened his eyes.
"You are awake," he said.
She nodded, watching him too closely. "How do you feel."
He considered the question. "Like I should be dead."
Her breath caught.
"But I am not," he continued quietly. "And that feels… wrong."
She looked away.
He pushed himself into a sitting position with effort. "Something happened last night. Did it not."
"Yes."
He waited.
She had never told him the whole truth about the city. About the screams that followed her survival. About the way the world seemed to answer her emotions like a cruel companion.
Now there was something else to add.
"There was something here," she said slowly. "Something that heard me when I begged."
Elion's expression hardened, not with fear, but with understanding.
"And it helped."
"It intervened," she corrected. "There is a difference."
She described the presence. The way it spoke without sound. The weight of its attention. The bargain that was not a bargain at all.
When she finished, silence stretched between them.
Elion stared at his hands.
"So," he said finally, "we are alive because the world is curious."
"Yes."
"That is unsettling."
She almost smiled.
He looked up at her then, gaze sharp despite the exhaustion etched into his features. "What did it take from you."
She hesitated.
"I do not know yet," she admitted. "But I feel… altered."
Elion reached for her wrist, thumb brushing lightly over her pulse. "You are still here."
"For now."
They packed quietly after that.
The clearing felt exposed now. As if the forest had fulfilled its role and no longer cared what became of them. The stones were cold again. The paths had settled back into something ordinary.
That frightened her more than when the land moved.
They had been noticed.
As they left, she felt it again. That faint pull beneath her skin, not urging destruction, but restraint. As if something unseen watched not to punish, but to measure.
By midday, they reached higher ground.
From the ridge, they could see smoke in the distance.
Not wildfire.
Settlements.
Elion squinted. "People."
She stiffened. "We should avoid them."
He shook his head slowly. "We cannot run forever."
"Yes, we can," she said quickly. "I am very good at it."
He turned to face her fully, wincing slightly as he did. "And what happens when the world catches up again."
She had no answer.
Below them, the wind shifted.
She felt it immediately.
Fear.
Not hers.
Many voices. Many heartbeats.
"Elion," she whispered. "We are not the only ones moving this way."
He followed her gaze.
Along the road below, figures advanced in loose formation. Armed. Organized. Too many to be coincidence.
Not hunters like before.
Something worse.
"They are looking for something," he said.
She swallowed hard.
"No," she replied. "They are looking for me."
The fire stirred uneasily within its new limits.
And far above them, unseen and patient, the thing that answered grief watched the test begin.