Consciousness returned as a dull, throbbing ache. It started in his back, a solid knot of pain where he'd hit the well, then spread outwards to his burned wrist, his cracked ribs, his seared chest. It was a map of his failure, drawn in fire and stone.
He opened his eyes to a grey world.
The screaming was over. The laughter was gone. Now there was only the sound of a slow, mournful wind hissing through blackened skeletons of buildings, and the soft, endless crackle of dying embers. The air was thick with ash, falling like grey snow, coating everything. It filled his mouth, gritty and tasting of charcoal and something else, something sweet and terrible.
He pushed himself up on elbows that screamed in protest. He was lying where he'd fallen, in the lee of the stone well. The village of Last Hope was no more.
What stood in its place was a charcoal sketch of a town. Walls stood as jagged, blackened teeth against a smoke-stained sky. Roofs had caved in, revealing hollow, glowing interiors. Here and there, a stubborn timber still burned with a sullen orange flame.
He got to his knees. Then, slowly, to his feet. The world tilted, and he gripped the cold stone of the well to steady himself.
Silence. Not true silence, but the silence of life ended. A low moan drifted from somewhere near the square, a broken sound that went on and on until it choked off into nothing.
He had to move.
His first steps were a shuffle. His body was a collection of complaints. He looked down at his right hand, still clenched in a fist. He forced the fingers open.
The stone pendant lay in his palm, unharmed. The spiral carving was filled with ash. For your mother. A fresh wave of nausea, cold and hollow, washed through him. He tucked the pendant into the pocket of his trousers, the movement automatic.
He began to walk.
He passed the inn. Maude's clean linens were a pile of blackened rags. He saw a shape under them, small and curled.
He passed the smithy. The forge was cold. Garrick lay half-outside its door, his great hammer still in his grip, the side of his head a darkened, terrible mess. The bodies of two Weepers lay nearby, their glowing scars now dark and dead.
Kaelen did not stop. He could not stop. If he stopped, he would have to think. And if he thought, he would have to understand.
He walked the path of his last, desperate run. Past the collapsed shed. He did not look at the blackened shape beneath the beam. He kept his eyes on the ground, on his own shuffling feet.
He found the alley where they'd been separated. The wall of debris was still there, cooled now to a mound of black timber and shattered brick. He clambered over it, his movements clumsy, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps that hurt his ribs.
The other side was worse.
This had been a narrower lane, where the fire had burned hotter, trapped. There were more shapes here. Unrecognizable.
And there, leaning against the moss-covered stones of the village well at the lane's dead end, was his father.
Kaelan Morrow was sitting upright, his back against the well, as if taking a rest after a long day's work. But his eyes were open, staring at nothing. The axe was gone from his hand. His left arm was a ruin. And across his chest was a single, deep, cauterized wound that had not bled, only burned shut.
Kaelen's legs gave out. He fell to his knees in the ash a few feet away. The distance between them felt like a mile.
His father's head turned. Slowly. The movement was stiff, final.
Their eyes met.
A shudder went through Kaelan's body. A spark, the very last one, lit in the grey depths of his gaze. His lips, cracked and dry, moved.
"Kael…"
Kaelen scrambled forward on hands and knees, the ash coating him. He reached his father. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't touch the wounds. He just knelt there, his face level with his father's.
"You're alive," his father breathed. It wasn't a question. It was a painful relief.
"Dad…" Kaelen's voice was a rusted hinge. "Lyra… she…"
"Gone. Ran. Smart girl." Each word was an effort, pushed out on a fading breath. "Listen. No time."
Kaelen leaned closer, his ear near his father's mouth. The smell of blood and burned flesh was overwhelming.
"The shrine…" his father whispered, his voice fading in and out like a weak signal. "It's not a shrine. It's a lock. They… the scarred one… he's a key. Or wants to be. Wants to break it open."
"Break what open?"
"What sleeps…" A cough wracked his body, a wet, tearing sound. He winced, a ghost of his old strength holding the pain at bay. "The Weeping… son… it's not a plague. Not what they say. It's… older. Hungrier."
His hand twitched, trying to rise. Kaelen caught it, held it. The skin was cold.
"The pendant. It's… a counter-key. For your blood. Your mother's line… knew. Hid it." His eyes were losing their focus, looking through Kaelen now, at something beyond. "Remember… Last Hope… wasn't just a name. It was… a warning."
He took one last, long, shuddering breath. His fingers tightened around Kaelen's, a final, feeble pressure.
"Don't… let them… open the door…"
The light in his eyes guttered and went out.
His hand went limp.
Kaelen stayed there, kneeling, holding his father's cold hand. The wind blew, stirring the ash around them. Somewhere, a piece of timber cracked and fell with a soft thump.
Time lost meaning.
Eventually, the cold of the ground seeped into his bones. He let go. He looked at his father's face. He reached out and, with a tenderness that felt like it belonged to someone else, closed his eyelids.
He had to bury him.
The thought was simple, clean. A task. He could do a task.
He couldn't dig in the hard, root-packed earth. Not with his wounds. Not with his strength gone. But the well was ringed with smooth, heavy stones.
He began to move them.
One by one, he carried them from the pile beside the well. He didn't think about their weight. He didn't think about the man they would cover. He just moved. Lift, carry, place. Lift, carry, place.
He covered his father's legs. His torso. Each stone was a sentence in a goodbye he didn't know how to say. When he reached his father's face, he stopped. He chose a flatter, smoother stone. He placed it gently over his father's chest, the closest thing to a marker he could make.
He stood over the low, rough cairn. He had no words. No tears came. He was a hollow shell, filled only with ash and the echoes of whispers. A lock. A key. Not a plague.
Something glinted in the mud and ash near his foot, by the base of the well.
It was a small, teardrop-shaped crystal. It was clear, like quartz, but with a faint, internal milky swirl. It caught the dim grey light in a way the ash around it did not.
Without thinking, numb and automatic, he bent to pick it up.
His fingers touched it.
It did not feel like stone. It was cool, then instantly warm. As he lifted it, it dissolved. It didn't melt like ice. It flowed into his skin, through his fingerprint whorls, gone in an instant.
A jolt slammed into him.
Not physical. It was a spike of pure, desolate feeling.
A small hand in his. A child's laugh. The smell of baking bread. Then heat. Terrifying, wall-of-flame heat. Screaming. "Find your sister! RUN!" Shoving a small body forward into the smoke. The crushing weight of a beam. Darkness. And the last, clawing thought, a prayer screamed into the void: "Lissy, please, baby, run—"
Kaelen gasped, staggering back from the well as if struck. He clutched his head. The memory—vivid, sensory, drenched in a love and terror that were not his own—faded like a thunderclap, leaving his ears ringing and his soul scoured.
He stared at the spot on his finger where the crystal had vanished. The skin was unmarked.
He looked around, truly seeing for the first time. He saw other, similar glints near other bodies. By Garrick's outstretched hand. Near the entrance to the inn.
Crystalline tears. Fallen from the eyes of the dying, the infected, the Weepers.
His father's last words echoed in the new, hollow space inside him.
The Weeping… it's not what they say.
A cold different from the morning chill took root in his core. It was the chill of understanding. He was alone. He was in a graveyard of secrets. And he was now carrying something inside him that did not belong.
He turned his back on his father's cairn. He looked up the hill, to where the old shrine stood silhouetted against the grey sky.
He had a pendant in his pocket. A warning in his ears. And a foreigner's grief now etched into the walls of his own mind.
He began to walk, leaving the ashes behind, each step heavier than the last.