The forest watched as they stepped back into the world. They left the Forest of the Dead beneath a sky that refused to brighten fully. Kegan had restocked their supplies and let them rest as long as they needed to at the temple.

  The girls had gone back to the table to gather some liquid courage. A whole bottle's worth of it. He had left them to themselves as he silently watched from a chair in the corner by the fire. He had pretended not to hear them talk amongst themselves of days long past, of the future that could be. Lili kept them laughing most of the night, with stories of her youth.

  By the time they had finished three bottles of his good ale and half a cake, he had suggested they make use of a bench to sleep it off. All three girls had started shouting angrily at him about not being told what to do. Then, bursting into tears. He had finally given up when Lili had thrown a chunk of cake towards his head and missed.

  A flick of his wrist and a silent prayer that Dramond would return to help him deal with three drunk women who seemed irrationally angry with him, he had conjured up a massive pillow mound near the fire. Lili had squealed in delight and dove headfirst into the pile, demanding the other two join her.

  Later, he had found them all asleep, snoring loudly, he might add. On top of several layers, they had sprawled out in very uncomfortable-looking positions. Making sure the fire was going to continue to burn through the night, he had walked out to another part of the temple, leaving them to their sleep.

  They walked single file for a while, the narrow, cracked trail overgrown. Between ancient roots and brittle earth, glowing mushrooms flickered in pockets of green light, nourished by the old magic of the forest. The trees stretched far behind them,bone-pale and watchful, as if the forest itself still lingered, just out of sight. Gravebloom was quiet in Alora’s hand.

  Aurora walked just ahead, Ymir’s pendant around her neck, catching the dim light like a fallen star. She had put it on for courage, hoping he would recognize it when he returned. He would remember her. She couldn’t doubt that.

  Lili trailed behind, her boots crunching in rhythm with the swaying of the strange fern she’d braided into her hair. Occasionally, a beetle the size of a walnut crawled across her shoulder, and she flicked it off with a half-smile, half-grumble.

  “I don’t like that the trees watched us leave,” Lili finally said, her voice breaking the hush. “I swear I heard one whisper my name.”

  Alora didn’t look back. “They probably did.”

  Lili groaned. “Great. Next time we camp inside a giant grave, someone else gets watch duty.”

  Aurora remained silent, her gaze fixed on the horizon, where the forest thinned and the sky opened like a wound. The land beyond the Forest of the Dead was no longer what it had once been. It was fractured. Burned in places, drowned in others.

  A hilltop was split cleanly in two, the right side covered in bright flowers, the left charred like glass. Further along, a stream ran uphill in defiance of gravity, choked with purple reeds and drifting embers that never burned.

  Time twisted around these places. Memory saturated the ground. Every so often, they would hear something, a cry, a laugh, a whisper, with no source.

  “The Rift has fingers now,” Kegan muttered from behind them. “It’s reaching further every day.”

  Alora turned slightly. “Do you mean literally?”

  “Not yet,” Kegan replied, with the air of someone who hoped he wasn’t lying.

  They made camp beneath a crumbled bridge, once a trade road lined with stone lions and engraved sunbursts, now broken in jagged halves across a shallow ravine.

  A single glowing lantern plant had bloomed beneath the arch, casting a blue light across their small circle. Aurora spread the book of tomes on her cloak. She looked tired, but focused, the kind of stillness that comes when grief and determination war equally in the soul.

  “We need more than the ritual,” she said, fingers running along the page’s edge.

  “We need the full magic behind it. Anchors. Components. Threads that bind.”

  Lili poked at her travel bread, frowning.

  “You’re saying we’ve got the recipe, but not the kitchen.”

  “Exactly,” Aurora said, not even smiling.

  Alora sat cross-legged, turning Gravebloom gently in her hand, the wood warm against her palm.

  “So where do we find magic old enough to make this possible?”

  Aurora looked up then, her eyes shining in the lantern light, and a thought passed over her. Why hadnt she thought of it sooner?

  “We go to the Aetherial Academy. It has the biggest record of Rift knowledge in the whole kingdom. There are even records there that the king himself doesn't have.”

  The others went quiet. Even Kegan stopped rummaging through his coat for whatever relic or bone fragment he’d been fidgeting with. He had an odd look on his face as his head whipped up to look at Aurora.

  “The Academy…” Alora echoed, slowly. “It’s near where the Rift took Ymir.”

  Aurora nodded. “That’s why we start there. That's where he was last before the rift took him.”

  Lili glanced between them, a flicker of doubt in her brow. “You think it’ll still be standing?”

  Aurora stood slowly, placing the book back into her pack. “I don’t know. I didn’t stick around long enough to see if the Academy would be able to withstand a Rift attack. Obviously, it was mostly students who were nowhere near ready for an attack. The instructors there would have put up some sort of a fight if it came down to it. They taught more than healing there.”

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  “There is a locked room under the library that might have what we need,” Kegan finally spoke up.

  “How do you know that?” Lili asked

  “Because…” he sighed, “I knew someone who had helped build the Academy.”

  “That's impossible, you would have to be either hundreds of years old or some spirit is telling the biggest fish story I have ever heard.” Lili laughed and shook her head.

  “You think I would make up a grand story for ben….” Kegan stopped mid-sentence and stood. He was staring off into the distance.

  “Something is burning. That smell…Oh no.” Kegan ran out of the camp.

  “What in the great forest was that all about?” Lili asked, standing, following Kegan's lead. Alora and Aurora grabbed their things and followed them out of the camp.

  The smoke reached them before the screams did. Aurora slowed her pace, scanning the tree line.

  “That’s no campfire.”

  “No,” Alora agreed. “That’s a burn ward. It's for keeping things in, not to keep them out. ”

  They crested the ridge to find a village, or what remained of one, slouched in the basin below. Shattered homes that had caught fire and had been destroyed. Scarred stone. Dozens of people camped in makeshift tents, their clothes stitched from old cloth and charred remnants of earth.

  It wasn’t the ruin that chilled Aurora. It was the silence. Dozens of eyes watched them descend. No one moved, fear in their eyes as they watched the group walk past the wards and into the village. Until a child, whose hair turned white from a rift burn, stepped forward and said,

  “Are you here to finish it? It hurts a lot. Mommy couldnt take the pain anymore. She said fire is the only way to stop it.”

  Aurora looked down at the child. They were called the Marked, villagers displaced when the Rift cracked open and tore through their farmland like a blade. Those who escaped bore strange signs: glowing veins, translucent skin, and voices that echoed slightly when they spoke. It was a sickness that spread quickly and killed slowly.

  The Rift hadn’t just destroyed the land; it had rewritten it. Those who stayed became infected. Drifting from place to place for fear of spreading the sickness to others. It would eventually take them all.

  Kegan took the lead, speaking softly with the elders, next to a large burning fire. Someone had died, and they had set up the last rites. Aurora stood at the edge of the ruined square, watching a woman try to calm a baby who no longer cried but instead vibrated with an eerie hum.

  Lili crouched beside a boy playing with stones that hovered slightly above the ground. “This is horrible,” she said. “They didn’t ask for this.”

  “No one does,” Alora murmured.

  The healer among them, an old man with half his face turned to crystal, approached quietly.

  “They’re stable,” he said. “For now. But the Rift sings to them. Some answer and pass on, we have to burn the remains. The sickness will spread. Please be careful when you touch them.”

  “It doesn’t sing to all of them,” the healer continued quietly. “Only the ones who are closest to… alignment.”

  “Alignment?” Alora asked.

  “When the Rift begins to believe they belong to it.”

  Lili’s stomach turned. “Belong?”

  “They begin to prefer it,” the old man said. “The cold. The hum. The way the world feels thinner. When that happens… they walk into the fire willingly.”

  Aurora’s brow creased. “You’ve heard it?”

  He nodded. “Only once. It said: make them whole. But I don’t know what that means. I have been with this group for half my life trying to heal them, but nothing I do makes a difference. The King ignores them.”

  Aurora straightened her spine, turning to look at the others. The girls nodded in silent agreement.

  “How can we help?” Alora stepped forward and reached around for her staff.

  They had spent most of the evening helping the village anyway they could. Wrapping wounds, cooking food, mending carts that had fallen apart. The Marked had given them a wide berth, not wanting to spread the sickness or fear. They had not been shown kindness in a very long time, and it had made them wary.

  Later that night, around a dying fire, the decision was laid bare.

  “We could stay,” Lili said, staring at the glowing veins beneath her own hand as if checking for signs. “Teach them containment. Strengthen the wards. Give them time.”

  “And then what?” Alora asked quietly. “Watch the sickness spread further while the convergence closes?”

  “They are not a detour,” Lili snapped. “They’re people.”

  “And Ymir isn’t?” Aurora’s voice cracked sharper than she intended.

  The words hung there. Lili flinched. Aurora inhaled slowly, steadying herself.

  “If we stay, we help dozens.”

  Her gaze drifted to the horizon, where the sky bent unnaturally over distant hills.

  “If we leave, we might save thousands.”

  The fire popped softly. Kegan spoke without looking at any of them.

  “This is how the Rift wins.”

  They all turned to him. “It forces you to choose which suffering you can live with.”

  Aurora closed her eyes. “And which you can’t.”

  A silence fell. Then the old healer walked up to them and presented her with a gift, a small pendant made of Rift-crystal, pulsing softly.

  “For you,” he said. “A reminder. The Rift doesn’t always take. Sometimes it offers. Thank you for your kindness today. It was more than we had seen our entire lives. The Elders will gladly lower the wards for you to leave. I don’t know how, but you all seem to be immune to the sickness. I have watched so many die in darkness; the light you brought was a beacon of hope to these people. ”

  Aurora held it for a long moment before leaving it on the edge of the fire pit. The crystal pulsed once in her palm. For a fleeting second, warmth spread through her fingers, not cold. Something almost gentle.

  She could have taken it. Another tether. Another fragment of understanding. Instead, she set it down beside the dying coals. She would not collect pieces of a wound. She would not take more from these people than they had.

  When they departed at dawn, not everyone in the village waved goodbye. However, one did. The child with white hair smiled and whispered a word that didn’t exist in any known tongue. The shard in Aurora’s pocket hummed in answer.

  The land shifted again as they walked. The road transformed from gravel to shattered marble. Pillars emerged half-sunken from the ground like the bones of gods, remnants of a time when the world was young, hungry, and filled with impossible dreams. As they neared the main road, the wind grew stranger. They were still days away from the Academy. At least a fortnight. The closer they would get, the stronger Aurora's determination would grow. She knew they would bring Ymir back; he would be whole, eventually.

  The fear of him not knowing her after all this time weighed heavily on her soul. What would happen if he decided that, after everything she had gone through, after everything they had endured, he wanted no part of. Aurora was close to losing the battle of keeping her tears in check when Alora took her hand. She closed her fingers tightly around Alora’s.

  Alora kept her eyes on the road ahead, not speaking about holding Aurora’s hand. No words were needed. Alora knew that Aurora craved strength now more than anything. An unspoken gesture of comfort when it was needed most. Lili had come up on Aurora’s other side and done the same. Aurora smiled at her.

  “Don’t worry. We’ve got you.” Lili whispered, squeezing the hand she held.