The girl sat now with her back propped gently against the tree trunk, eyes half-lidded with fatigue. Her hair—black as night—spilled over Kael’s cloak, still wrapped around her frame. The fire cast soft light across her skin, catching the subtle sheen of warmth rising back into her cheeks. She hadn’t spoken again, but her gaze lingered on Lirael and Ezryn with a strange… ache. Longing? Recognition? It was hard to tell.

Kael noticed it but said nothing.

Lirael had tucked a spare cloth behind her neck, creating a makeshift pillow. Ezryn had summoned another glowing orb, setting it to float just above them, casting steady light. The forest, usually alive with whispering winds and rustling leaves, felt utterly still.

“Alright,” Ezryn said at last, arms folded, voice low. “Let’s talk.”

Kael looked up from tending the fire. “About?”

“The girl.” Ezryn nodded toward her. “You said she came from the rock. Alone. Naked. Surrounded by God-knows-what kind of sealing spell?”

Kael’s brows furrowed. “Yeah. That’s what happened.”

“And you didn’t think that might be… suspicious?” Ezryn’s tone sharpened. “Things buried for a hundred years in cursed forests aren’t usually harmless.”

“She was asleep.” Kael’s jaw clenched. “She wasn’t doing anything.”

Lirael’s voice came quietly. “Still… It’s strange. No memory. No name. Not even fear. Just… confusion.”

Kael huffed, turning his gaze back toward the flames. “You think she’s a monster in disguise?”

Ezryn didn’t answer immediately. “I think we’re in a forest that keeps playing tricks on us, be it with memory, time, and illusions. We don’t know what rules this realm operates on. She could be a vessel. An echo. Or worse, a lure.”

Kael stood up suddenly. “She’s not.”

Ezryn arched with an eyebrow. “You sound certain.”

“I am certain,” Kael growled. “She was cold, alone, and barely breathing. Whatever she is—or was—right now, she’s just a girl who needs help. We can’t leave her here to die.”

“Since when do you care about strangers?” Lirael asked softly, not unkindly.

Kael turned his head sharply. “Since I had to dig one out of a stone cocoon, and she looked at me like I was the first person she ever saw.”

Lirael blinked.

Ezryn exhaled, pushing his glasses up. “You’re sure she wasn’t… glowing?”

Kael hesitated, eyes flicking toward the girl.

Just for a moment—when her eyes opened—they had shimmered gold. Her hair, too, had flashed like starlight. He’d thought he imagined it. But now…

He didn’t speak of it.

“Look,” he muttered, “we can figure it out later. Let’s not make decisions while she’s half-conscious and freezing.”

Lirael nodded slowly. “Fine. But she can’t stay nameless.”

Ezryn tilted his head. “What should we call her? ‘Girl in Kael’s cloak’?”

Lirael turned toward the girl. “She’s waking up.”

The girl—still wrapped in Kael’s cloak—was no longer dozing. Her eyes, bright green now, blinked slowly as if struggling to hold focus. Her gaze flitted between them, unreadable, quiet.

Kael crouched beside her. “Hey… do you remember your name?”

She said nothing.

"Liz," she said, after a beat. "You can call me Liz."

It felt strange in her mouth—but not wrong. Like a sound she'd heard once, in life she couldn't quite touch.

A name offered in a dream. A thread that hadn't snapped.

Lirael tested the name. "Very well."

Ezryn dipped his quill as if the name itself needed to be written into the world to become true. "Liz, it is."

For a while, the only sounds were fire, soup, and the rustle of parchment.

A night bird called once, decided against it, and folded into silence.

Kael spoke first. "Tomorrow, we cut east. We'll see the river. Stick to the granite—we won't be circled."

Lirael nodded, as if granting him a medal. "I'll sweep ahead at dawn. If there's a path, I'll find it."

Ezryn added, "I'll set the protection barriers."

Liz listened as if the words had weight she could lean against. "And me?"

Kael met her gaze. "You rest."

She looked faintly amused. "I can walk."

"You can," he said. "You will. But you'll also sleep."

Lirael's mouth curved. "Listen to him now. He's right."

Liz's hands tightened around the tin. For a moment, it seemed like she wanted to ask something else. Like she wanted to admit that the world kept tugging at the edge of her mind. That someone had left a door open inside her.

"I don't know who I was," she said. 

A pause.

"It feels as if I am dreaming." But she says nothing further. 

Something in her eased. "Alright."

Ezryn rose and began tracing sigils into the earth with a stick, murmuring low.

Lirael cast her senses wide. A thread of wind unspoiled from her fan, weaving through the trees. A barrier—more delicate and more final than any wall.

Kael spread his spare cloak beside the fire and, without apology, laid his own near it. He set his sword within reach of Liz's resting place. No one questioned him.

"Here," Lirael said, returning with a scrap of linen that smelled faintly of mint. She tucked it beneath Liz's head. Her hands were not motherly—but they were kind.

"If the smoke bites your eyes, this will help."

"Thank you," Liz whispered.

They lay in the order:

Lirael on the edge.

Ezryn across the fire.

Kael is between Liz and everything else.

—

Something moved.

Not in the forest.

In Liz.

In the hush behind her closed eyes, light swelled like dawn beneath a locked door. Not warm—no, it was beautiful, and it was terrible. It bled across a sky of hammered bronze, vast and breathless. Mountains stood like the spines of sleeping giants, unmoving, eternal.

And at the edge of the world, where the land fell into nothing, two figures in white walked the air.

She knew them and didn't.

The woman's hair spilled like molten sunlight, her posture a blade honed by certainty. The man's white hair streamed in a wind that touched nothing else; law pressed into the corners of his mouth, softened only when his eyes found hers. Yet she could not get a clear image of them. 

They reached for each other as if they had never learned how not to.

The kiss that followed wasn't frantic. It was a vow.

 It tasted like oath and ash and something so sacred, it would be heresy in any mouth but theirs.

 She didn't hear what they said before or after. She heard only the sound the world made when they touched—like silk torn down the middle, like a bell tolling from the ocean floor.

Then fire swallowed the mountains.

Light unraveled.

Time screamed in reverse.

Her body jolted.

"Liz."

A voice. Close. Not in the dream. But a more grounded physical realm.

Her eyes snapped open.

The forest reassembled itself in fragments: a scrap of sky, the ring of firestones, the weight of a blade within reach, the silhouette of Kael's shoulder where he'd braced himself, already watching.

"You're alright," he murmured, not touching her, but close enough she could've reached him in one breath. "It is still night."

Just the night.

As if the dark were simple.

Her throat rasped. "I… didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't. I wasn't sleeping."

A lie—gentle, offered like a blanket.

Across the fire, Ezryn lay on his back, eyes open, the conjured light dimmed to a ghost of itself. He gave no sign he'd stirred. Lirael didn't move at all, which meant she was awake and generously pretending otherwise.

Liz stared at the flickering tongues of flame—the quiet work of burn and become ash. 

She lowered herself slowly. "Will you”

"I'm here," Kael said before she could finish.

She let her breath fall in time with him. Let it together.

Minutes passed. Maybe for hours. Time forgot itself.

At some point, her hand drifted toward him. Her fingers brushed the back of his knuckles.

He didn't take her hand.

He turned his palm up so she wouldn't have to reach it.

And she slept.

Kael watched the canopy until his eyes burned. He found himself praying for a complete stranger, embracing her like she is his one and only ember of life. He told himself many things until the telling became a prayer he'd never admit aloud.

Across the fire, Ezryn watched the last glowing line of his barriers pulse and fade, pulse and fade, like a heartbeat under the skin.

He didn't look to long toward the girl wrapped in Kael's cloak. Something inside him tell he shouldn't, as if a long-forgotten page had turned, and the words remembered him back.

Near dawn, Lirael rose soundlessly. She fed the fire with twigs no thicker than a whisper. Smoke rose in a clean, straight line.

She looked at the girl asleep, the bend of Kael's shoulder, the silent stillness of Ezryn.

And for one heartbeat, the steely line of her mouth eased.

 Hope today bring us better news.