The dust hadn't even settled yet.

  A Reaver's body lay in the dirt, blood seeping into the cracked stone beneath it. The crimson pool spread slowly, finding the natural grooves and fissures in the weathered ground, following paths of least resistance. The last gurgle from his throat had long since faded into the heavy silence that now blanketed the ruined village, but the girl remained frozen in place—knees drawn to her chest, clutching that filthy bandage roll like it was the last tether binding her to a world that still made sense.

  She didn't move. Barely breathed. Her eyes, wide and hollow, reflected nothing but the terrible stillness that comes after violence. The bandage roll in her hands had once been white, perhaps. Now it was stained with dirt, sweat, and the invisible fingerprints of desperation. She gripped it so tightly her knuckles had gone pale, bloodless moons against skin burnished by sun and grime.

  Norn stood nearby, cleaning his blade with the hem of the dead man's tabard. The fabric absorbed the wet redness with a soft, almost tender sound. His movements were precise, like a well-oiled machine performing its designated function. It wasn't the first body he'd cleaned his dagger on. It wouldn't be the last. The morning light caught the edge of steel as he turned it, checking for remaining traces of death that might corrode the metal.

  He looked over his shoulder, eyes meeting hers across the small distance that separated them—a distance measured in more than just physical space.

  She didn't speak.

  Neither did he.

  Only the wind dared stir between them, rustling the dry leaves overhead and pushing smoke through the broken beams of the half-collapsed house. The scent of copper hung in the air, metallic and primal. Somewhere distant, a bird called—three sharp notes that cut through the silence before fading back into nothing.

  The sun climbed higher, painting long shadows across the broken stones and abandoned tools that littered what had once been someone's home. Time stretched like taffy, slow and sticky and impossible to measure with any tool but heartbeats and held breath.

  Norn took one last glance at the corpse, then stepped toward her. His boots crunched softly on the debris-strewn ground, each step deliberate and measured.

  Not threatening. Not kind. Just... deliberate.

  Her eyes tracked his every move, wild with fear and uncertainty. The tendons in her neck stood out like cords as she pressed herself further against the wall, as if hoping the ancient stones might swallow her whole, might offer an escape from this moment suspended between terror and survival.

  He crouched a few feet away, careful not to get too close. His shadow fell across her feet but went no further, a boundary line he seemed to instinctively understand. The air between them crackled with unspoken tension, with questions neither dared to voice.

  Still breathing. Not screaming. That's something.

  The thought crossed his mind but didn't reach his lips. There was no point in speaking when words would only bounce off the walls of fear she'd built around herself. He'd seen it before—the way terror could turn a person to stone, could freeze their tongue and dim their eyes until they became little more than breathing statues, waiting for the next blow to fall.

  Without a word, he turned and crouched beside the Reaver's corpse. Hands moved with cold efficiency—checking pouches, unlacing belts, turning over boots. The body was still warm, a mockery of life that made the stillness of death all the more apparent. A fly landed on the dead man's cheek, rubbing its front legs together in ghoulish anticipation.

  He found flint. A few copper coins that might buy bread in a town, if they ever found one that still existed. A cracked dagger with a handle wrapped in worn leather, the blade still sharp enough to be useful.

  And a small, rusted locket.

  Pausing, he held it up to the dusty light that filtered through the broken roof. The metal was tarnished, green with age in some places, but the small clasp still worked. He opened it with a soft click that seemed impossibly loud in the silent room.

  Empty.

  No picture. No keepsake. Just a dry hollow space where a memory used to live. A void that matched so many others in this broken world—places where something precious had once existed, now vacant and meaningless.

  He stared at it a moment longer than necessary, turning it over in his fingers as if trying to divine some secret from its worn surface, then slipped it into his pouch.

  "Another piece of death to carry."

  The whispered words escaped before he could trap them behind his teeth. They hung in the air between them, fragile and unwelcome.

  He spoke again, voice flat, but not cruel. Just empty, like a well that had been dry for too many seasons.

  "You didn't come from here. Where's your village?"

  She said nothing. Her lips remained pressed into a tight, bloodless line, as if speech itself were a luxury she could no longer afford. But her eyes—they spoke volumes in their silence. They darted from his face to his hands to the door and back again, calculating distances, measuring threats, seeking escape.

  But her eyes drifted—lower, toward his wrist where the Ashmark pulsed beneath his sleeve. Even dim, it cast an ugly light, a sick glow that seemed to writhe beneath his skin like something alive and malevolent. The faint red glow seeped through the threadbare fabric, a brand that told its own story without words.

  Her eyes widened. She flinched, ever so slightly—a tremor that ran through her body like a current, there and gone in an instant. But he caught it. He always caught the small things. The Maw had taught him to read fear in its tiniest manifestations.

  Norn noticed.

  He yanked his sleeve down sharply. The fabric rasped against his skin, a sound like distant thunder. His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble that shadowed his face.

  "Don't answer if you don't want to," he muttered. The words fell between them like stones dropped in still water, creating ripples of silence that spread outward into the empty room.

  Reaching into his bag, he pulled out a strip of jerky—his last one. Dried and tough, but food nonetheless. The meat was dark, almost black in places, preserved with salt and smoke until it barely resembled the animal it had once been. Hard as wood in some spots, but sustenance for bodies that couldn't afford to be picky.

  He held it out to her. The offering hung in the space between them—not quite a peace offering, not quite charity. Just a practical gesture in a world where practicality had replaced kindness.

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  She didn't take it.

  Her gaze flicked between the meat, his hand, and his blade. The calculation was obvious—weighing hunger against danger, need against fear. Her stomach might have groaned, but her survival instinct screamed louder.

  He didn't sigh. Just shrugged. A slight lift and fall of shoulders that had carried too many burdens for too many years.

  "Suit yourself. We can't stay here."

  He stood, tossing the jerky into the dirt between them, and pointed toward the treeline visible through the broken wall. The forest beyond stood silent and dark, a wall of shadow against the harsh midday light.

  "I can take you back. Wherever you came from. Or... you follow me."

  The choice lay between them, simple and brutal. Go back alone through territory crawling with Reavers, or follow a stranger with blood on his hands and death in his wake. No good options. Just degrees of danger.

  He didn't wait for her answer.

  But as he turned, he heard her move. Small feet crunching dry grass. The jerky gone from the ground where it had fallen. She had made her choice, silent as it was. Survival trumped fear, at least for now.

  They moved through the dead woods, burnt trees rising around them like broken teeth against a cloudless sky. The forest had been beautiful once, perhaps. Now it was a cemetery of timber, blackened trunks stretching toward heaven like the fingers of the damned begging for salvation that would never come.

  He led. She followed, silent but close. Not close enough to touch, not close enough to suggest trust—but close enough that if danger came, they might face it together. It was calculation, not companionship, but it was enough for now.

  The path twisted through ruins, scorched stumps, old blood. A quiet trail of memory etched into the landscape. Here, a crumbled wall that might have been a home. There, a rusted plow half-buried in ash and dirt. The ghosts of ordinary life lingered in these fragments, whispering stories neither of them wanted to hear.

  Norn didn't speak.

  But he glanced back more than once. Not to check if she was following—he could hear her footsteps, light as they were—but to reassure himself that she was still there. That he wasn't alone in this wasteland of ash and memory. That someone else still breathed the same bitter air.

  A twig snapped.

  The sound cracked through the silence like lightning in a clear sky. In a flash, Norn turned—blade drawn, posture ready to strike. His body responded before his mind could process, muscle memory honed by years of violence reacting to potential threat with lethal precision.

  But it was just her.

  She had tripped, caught in a tangle of root and rubble, hands scraping the dirt as she tried to catch herself. Dried leaves and twigs clung to her palms, small wounds that would sting but not slow her down. Not in this world where pain had become background noise.

  She looked up at him, startled. Still silent. Her eyes wide with an emotion that might have been fear or might have been something else—something he couldn't name because he'd forgotten how to read anything but danger in another person's face.

  His shoulders loosened. The blade lowered, though it didn't return to its sheath immediately. Old habits died hard, and in this world, they often outlived the people who carried them.

  "Watch your step," he muttered. The words fell between them, inadequate and rough.

  It wasn't kindness. It wasn't cruelty. It was something else.

  As dusk fell, they found shelter in the crevice of a collapsed outbuilding, the stone walls burned but still intact enough to block the worst of the wind that had picked up as the day died. The sky bled from blue to purple to a deep, velvety black pricked with distant stars that offered light but no warmth.

  Norn built a tiny fire, careful to keep it small enough that the smoke would blend with the deepening shadows. The flames licked at the dry wood, hungry and eager, casting writhing shadows across the ruined walls. The girl stayed just outside the glow, eyes fixed on the flame like it might speak if she listened hard enough. The firelight caught in her gaze, turning her eyes to liquid amber, revealing depths that daylight had hidden.

  She was still holding that roll of bandages. Her fingers worked the frayed edge absently, a nervous gesture that betrayed the stillness of her face. The cloth was dirty, nearly useless for its intended purpose, but she clung to it like an anchor.

  He saw her flinch as the fire cracked too loud, a sudden snap that sent sparks spiraling upward into the darkness. Her body tensed, ready to run, ready to fight—ready for whatever new horror might emerge from the night.

  Without a word, he stomped it out. His boot came down on the tiny flames, crushing them beneath his heel until only embers remained, glowing like dying stars in the packed dirt.

  Darkness returned, swift and complete. The sudden absence of light made the night seem deeper, more consuming. They became shadows within shadow, outlines barely visible against the greater blackness.

  "We don't need it," he said. The words hung in the air, unnecessary but strangely comforting in their practicality. Fire meant warmth, but it also meant visibility. In a world where being seen often preceded being killed, darkness was the safer choice.

  The stars emerged, small and cold above the broken roof. Their light was distant, indifferent to the small dramas playing out beneath their eternal gaze. They had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, the birth and death of worlds. Two people huddled in ruins were nothing to them.

  Norn sat with his back to the stone, polishing his blade, every stroke of the cloth a rhythm of survival. The soft scrape of fabric against metal was hypnotic, meditative. His fingers moved from memory, cleaning away blood that might rust the edge, checking for nicks that might compromise its effectiveness when he needed it most.

  The girl chewed slowly on the jerky he gave her. Her mouth moved, but her eyes were somewhere else. Lost in memory, perhaps, or simply vacant with exhaustion. The meat was tough, requiring effort to tear and chew, but she persisted. Hunger was a more immediate master than fear.

  Then—

  "...You're one of them," she said, her voice barely above the wind. The words drifted between them like fallen leaves, light but impossible to ignore. "But you're running."

  He froze.

  No shift. No flinch. Just silence.

  His hands stilled on the blade, fingers pressed against the cold metal as if seeking truth through touch. The night seemed to hold its breath, waiting for his answer.

  Then he whispered:

  "...I'm not one of those beasts."

  The words tasted like ash in his mouth. Like a lie too often told until it became indistinguishable from truth. His fingers unconsciously moved to his sleeve, to the place where the Ashmark pulsed beneath fabric and skin.

  He didn't believe it.

  And maybe she didn't either.

  But she said nothing more. Just watched him with eyes that had seen too much to be easily deceived, but had also seen enough to understand that in this new world, monsters and men were separated by margins so thin they might as well not exist at all.

  The night deepened around them. Insects sang in the darkness, a chorus of small lives continuing despite the apocalypse that had claimed so many larger ones. A reminder that the world hadn't ended—it had simply changed into something harsher, something that favored the small and the hardy and the vicious.

  Sleep came in fits and starts, neither of them surrendering fully to its embrace. They took turns watching, though no words passed between them to establish this arrangement. It simply happened, instinct guiding them to protect each other through the vulnerable hours of darkness.

  At first light, they moved again. The sun crept over the horizon, painting the burned land in shades of gold and amber that almost—almost—made it beautiful again. Morning dew clung to the blackened branches, tiny diamonds that caught the light and scattered it in brief, brilliant flashes.

  This time, she walked closer.

  Not beside him.

  Not yet.

  But closer.

  The distance between them had shrunk overnight, measured now in inches rather than feet. Not trust—not exactly. But perhaps the first tentative steps toward something that might, one day, resemble it.

  He noticed.

  And didn't say anything.

  But for the first time in days—maybe weeks—he looked up and watched the sky. The endless blue stretched above them, untouched by the ruin below, a reminder that some things remained constant even as the world burned. The sun still rose. The stars still emerged. And people still found ways to survive in the spaces between.

  They walked on, two silhouettes against the blistered horizon, moving together through a landscape of ash and memory.