The last thread of water slid down the wood, then the crate slammed into the hold with a dull, heavy thud.
Xavier straightened with a grunt and flexed his numb fingers once. Twice. His shoulders burned. His back had already sent the bill an hour ago.
"Last one," he called.
Raymond didn't answer.
He was already on deck, bent over the mooring lines, hands on knots, eyes on anything that could fail. Xavier didn't need to look to know he was checking everything twice. Raymond always did that. Not because he was careful.
Because he trusted chance less than he trusted rope.
Xavier was about to throw some jab at him when he heard the footsteps.
Wrong footsteps.
Too fast. Uneven. The sound of a man running on legs that had already quit.
He looked up just as Delo burst out of the dirt path.
The kid's lungs were shredding themselves. Face white. Hands covered in blood. And clutched against his chest so tightly it looked painful, his little sister hung limp in his arms, head lolling, hair stuck to her forehead.
Xavier's first instinct was stupid.
Find words.
Then he saw better.
The blood on Delo's sleeves.
The torn shoulder.
The black soot around the cuffs.
Then the look on his face.
No panic. No tears.
Just the empty stare of someone who'd seen horror rise behind him and hadn't yet figured out in what order life was supposed to continue.
Delo stopped at the edge of the dock.
"The village…"
His voice scraped coming out.
"There's… something there. Some abomination. Don't know how long. Chief's still fighting, maybe. I didn't stay. I grabbed her first."
He swallowed hard.
"The others… I don't know. I don't know."
Raymond was already off the deck. Xavier hadn't heard him move.
He stepped in front of Delo, took the girl's wrist between two fingers, and closed his eyes.
Three seconds.
Maybe four.
His breathing never changed. His face didn't either.
Then he pressed two fingers into the base of her neck, feeling for something fragile and fast under cold skin.
He let go.
"She'll live."
He jerked his chin toward the cabin.
"Move."
Xavier and Raymond carried her inside.
Xavier ducked her head past the doorframe. Raymond changed the air in the room somehow. No light. No spell flare.
Just warmth creeping into the cabin like a coal waking up.
They came back out.
Delo was waiting by the door, fists clenched so hard his knuckles had gone pale.
Raymond was staring at the forest.
Not at Delo.
Not at Xavier.
The forest.
"That's not our village," he said.
Xavier looked at him. He knew that tone. The one Raymond used when he was talking less to persuade than to keep himself from saying more.
"No," Xavier said.
Raymond didn't move.
"People we barely know. Ground we haven't seen. A thing we know nothing about. That kind of mess stacks fast."
"So?"
"So," Raymond said, "you end up gutted in a place that won't remember your name."
Xavier gave a short bark of laughter.
"You've got a gift for charm."
"Wasn't trying."
"I know."
They looked at each other.
Short silence.
Heavy one.
There was something in Raymond's eyes. Not fear. Not hesitation exactly.
Memory.
Xavier didn't like that.
Raymond wasn't the kind of man who "felt" danger. He measured it. Named it. Counted exits.
So when he slowed down, it meant he'd seen a shadow he didn't want to explain.
"We're going," Xavier said.
Raymond finally looked away.
"Gear up."
Xavier stepped into the cabin.
His sister sat by the table, back straight, face already closed before he said a word. She'd heard everything. Of course she had. This shack leaked voices like torn skin leaked blood.
"We'll be back," he said.
"No."
He stopped.
She stood so fast the chair nearly toppled.
"I heard you. I heard what's out there."
"You didn't—"
"You're the only family I have left."
Her voice wasn't loud.
Worse than loud.
Controlled.
Pinned between her teeth.
Xavier opened his mouth, then shut it again. The easy lies stuck in his throat.
It'll be fine.
We'll be quick.
Back before dark.
Rotten wood, all of it.
She stepped closer.
Then one more step.
"I'm telling you not to go."
He almost smiled.
"You're telling me?"
"Yes."
"Bold."
She was shaking. Barely. Enough for her fingers to grip the edge of the table. Enough for her jaw to lock. Enough for him to know she was fighting something bigger than fear.
Xavier crouched in front of her.
"I'm not lying to you."
She watched him hard.
"It's bad."
Her breath caught.
"But I'm coming back."
She stared at him a long time.
Then laid her hand over his for one second.
No more.
Her thumb brushed the cracked skin across his knuckles.
Then she pulled away.
A tiny tilt of the chin toward the door.
Not blessing.
Not goodbye.
An order.
Don't leave me alone too long.
Xavier stood and left.
Outside, Raymond had already spoken to the familiars. Few words. Sharp ones. No repeats.
Delo stood there, still pale, still wrecked. Raymond held out a lump of dark paste, glossy and dense as tar-packed peat.
"Eat."
Delo frowned.
"What is it?"
"Eat."
"Raymond—"
"Eat."
He did.
Xavier didn't ask. He'd learned some things were better swallowed than explained.
Two minutes later, Delo wasn't breathing like prey anymore. His shoulders had squared. His eyes had found an edge again.
Not confidence.
Alignment.
Raymond took his bag, checked the strap, then started toward the trees.
They followed.
The path closed behind them like a throat.
Half an hour in, something changed.
Xavier felt it before he understood it. His sense—that extra instinct, whatever name people wanted for it—tightened all at once.
Not a warning.
More like static under the skull.
The animals had gone silent.
Not one by one.
All at once.
Leaves didn't move right anymore. Even the wind seemed to avoid one stretch of forest.
Delo slowed.
"You feel that?" he whispered.
Raymond said nothing.
Xavier glanced sideways at him. Raymond's profile was hard, shut tight. His left hand hung a little lower than usual, like the arm knew something the rest of him refused to admit.
Then the forest opened.
Not because the trees moved.
Because attention did.
Like the world had turned a page, and there it was in the middle of the road waiting to be read.
The creature stood taller than a horse, wider than a wagon, and looked unfinished in the worst possible way.
A gray wet body streaked with black veins.
Three heads sharing one trunk.
One of cracked stone.
One burned black, like meat forgotten in a fire.
One almost transparent, shape leaking at the edges like steam forced into skin.
Cold hit Xavier in the chest.
Not weather-cold.
Vacuum-cold.
The kind that steals heat from inside your ribs.
He stepped back before he meant to.
Delo did too, hands already on his weapons.
Raymond didn't move.
He stared at it like a man staring at an old mistake.
Xavier turned toward him, then back.
He understood enough.
Raymond knew this kind of thing.
Had seen one before.
Or something close.
The transparent head turned slowly toward them.
Silence got heavier.
Not absence of sound anymore.
Presence.
Something moved through the air.
A word.
A breath.
An intention.
"Soft."
"Marrow."
Delo flinched like he'd swallowed glass.
Xavier felt his own teeth grind.
Then the stone head slammed down.
The ground exploded.
Xavier was thrown into a tree so hard the world flashed white. His shoulder hit bark. Something cracked in his side—not broken, but close enough to hurt mean. Delo rolled through mud.
The creature hadn't just struck.
It had compressed the earth.
Ribs of dirt rose around the impact point.
Raymond was still standing.
The shockwave bent around him as if it had hit a wall.
"You two!" he shouted.
Xavier pushed up, palms slipping.
The burned head opened its mouth.
Fire came out.
Not red.
Not clean.
A thick black stream that smelled like copper and overcooked flesh.
Raymond raised one hand. The air in front of him warped. The blast smashed against something unseen and split sideways, tearing branches apart.
"Xavier!"
Raymond barely turned his head.
"The village. Now."
"And you?!"
The creature rose with the sound of wet bones grinding.
Raymond planted his feet.
"I stay."
"Hell no."
A short breath. Half a laugh.
"This or all three of you die here."
Delo staggered upright, blood in his mouth.
"We can take it together."
"No," Raymond said. "Not now. Not like this."
The transparent head opened, and an invisible blade cut through the space where Delo's face had been half a second earlier. The tree behind him split clean through.
Delo went pale.
Raymond kept talking, voice low.
Worse than shouting.
"Xavier. Get them out. You hear me? Village. Now."
"Go to hell."
Raymond finally looked at him.
And Xavier saw something raw there.
Not softness.
Not fear.
The look of a man who knew exactly what he was asking.
Then Raymond said, quieter:
"I can't let it pass."
Xavier frowned.
The creature understood first.
The burned head jerked up. The stone one twisted with a grinding noise, like the words had scraped an old scar.
Raymond clenched his jaw.
"It came through here before."
Silence after that wasn't empty.
It was inhabited.
Xavier looked at the thing. Then Raymond. Then back again.
There was history here.
Rotten history.
A thread Raymond had buried and never cut clean.
"Personal," Xavier said.
Raymond didn't answer.
The transparent head smiled.
And Xavier knew the creature understood too.
Delo cursed under his breath.
"Raymond…"
"Go," Raymond said.
The creature struck again.
This time Raymond didn't block.
He slid aside at the last instant, and the mass pulverized a pine behind him. The tree fell screaming sap.
Raymond hit back before it could recover.
He drove one hand forward and slammed compressed force into its chest so hard the ground split under its feet.
"NOW!" he roared.
Xavier grabbed Delo by the collar.
"Move."
"No!"
"You want to die here or save what's left?"
Delo fought him.
Not hard enough.
Not against Xavier.
Not against panic.
Xavier dragged him backward through the mud while behind them Raymond and the creature crashed into each other again.
The first impact sent branches flying.
The second shook the dirt through Xavier's boots.
Delo twisted for one last look.
"We can't leave him!"
"If he told us to go," Xavier snarled, "it means he plans to do worse than die."
They ran.
The village looked like an opened wound.
Houses ripped apart. Roofs split. Smoke crawling low and greasy. Burned wood mixed with blood and dead livestock.
Part of the dock had collapsed.
Something had passed straight through the center and peeled walls away like skin.
Delo stopped dead.
Xavier did too.
Then the world behind them screamed.
Not with sound.
With pressure.
The forest bent inward, then snapped back. A column of dirt, branches, and meat rose above the trees.
Delo froze.
"He'll come back," he whispered.
Xavier said nothing.
His senses were locked on the road.
On what he couldn't yet see but could already feel.
Raymond.
Raymond's presence came in jagged waves.
Broken.
Then there again.
And with it—
the creature.
Closer.
Faster.
Then Raymond burst through the trees like the forest had spat him out.
He was stumbling backward, one arm hanging wrong, sleeve torn from wrist to shoulder. Blood glazed his hand. Sweat ran off his jaw. One side of his mouth was split open.
Behind him, the creature still came.
Only two heads now.
But worse.
The stone head had cracked wider, a foul glow leaking through the seams.
The burned head smoked.
The transparent one… was changing.
For flashes at a time, it wore a human face.
A face Raymond recognized.
Xavier saw it in him.
Not surprise.
Something uglier.
Something stripped bare.
The creature opened its mouth.
And spoke in a voice that was not its own.
Rough. Broken. Choked.
"You… ran… again."
Raymond stopped moving.
Not by choice.
The words hit harder than claws.
Delo stepped back.
Xavier felt his own throat tighten.
Raymond lifted his head.
"You're not him."
The thing laughed.
Wet. Wrong.
"You left me."
The silence after that was a pit.
Raymond moved.
"Xavier. Delo. Out."
"Raymond—"
"OUT!"
The word cracked like rope snapping.
Xavier seized Delo's shoulder.
"We're going."
"He'll—"
"He knows."
It wasn't true.
Not fully.
But it was enough to make them run.
They fled toward the village.
Raymond stayed alone.
Alone with the thing.
Alone with whatever memory had learned to wear flesh.
The creature charged.
Raymond met it.