Falazahr halted herself. It was not sudden. It was slow. Her feet took root. Her eyes saw—and continued seeing, even when kindness pleaded for them to stop.
There were two.
Both were turned east, their faces oriented toward the direction of the sunrise. As if they had died looking toward the morning. Or—worse—as if the morning had found them already dead, and left them that way.
Falazahr did not recognize them immediately. And this was, perhaps, the most terrible part. Because they were from her village. She had given them their names, but death had rewritten their faces. Their cheeks were sunken, their eyelids half-closed, and their lips were pulled back from their teeth, turning them into near-strangers.
Niu hid behind her, her small body shrinking.
— Do you see the color? — the girl whispered. — The color whose name I don't know?
Falazahr had even noticed the blood trails that she had missed on the path. Those bodies had been dragged. The color was a dark purple and red, a diluted wine shade, and it covered their necks, the tops of their chests, and trailed down in thin patches. It was a color that belonged to the body—blood.
She knelt. Slowly. Her knee touched the leaves, and the dampness crept up the back of her thighs, yet she barely felt it.
— Stay behind that rock, Niu — she said, without looking at the girl. — Don't come close.
The girl obeyed without a word. She went behind the largest rock, sat with her back against it, and hugged her knees.
Falazahr approached the first body. It was Guilem. She remembered giving him that name when she met him, as he used to admire a small bird for hours on end, without moving. Now he lay there on his side, his right arm stretched out in front of his body as if, in his last moment, he had tried to touch something—or push something away.
Falazahr brought the Winter Flame near his face.
The Flame recoiled. It retreated in a way she had never seen before—it was not a shrinking, but a flight. The blue light, which usually floated over her palm like a serene bubble, curled up and tried to burrow between her fingers, like a small animal hiding from its own shadow.
— Quiet — Falazahr whispered, and she did not know if she was speaking to the Flame or to herself. — Quiet. I just need to see.
The Flame's light wavered, as if apprehensive, before stretching out with visible reluctance. Beneath its glow, Guilem's neck was revealed, displaying two peculiar marks on his neck and skull. These did not resemble cuts or bites; they were, in reality, subtle deformities, leading Falazahr to imagine that some rigid object had struck their heads.
Stepping back, she moved to the second corpse. It was Hesna, who showed injuries at specific points on her skull. Falazahr became very still. The forest mirrored her. There was not even the chirp of a bird, nor the usual rustle of small animals, and certainly not the wind that had been blowing through the branches on the way there.
And in this traumatic moment, her ears caught the sound of footsteps. It was not a close step—perhaps twenty, thirty trees ahead, on the far side of the bodies. A fallen branch nearly snapped under the pressure of what was apparently a stride, and then nothing more.
The Winter Flame grew in Falazahr's palm to nearly the size of an apple, its glow becoming colder, steadier, and bluish-white. In her chest, that familiar sensation arose: a wordless warning. Just a sign of caution.
She rose slowly, without a sound. Her gaze swept the spaces between the trunks, searching for a shape, a movement, any sign. Nothing appeared. But the emptiness had texture. It seemed, in that moment, to possess its own vision.
— Niu — Falazahr whispered, without turning her face. — Get up. Slowly. Come behind me.
Niu complied. The child's steps on the leaves were light, but they echoed like shouts in the silence. She reached Falazahr and gripped her legs tightly. Falazahr felt the girl's heart pulsing against her skin.
The sound appeared again. Closer now.
The Winter Flame vibrated. Once, twice, three times. Like a vital organ.
— Who is there? — Falazahr asked.
Her voice sounded confident. It echoed the tone of one who led the nights around the bonfire—the authority of one who named, decided, shaped days with a simple sentence. But inside, she acknowledged, there was fear.
No one replied. The forest remained inert and hushed.-----Heridor stopped abruptly, as if invisible roots had grown beneath his feet. He had come much slower than they, keeping his distance, hidden behind thick trunks, resting the stump of his arm against the rough bark whenever his shoulder ached. He had reached the limit of observing without being noticed, and from there he witnessed everything.
- - -
He watched Falazahr kneel on the ground. He watched the Winter Flame recoil hesitantly, pause in doubt, and expand with renewed strength.
For the first time in his life, he faced those corpses—inert forms that made his gut twist like a snake awakening. His stomach rose to his throat, descended immediately after, leaving a bitter taste and a painful certainty: that could strike down any one of them. It could reach him. And perhaps it still awaited him in the future.
He crouched behind a tall root, controlling his ragged breathing, as he continued to peer out.
He noticed the moment Falazahr slowly rose, the flame dancing in her palm, and he admired her posture—alert, yet without panic, perhaps the fight against the Stone-Hide had taught her that uncontrolled fear would save no one.
Then, he discerned what had escaped Falazahr's eyes: a slight rustle of leaves in a low-lying bush, ten paces from his hiding place, for a very brief second. The glimpse was too fast, a flash of lightning in the half-shadow of dawn. Even so, Heridor did not have enough time to identify what he saw. He held his breath, as if oxygen had become a luxury. He did not inhale for the time of one, two, three heartbeats. His left stump gave a sharp pang—that twinge from the first days after the loss, but now a signal from his own body resurfaced: something terribly wrong was hovering in the air.
The shape in the bush vanished—it was gone. The leaves settled, returning to stillness, and where the silhouette had been, only the shadow of dawn remained. Heridor gazed at the empty spot long enough for Falazahr, on the opposite side, to utter phrases he did not catch. Long enough for Niu to sigh loudly.
Slowly and without a sound, he circled the trunks to the left. He did not intend to appear abruptly. He did not want Falazahr—the revered, the leader, the possessor of the inexplicable flame—to imagine he was watching her. He was present because he had spotted Falazahr crossing the village boundary, leaving the mother-fire burning.
— Who is there? — she spoke, searching with her gaze.