The mist thinned as they walked, peeling back from the path like a wound trying to heal.
The ground beneath their feet grew firmer, though the scent of burning still clung to the air, faint but inescapable.
She shifted the broken sword on her back, the cloth wrapping it tight against her spine. The shard of crystal against her chest pulsed faintly with each heartbeat, a small, persistent warmth in the chill.
He walked beside her, silent, his hood drawn low against the weak light.
Ahead, the trees broke open into a clearing and what waited there was not what she had expected.
Figures moved among the stones, wrapped in tattered cloaks, their faces hidden, their bodies thin and hollowed by time.
They were not the shades they had fled before.
They were not echoes.
They were something else.
Living.
Breathing.
But not whole.
She froze at the edge of the clearing, instinct screaming that something was wrong.
He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder.
"They are called the Hungering," he said softly.
"What do they want?" she whispered.
He looked down at her, his eyes unreadable in the dim light.
"What every broken thing wants," he said. "To be whole again."
One of the figures turned toward them, and she caught a glimpse of its face beneath the hood
Hollow eyes.
Skin stretched thin over sharp bones.
A mouth stitched closed with threads of blackened sorrow.
She took an involuntary step back.
"They can smell what you carry," he said. "The memory. The light."
"What do we do?" she asked, voice trembling.
"We do not run," he said. "Running feeds their hunger."
The Hungering moved closer, slow but deliberate.
She could hear them now
Not words, not voices.
A scraping sound, like the rustle of dry leaves blown by a dead wind.
They reached the center of the clearing and stopped, forming a rough circle around the two of them.
No attack.
No violence.
Just waiting.
One stepped forward a little taller than the rest, its cloak torn at the edges, its hands gnarled and trembling.
It extended a single finger toward her.
She swallowed hard, her hand instinctively going to the crystal around her neck.
"They want it," she said.
"They want you," he corrected.
Panic flared in her chest.
He stepped in front of her, a wall of shadow between her and the circle of broken souls.
"You will not have her," he said, voice low and lethal.
The Hungering did not retreat.
Instead, the one who had stepped forward dropped to its knees, bowing low until its forehead touched the dirt.
The others followed, one by one, until the clearing was filled with the sight of kneeling, broken things.
She stared, heart pounding.
"What are they doing?"
He turned his head slightly, enough for her to see the grim set of his mouth.
"They are not begging," he said. "They are binding."
She shivered.
"Binding to what?"
"To you."
The wind stirred the clearing, lifting the edges of their tattered cloaks like ghostly wings.
"They recognize the light in you," he said. "They will try to claim it. To use it to fill what they have lost."
She shook her head, stepping back.
"I don't want this."
"Wanting has nothing to do with it," he said gently. "You are the one who remains. That is enough."
The Hungering began to rise, slow and unsteady.
Their heads lifted, and for the first time, she saw their eyes
Not hollow.
Not dead.
But burning.
With need.
With longing.
With despair.
She clutched the crystal tighter, its faint glow growing stronger in her palm.
"They will follow," he said. "Unless you break the binding."
She met his gaze, fear warring with the fragile strength she had fought so hard to reclaim.
"How?"
He reached into the folds of his cloak and drew out a small dagger simple, unadorned, the blade black as night.
"Blood remembers what the mind forgets," he said.
She understood at once.
A sacrifice.
A choice.
Her breath shuddered out of her.
"Will you stay with me?" she asked.
He offered her the dagger, hilt first.
"Always," he said.
The dagger weighed nothing in her hand, and yet it might as well have been made of stone.
The Hungering watched her, silent, their eyes flickering with a desperate, terrible hope.
She swallowed hard, the sharp edges of the choice cutting into her heart.
If she offered the crystal, they would swarm it, tear it apart, consume it until nothing remained.
If she offered her blood, she could bind them away but at a cost she did not yet understand.
She looked to him.
The shadow who had walked beside her through ruin and ash, who had knelt when she could not stand, who had given her the light without ever asking for anything in return.
His face was hidden still, but his voice, when it came, was steady.
"It must be your choice," he said. "No one can bear it for you."
Her fingers tightened around the dagger's hilt.
She had made choices before.
Terrible ones.
Ones that shattered worlds and hearts alike.
This would not be the last.
She drew the blade across her palm.
The cut was shallow, but the blood welled up bright against her skin, vivid in the misty light.
A murmur rippled through the Hungering, a shudder of longing and hunger and sorrow so fierce it staggered her.
She clenched her hand into a fist, letting the blood drip onto the earth at her feet.
The ground trembled.
The stones of the clearing glowed faintly, lines of ancient magic lighting up in a web around her.
The Hungering cried out without sound, falling back from the circle as if struck.
The binding had begun.
She pressed her bleeding hand against the ground, the cold earth biting into her skin.
The magic accepted the sacrifice, weaving her blood into its forgotten songs.
The Hungering screamed now, real and raw, their forms flickering like candle flames caught in a storm.
She gritted her teeth, holding the connection steady.
One by one, the broken figures dissolved into ash, their sorrow carried away by the rising wind.
It was not cruelty.
It was mercy.
When it was over, she slumped forward, the dagger slipping from her hand.
He caught her before she could fall, strong arms wrapping around her, lifting her against his chest.
"You did well," he murmured against her hair.
She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder, shaking.
"I didn't want to hurt them," she whispered.
"I know."
"They were so lost."
"So were you," he said gently. "So am I."
She tightened her arms around him, clutching at the fabric of his cloak as if he were the only real thing left in a world made of ghosts and ash.
"You're not lost," she said fiercely.
He laughed then, a soft, broken sound.
"Not while you remember me," he said.
Slowly, she pulled back enough to see him.
For the first time, she caught a glimpse beneath the hood.
Not all of him only a fragment.
A mouth curved in a sad, beautiful smile.
Eyes dark with ancient pain and endless patience.
He was not a monster.
He was not a curse.
He was a man who had loved her enough to be forgotten again and again.
And who had chosen to find her each time without complaint.
Her heart cracked wider at the sight, and through the crack, something stronger began to bloom.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But hope.
Tiny. Fragile.
Real.
She touched the crystal at her throat.
It pulsed once, matching the beat of her heart.
She nodded, the decision settling into her bones like a vow.
"Let's go," she said.
He offered his hand.
She took it without hesitation.
Together, they stepped forward, leaving the hollowed behind.
Ahead, the mist parted, revealing a road that wound upward toward a distant light that might once have been called a star.
Or perhaps a memory.
Or perhaps simply the promise that even the broken could find their way home.