By the time the village came into view, Lyra's breathing had turned ragged, but she still refused to put him down.
"Almost there," she panted, shifting his weight on her back. "Mom… Mom won't believe it when she sees you. She's going to be so happy."
Mom.
The word landed strangely in Zaric's chest.
He closed his eyes and tried to dig through the fog inside his skull—searching not for the memories of a thirty-year-old miner from Earth, but for the boy this body had once belonged to.
Shadows stirred.
A woman's hands, rough from work but gentle on his hair. The smell of boiled roots and smoke. A warm laugh, low and tired. A lullaby hummed under breath as a small boy drifted to sleep. A cough that wouldn't stop.
The images were faint and distant, like echoes heard through stone, but they were there.
Lyra stepped off the road and stopped.
"This is it," she said.
Before following Lyra, Zaric never imagined "home" would look like this.
The hut crouched at the edge of a scrubby field, its walls a patchwork of sun-baked mud and stones scavenged from the roadside. The roof was a quilt of reeds and fraying cloth held down with rocks. Smoke seeped from a cracked hole at the top.
Inside, it was one room: two narrow beds, a wobbly table, a pair of stools, a clay stove, and not much else. Wind slid through the seams and set hanging bundles of dried weeds rustling softly.
Lyra ducked under the low doorway and carried him inside.
She set him gently on the nearest bed. He'd tried to walk; his legs had managed a handful of shuddering steps before threatening to fold, the exhaustion of dying, waking, and walking all catching up at once.
"Sit," she said quietly. "If you fall over now, I'll hit you."
It came out like a joke, but her eyes didn't match it.
Zaric watched as she crossed to the corner and lifted a small sack of grain. It sagged in her hands, almost weightless. A thin patter of kernels into a clay pot sounded like rain with no clouds behind it.
She added water, stirred, set it on the stove. Her movements were automatic, practiced. A routine built over years: feed the body, then go back to the mine. Feed the hope, then go back to the waiting.
The smell that rose was barely there.
When the porridge was done, it was so thin it caught the reflection of the rafters. Lyra added two shriveled wild fruits and a handful of boiled greens, then carried the bowl over with both hands as if it were something fragile.
"Careful," she murmured, setting it in his lap. "It's hot."
Hunger hit him like a fist now that food was in front of him. His stomach cramped, sending a wave of weakness through his limbs. He forced himself not to shovel it down like an animal.
First spoonful—thin, bland. Second spoonful—bitter from the greens. It was hardly food, but his body grabbed at it anyway.
Lyra didn't take any for herself.
"Where's yours?" Zaric asked.
"I'm not hungry," she said.
Her eyes flicked—not to him, but to the grain sack in the corner. Its mouth gaped open, showing almost nothing inside. He remembered the sound: that meager patter into the pot. Enough for one, stretched for two.
"You should eat," he said.
She shook her head. "I…I ate before I went to the ridge."
He thought of the grave. The broken mound. The wooden marker.
"You're a bad liar," he said quietly.
Her lips trembled as if she wanted to argue, then flattened. "It doesn't matter. You were gone for a day. You need it more."
Gone for a day.
The words sat heavy between them.
He looked down at the thin porridge, then back at her hollow cheeks and chapped lips.
In his old life, he'd worried about overtime pay and hospital bills. Here, his sister was lying about food.
He pushed the bowl toward her a little. "Share with me. My stomach's not as big as you remember."
She gave him a look that said she didn't believe that for a heartbeat, then looked down at the porridge. Her hand moved almost against her will, taking the spoon, dipping it for a small mouthful. She swallowed like it hurt her pride more than her throat, then pushed the bowl back.
"There," she said. "Now I'm not lying."
"Barely," he muttered, but he didn't push it. Not yet.
He finished the rest slowly, feeling strength seep back into his limbs in thin, grudging threads.
When the bowl was finally empty, Lyra took it, rinsed it with a splash of water, and set it aside.
Only then did she stop moving.
Her hands, now empty, hovered in the air a moment before curling into fists.
"Zac," she said, still facing the stove. "Do you remember… being in the mine?"
He hesitated. "Pieces."
Her shoulders hunched.
"They told me you were dead," she said, voice small and flat. "The mine men. When the tunnel collapsed. Everyone was shouting. They brought out the ones who were easy to reach. You weren't one of them."
She turned halfway, enough that he could see her profile, the tension in her jaw.
"I ran to the mine," she went on. "They wouldn't let me close. One of the workers—Renn, the one with the bent nose—you remember him? He came over and said they'd found you deeper in, under the worst of it. Said you weren't breathing. He…" Her voice cracked. "He said he checked."
She looked at her hands as if seeing someone else's blood on them.
"I thought you were dead," Lyra said. "I thought you were gone. So I took you to the ridge. I dug as deep as I could, and I put you in the ground, and I marked it with wood, and I said goodbye."
Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.
"But when you climbed out… you were warm." Her fingers dug into her arms. "Your skin was warm. When I hugged you, your heart was beating. You—" She swallowed hard. "You weren't cold. You weren't stiff. You weren't… dead."
She stared at him as if begging him to contradict her.
"I buried you alive," she choked out. "I listened to them and I put you in the ground while you were still alive."
There it was—the thought that had been gnawing at her since the moment she saw him stand up from his own grave.
Zaric opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He remembered his own death clearly—the other one. A different tunnel, a different mine, the golden core in the wall, the roar and crush and nothing. If the Core of Aetherion had pulled his soul across worlds, what had it done to this body while it waited?
He didn't know. He only knew this: however the timing worked, however the magic twisted, Lyra had been a fifteen-year-old girl being shoved along by men who wanted a problem dealt with before dark.
He thought of foremen and overseers in his old world. The way they lied about safety and blamed the dead for "carelessness." Different words, same men.
"You were there," he said. "You were the one who carried me up the ridge. Who marked the grave. Who came back the next morning." He held her gaze. "If anyone brought me back, it was you."
That wasn't entirely true; the core at his chest pulsed, a quiet protest. But it was true enough in the way that mattered.
Lyra's shoulders shook. Her fingers dug into her arms until the knuckles went white.
"I still see it," she confessed. "Every time I close my eyes. You wrapped in cloth. The dirt hitting you. I thought… I thought I was giving you peace. And now all I can think is that you were still in there, alone, in the dark, calling for me."
Her voice broke on the last word.
Zaric's chest ached.
The boy was already gone, he thought. Only the body waited there, cooling in the ground, for me to wear it.
But he couldn't say that. He didn't know if it was fully true, and even if it was, it wouldn't erase what she'd done in her own mind.
He reached out and, slowly, took her wrist.
"Come on," he said, voice still hoarse but determined. "Mom's waiting."
The "back room" was nothing more than a faded curtain at the far corner of the hut.
Lyra slipped an arm around him and guided him across the floor. His legs were steadier now, the food a thin patch over the gaping hole of his hunger.
She pulled the curtain aside.
The space beyond was barely big enough for a narrow bed and a crate that served as a table. A small clay lamp burned there, its light tired and wavering, filling the air with the smell of cheap oil.
On the bed lay a woman.
She was thin, every bone faintly outlined under sallow skin. Her hair, the same clay-brown as Lyra's, was braided back from her face and tied with a strip of faded cloth. Her eyes were closed. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, steady breaths, as if someone had cut her life down to the bare minimum and left it there to smolder.
Bundles of herbs hung from the low rafters. Someone had scratched clumsy symbols into the packed earth around the bed—loops and lines that meant nothing to him, but felt like failed prayers.
Lyra let go of him and crossed the small space in two steps.
"Mom," she whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking the woman's limp hand. "Mom, look. Zac's back."
She looked back at Zaric, eyes bright in the lamplight.
"She's been like this since you were nine," Lyra said, voice softer. "The fever wouldn't break. The healer came from the lower village. Said her Radiance was blocked, her veins twisted. Called it vein-sleep or vein-sickness, I don't remember which anymore. Said if we had silver, real silver, we should take her to the city."
"And if you didn't?" Zaric asked.
Lyra's mouth twisted. "Then we should be grateful she was still breathing at all."
Three years.
Three years of this room, this bed, this lamp. Three years of waiting for a woman to wake up while the world outside dug itself deeper into the earth.
"We started working more after that," Lyra said. "First carrying ore for the older miners, then into the tunnels when they said we were big enough. More danger, more pay." She swallowed. "You were always taking extra shifts. Said we'd save enough to hire a city mage one day. I called you an idiot. You laughed."
Her hand clenched around her mother's. "Yesterday, you went in for one more shift. Just one. The mine cracked and… and…"
She stopped.
Zaric wasn't sure that was how fate worked.
He reached out and, after a moment's hesitation, took his mother's other hand.
Her skin was warm. Too warm. Not the clean heat of a healthy body, but the stale warmth of a fever that had never fully left.
The core at his chest woke.
A low, golden throb pulsed outward, threading through his ribs, down his arm, into his fingers. For an instant, He could feel her.
Not in thoughts or words, but in currents. Channels inside her that should have flowed smoothly felt thick and sluggish. Other channels were dry, as if something had cut them off.
Then it was gone.
The lamp came back into full focus. Lyra's worried face. The gentle rise and fall of their mother's chest.
Zaric let go, breathing a little too fast.
"Zac?" Lyra's voice sharpened. "What happened?"
"Nothing," he said automatically. Then, forcing calm into his voice: "Just stood up too fast earlier, I think. Still… adjusting."
She studied him for a moment, then nodded reluctantly.
"You should lie down," she said, standing. "I'll sit with Mom. Like always." She tried a smile. "You can tell her about your dramatic escape in the morning."
He wanted to say this was the morning after his death. That he wasn't sure he'd sleep at all. Instead, he just nodded.
Lyra lifted their mother's hand, pressed it to her cheek for a heartbeat, then set it back on the blanket. She tugged the covers up a little higher around her shoulders, fussing the way someone would with a child, then guided Zaric back out and let the curtain fall halfway.
The lamplight painted a thin sliver of gold across the floor.
Night found the hut without much effort.
Wind slipped through the cracks in the walls, carrying bits of mine dust and distant voices. Somewhere far off, a shift bell rang and faint shouts answered, swallowed quickly by the dark.
Lyra sat on the floor near the curtain, knees pulled to her chest, watching the faint glow from the other side. Every so often, she would sit forward, listening hard, then relax when she heard their mother's shallow breaths still going.
Zaric lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
The Core of Aetherion beat quietly in his chest, a second pulse under his own.
He let his mind drift where it had been trying not to go all day.
Mara. His wife. Her tired eyes and quick laugh. The way she'd leaned into him on the couch, one hand on her belly, the TV flickering forgotten in the background. The echo of his son's heartbeat in a dim hospital room, fast and strong like a bird's wings.
I'll come back, he had told her. We'll do this right.
He hadn't.
Somewhere, in another world that would never hear of Cores or vein-sickness or beast riders on living mountains, a woman was getting a phone call, or a knock at the door, or… nothing at all, just a notice and a cold line on a report.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, so quietly even he could barely hear it. "Mara… little one… I should be there. I should be holding you. I should be fixing the sink and complaining about the night shift. I should be… anything but this."
The darkness didn't answer. It rarely did.
He took a breath that scraped his throat and let it out slowly.
"Live," he murmured to the memory of them. "Please just… live. Find someone kind. Tell my son I worked hard. Leave out the part where I died like an idiot grabbing a rock in a hole."
The Core of Aetherion stirred, a faint warmth recognizing his grief but offering no comfort.
His gaze slid to the curtain.
On the other side lay a woman who had slept for Three years and a girl who feared she'd buried her brother alive with her own hands.
On this side lay him—a stranger in a stolen body, holding two lives in his chest like mismatched stones.
"Zac," he whispered inwardly, as if speaking to another presence nested under his skin. "If you're still in here somewhere… I don't know if you ever heard your sister sobbing on that ridge. Or felt the dirt fall. Or if you were already gone. But either way… I'll carry this for you."
He thought of Lyra's guilt-twisted face. Of the way she'd clung to him. Of the soft, steady breathing from behind the curtain.
"I'll take care of them," he said. "I swear. I'll get you all out of these mines. I'll find a way to wake her. I don't know how yet, but I'll learn. I owe you that much. I owe all of you that much."
Between the weight of the promise he'd broken in one world and the promise he'd just made in another, Zaric closed his eyes and let sleep creep over him in the little hut of mud and reeds at the edge of a world that was beginning to feel, terrifyingly, like his.