We made it back to the first rib.
The moment my foot touched the pale bone, whatever had been holding me upright gave out. I collapsed where I stood, dropping hard against the surface as everything came crashing in at once—the exhaustion, the pain, the fever burning under my skin. It was constant now, unrelenting, like my body had finally decided it was done pretending.
I couldn't move.
"What's wrong, Asher?"
Trace was beside me almost instantly, lowering herself down, her voice tight with worry she wasn't trying to hide. I could hear it clearly now—sharp, edged with fear.
My breathing was uneven, shallow and broken. Each inhale felt incomplete, like my lungs couldn't quite remember how much air they needed. I tried to answer her, but the words wouldn't come. My tongue felt heavy. My thoughts slipped the moment I tried to grasp them.
The world tilted.
My shadow peeled away from me and sank into the bone, emerging nearby as if even it knew something was wrong. Seeing it there—separate, watching—was the last clear thing I registered.
I forced my mouth open, dragging the words out through labored breaths.
"I'm… going to sleep."
The sentence fractured between breaths, barely holding together.
"Just—sleep."
Trace said my name again, sharper this time, but her voice was already fading. The edges of the world blurred, sound draining away like water pulled from a basin.
Darkness closed in.
And this time, I didn't fight it.
"Let him rest," I said softly. "It's fine. We can keep watch through the night."
I gestured toward the shadow standing guard over Asher as he slept.
It watched without moving.
I found myself staring at it longer than I meant to, my senses reaching out on instinct—and finding nothing. No lifeforce. No echo. No presence I could name. It was like trying to look at a hole cut into the world, a shape that existed without belonging to it.
Unnerving.
It wasn't dead.
It wasn't alive.
It simply… was.
For a moment, the wrongness of it held my attention completely.
"Sare."
Trace's voice snapped me out of it.
I blinked and turned toward her. "I'll take the first watch," she said, shaking off the lingering chill. "You fought with Asher the other night."
She didn't argue. "Yeah. That's fine. Just wake me when you want to switch."
I nodded and moved to my place, settling down against the bone. The tension in my shoulders loosened the moment I stopped moving, exhaustion finally catching up to me now that there was nothing demanding my focus.
I closed my eyes.
The night pressed in softly around us, quiet but watchful. Somewhere nearby, the shadow stood unmoving over Asher, keeping vigil in a way I still didn't understand.
I drifted almost immediately.
Only later did I realize how tired I'd been—how close I'd come to falling asleep without meaning to at all.
I woke to a gentle pressure on my shoulder.
"Sare," Trace whispered softly. "It's time."
For a moment, I didn't move. My body felt impossibly heavy, like I'd been pressed into the bone itself. When I finally opened my eyes, the world came back in dull fragments—the pale curve of the rib beneath us, the dark silhouettes of trees beyond it, the faint chill of night air clinging to my skin.
It felt like I'd only just closed my eyes.
I pushed myself up slowly, muscles protesting as stiffness set in all at once. Sleep hadn't done much. Whatever rest I'd managed to steal had been shallow, unfinished.
Trace was already standing, her posture alert despite the exhaustion weighing her down. She kept her voice low, but there was an edge to it—focused, careful.
I rubbed my face and forced the fog from my thoughts. "Did anything happen while I was asleep?"
"No," she said. "It's been quiet."
She angled her head slightly toward the trees, listening into the darkness. "The monster on the next rib is still there. It hasn't moved."
That didn't sit right with me.
Still, I nodded and drew a slow breath, grounding myself. Quiet didn't mean safe. It rarely did.
"Alright," I said, pushing fully to my feet. "You sleep. I'll take watch."
Trace hesitated, just briefly. Then she nodded and stepped back, exhaustion finally winning out now that she allowed herself to rest.
I moved closer to the edge of the rib, settling into position where I could see the forest below and the bone stretching out ahead. My body felt worn thin, but my senses sharpened as I focused outward.
Asher was still out cold behind me. Even without looking, I could feel it—the weight of his exhaustion, the way he hadn't truly recovered from anything we'd put him through. His shadow lingered nearby, silent and unnerving, keeping watch in its own unnatural way.
I didn't trust it completely.
I didn't trust the quiet either.
The forest stood still beneath the night sky, branches swaying faintly with the breeze. No movement. No sound beyond the distant creak of trees and the soft rhythm of breathing behind me.
Too calm.
I folded my arms and stayed alert, eyes scanning the darkness again and again, counting heartbeats, listening for anything out of place.
Because even as Trace slept and Asher didn't stir, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was waiting.
I woke to the quiet scrape of movement on bone.
Sare was sitting near the edge of the rib, posture straight, eyes fixed on the forest below. She hadn't shifted when I stirred—not even slightly—which told me she'd been awake long before I opened my eyes.
I pushed myself up slowly, rubbing at my face. My body still felt heavy, but the crushing weight from before had dulled into something manageable. Exhaustion lingered, but it no longer felt like it was dragging me under.
"I slept the whole time," I said hoarsely. "Thanks to you guys."
Sare didn't look at me right away.
"It's been two days," she replied calmly.
That made me pause.
"Two days," I repeated, blinking once. I let the thought settle, then gave a small exhale. "I'm not really surprised, I guess."
She finally turned her head toward me.
"You shouldn't be," she said. Her voice was cool—measured—but there was a sharpness under it, something deliberate. "You were dying. And your fever kept getting worse."
The words landed heavier than I expected.
"Oh," I said quietly. Then, after a moment, I shrugged. "I see. Still—I wouldn't have died. I'm too stubborn for that."
It was half a joke. Half a truth.
For a second, she just watched me. Then something in her expression shifted—not softer, not exactly—but less rigid. She stood, stepped closer, and without warning reached out.
Her hand ruffled my hair once, rough and unceremonious.
"Good," she said simply.
The word carried more weight than anything else she could've said.
She turned back to her watch as if nothing had happened, leaving me sitting there with the faintest hint of warmth settling in my chest—quiet, unfamiliar, and steady.
For the first time since waking, I felt like I might actually be back.
I turned my gaze toward the next rib.
Even from here, I could picture it—the place where the Echo had fallen, where its presence had been torn from me so completely that the space it left still ached. The bone rose pale against the dark forest, silent and unchanged, as if nothing had happened there at all.
But I knew better.
Something had killed my Knight.
Not a beast that charged blindly. Not something we could wear down with patience or numbers. It had hunted us—waited, measured, struck when we were weakest.
I didn't feel anger flare.
I didn't feel fear either.
Just a narrowing.
A quiet pull of focus, like everything else was slipping out of relevance.
One thought settled in my mind, simple and unadorned—no rage, no desperation, no answers yet.
How do I kill that creature?
The question didn't demand an answer.
Not yet.
It just stayed there, steady and patient, waiting for the moment when I'd be able to ask it properly.