The light was soft when it returned. Pale gold crept through the cracks in the wooden walls, brushing across the floor in quiet strokes. The hearth had been rekindled its fire low and steady, just enough to hold back the edge of morning's cold.
Neo stirred, pain met him with quiet confidence. Not sharp, not screaming. Just deep and dull, like something left behind in the bones. His throat ached raw. His ribs pulsed when he breathed. His head throbbed slow and steady behind his eyes.
He blinked against the blur of sleep and memory. The ceiling above was familiar rough beams, pale light. Thal's hut. But the scent in the air was not.
Something warm. Savory. Crisp. It hovered faintly, just enough to remind his body what hunger was. He turned his head, wincing. She stood by the fire.
Alinda had shed her coat, now resting over a nearby chair. Her armor was pared down still dark and fitted, but lighter than before, built for movement rather than war. She wore a sleeveless black tunic beneath the plates, and from where she stood, the cut of it exposed a glimpse of her upper thighs. Leather straps wrapped tightly around them, pouches clipped to each with precise symmetry. Her skin, bronze and marked by motion, caught the firelight in a way that made Neo's already fraying focus slip further.
He looked away almost immediately, heat rising beneath the ache in his chest. Embarrassing. He'd nearly died. Tor was still unconscious. He wasn't even sure if he could sit up without something tearing.
She moved like nothing about this morning was strange, her stance relaxed, her weight shifting fluidly from one leg to the other as she stirred the pan. No humming. No idle words. Just the whisper of fire, the quiet clink of the spoon, and the calm control she wore like armor .
Neo closed his eyes for a moment, exhaled slow. He cleared his throat and immediately regretted it. It felt like sand had been poured into his lungs and dragged back out with a dull blade.
"You're awake," Alinda said. No surprise in her voice.
Neo groaned and tried to sit up, wincing as his ribs protested, his hand instinctively pressing to his side. His voice came rough and uneven: "What… what time is it?"
"Morning," she said. "Not that it matters. You weren't going anywhere."
He let his eyes drift around the room. Tor still lay nearby, her breathing strong and slow. The hut was quiet. Still. The warmth in the air smelled faintly of herbs and something gently seared. His brow furrowed. "…What is that?"
Alinda stirred the pan again, then shot him a brief glance over her shoulder, her expression flickering with the faintest trace of amusement. "Food."
He groaned. "Last time you gave me something, it tried to commit war crimes in my stomach."
She smiled slightly. "That was medicine."
Neo rolled his eyes "Same difference."
"You'll eat it," she said, turning back to the fire. "You need strength."
Neo watched her for another breath watched the strength in her posture, the grace in how she carried it. Then he let his head drop back onto the blanket with a quiet grunt, trying not to think too hard about anything. "…You didn't have to stay."
Alinda didn't respond right away. The fire crackled softly, and the room settled around the weight of the quiet. Then she spoke, just loud enough for him to hear. "I know."
Alinda didn't speak for a while after Neo's words. The fire popped gently, the scent of the food growing thicker herbs and root vegetables, something simple, nourishing, warm. She stirred the pan one last time, then began plating it with the same steady care she brought to everything else.
Neo groaned as he shifted upright, cradling his ribs as he pushed himself to sit against the wall. His muscles fought him the whole way, but he managed it, breathing easier now though the pain still hummed beneath every motion like a song stuck in his bones.
She stepped over without a word, handed him a small wooden bowl, then knelt by the fire again. He stared at the food in his hands, the simple weight of it foreign after everything. "Thanks," he muttered, surprised it had come at all.
"You'll like it better than the potion," she said with a small, knowing smile that barely curved her lips. Neo nodded absently, then paused as he noticed her eyes on him not hard, not pressing, just focused. Watching him the way someone watches an ember to see if it will catch. Her tone shifted still calm but laced with something firmer beneath it. "But…," she said, like it was a passing observation, "…. we still have questions."
The spoon hovered halfway to his mouth before Neo froze. He didn't need to ask what she meant. She didn't elaborate. She didn't need to. As if the moment itself had been waiting for that line, the door creaked open.
Neo jerked, flinched so hard the bowl nearly slipped from his hands. His back slammed the wall, heart pounding, breath caught halfway between panic and instinct. It wasn't fear not in the conscious sense but something older, deeper. A survival reflex carved into his spine by violence he hadn't yet processed.
Fall stepped into the room without a sound. Snow dusted the folds of his cloak. White hair spilled loose beneath the edge of his hood, pale eyes glowing faintly in the firelight. He moved without urgency or intent, only presence unshakable, cold, and slow. The light in the room dimmed slightly, not in truth, but in sensation, as if the world itself were cautious of his passing. Neo's pulse surged, thudding against his ribs like it was trying to escape but Alinda didn't look at Fall, she watched Neo.
His breathing had sped up, his fingers tightened subtly around the bowl, and for a moment, he looked much smaller than he had the night before. Her voice came gently, not soft, but level. "It's all right. He's not here for round two."
Fall stepped in further, his expression unreadable. His gaze passed over Neo brief, cool, enough to settle weight into the space between them. Neo met it, tried to hold it, and failed. His eyes dropped to the food again, suddenly unsure of his appetite.
Alinda turned her gaze back to the fire. "Questions, yes. But not from him." She stood and brushed her hands against her thighs as she turned to face the silent figure near the door. "You've had your say."
Fall said nothing. He crossed the room and found a place near the entrance, standing with the patience of stone. His cloak whispered faintly as he moved. For a moment, he simply stood, still and unblinking, the weight of his presence drawing the air tight. Then, without a word, he let his gaze settle on the room, the hush deepening like a held breath. He didn't lean. Didn't move. Just remained present, and watching.
Alinda returned to where she'd been, lowered herself cross-legged onto the rug across from Neo, arms resting loosely on her knees. Her posture was relaxed, but there was nothing passive about it. She was focused, precise, as always. Her eyes locked onto his with quiet expectation not pressure, not threat. Just truth. Her voice, when it came again, was calm and steady.
"Let's try again. Start at the beginning." Then, without ceremony, Alinda spoke. "How did you draw blood from the Harbinger?"
Neo blinked. The question landed like a stone dropped into still water, sending a faint chill down his spine, his stomach twisting as the weight of it settled heavy in his chest no splash, just quiet, widening ripples. He glanced down at his bowl, the food inside already beginning to cool. His fingers tightened slightly on the rim. She wasn't asking out of curiosity. Not really. She already knew there was weight behind the answer.
He licked his lips, trying to soothe a throat that had gone dry again. He didn't want to answer not because he had something to hide, but because the truth felt too vague, too fractured to offer with any confidence. "I…" He hesitated, his gaze drifting to the corner where Fall stood, unmoving, carved from shadow and silence. "I didn't go in there to fight," he said at last, voice rough and raw. "Not really. I just… I needed to see it. I had this feeling that what I was seeing wasn't the truth. That it was wearing something."
Alinda didn't speak. She simply waited, as she always did like stillness was a tool she wielded as easily as a blade.
Neo's eyes dropped to his hand, watching as his fingers curled faintly. "I blinked. Like I always do. But this time… it went deeper. It wasn't just a shift. It felt like something tore. The world didn't move I did. And when I landed, I was in a place that looked like ours, but it wasn't. The sky was wrong. The land was black and red, like someone scraped all the colour out of existence and left it raw."
He looked up slowly. "I was in the Rim."
Alinda's eyes narrowed not with disbelief, but with confirmation, and Fall's expression, though unreadable, sharpened. Neither of them interrupted.
"I always thought the Rim was just a story," Neo continued, voice quieter now. "Something the old bastards talked about to scare kids or sound cryptic. The end of things. A mirror of Gaia where everything goes to die."
"It's not a story," Alinda said, and this time her voice carried a different edge less steel, more reverence. Older. Wary. Neo glanced at her. "No one's ever seen the Rim and come back," she murmured. "Because no one's supposed to."
"I didn't think about it," Neo said. "I just… went. And when I did, I could finally see the Harbinger. Not the storm. Not the shadow. The real one. Its body. Its eyes. Its shape. It wasn't just there it was wearing the Typhon like a cloak."
Alinda's next words came softer, but they landed hard. "And you struck it?"
He nodded, slow. "I didn't think. I just moved. My blade connected. It bled."
She didn't speak. Not immediately. Her expression was unreadable, but her silence said more than surprise. "No one's ever wounded one," she said at last, her voice barely more than breath. "Not in the Rim. Not like that."
Neo frowned, his gaze narrowing. "Then how have you all fought them?"
"We haven't," Fall said, his voice cutting through the room like ice through velvet. "We hold them. Stall them. Kill the shell. Delay the return. That is all."
Neo swallowed, the bowl now forgotten in his hands. "But I saw it bleed."
"You weren't supposed to see anything," Fall snapped, not loud, but sharp enough to silence the air. "You were not meant to enter that realm, child. You were not meant to walk in it like you belong there."
Neo met his gaze. "I've always been able to. Since I was little."
Something shifted in Fall. Not his body but everything else. The stillness grew colder. Denser. Alinda didn't move, but her focus locked onto Neo now, like a blade sliding into place.
Neo hesitated, then added, "I thought it was just… mine. My magic. My kind of way of blinking through space."
Fall stepped forward at last. The wood groaned beneath his weight, the air bending faintly around him. "You think the Rim is a playground?" he asked, calm but edged. "A gift?" Neo didn't respond. He couldn't. Fall's voice dropped lower, colder. "The Rim is not yours. It is not meant for the children of dust. The fact that it lets you pass is not a blessing. It is a question."
Neo's pulse kicked, the room beginning to feel smaller, the air heavier. He looked up slowly. "What question?"
Fall stood inches away now, his eyes gleaming faintly in the firelight. "Why you're still alive." The words fell like hammers into the space between them. Everything stilled. Not quite still. Even the fire seemed to draw inward, the flames flickering low as if they too feared to move in this moment.
Neo didn't breathe. His throat was dry, heart thudding slow and loud in his chest. Fall towered over him, not with fury, but with certainty, the kind of weight that didn't have to prove itself.
"The Rim is not a gift," Fall said again, voice softer now but no less final. "It is not a realm. Not in the way you understand. It is not 'otherworld' or 'shadow plane' or any of the thing's mortals call it when they try to name what should never be touched." He stepped back slightly, his voice lowering into something darker something that didn't echo but burrowed. "It is not a place. It is the breath between endings. The space that exists not after death, but between decay and consumption. A wound in the fabric of existence that never closes."
Neo didn't move. He couldn't. His breath felt locked in his chest, the hairs on the back of his neck rising one by one as if the truth itself had leaned into whisper something meant only for him.
Fall's eyes gleamed faintly, and Neo realized the light wasn't just from the fire it was catching something deeper behind his gaze. Not reflection. Not life. Something darker. Something older. "Nothing that enters the Rim leaves unchanged," Fall said, his voice quiet, deliberate. "It is not Empyrean's twin it is its shadow. Its memory. The echo of a scream so loud, it was buried in silence."
He stepped forward again, and Neo's fingers twitched involuntarily, his breath catching despite himself. Fall's presence wasn't louder only closer, and somehow heavier. "You entered it," he said, "and you walked. You stood in a place where gods dare not linger. Where time is thin. Where thought collapses. Where things older than language still sleep."
Neo clenched his jaw. "I didn't mean to…."
Fall raised a hand, and Neo fell silent. Not out of obedience. Just instinct. The gesture wasn't threatening, but it had the weight of something that didn't need to be. "You entered," Fall repeated, "and the Rim let you pass." He tilted his head, slow, measured, a motion more animal than man, like something gauging the distance between breath and bone. "That should terrify you."
It did but not in the way Neo had expected. It wasn't fear of death that pressed against his ribs. It was the fear of knowing. The fear of understanding too much. Of something recognizing you when you didn't even know you were worth noticing.
Fall knelt suddenly, the shift so fluid and precise it felt like the air itself tensed. Now eye-level, he stared into Neo with the patience of stone. "You saw the Harbinger," he whispered. "You saw its form. Do you know what that means?"
Neo shook his head, mouth suddenly dry.
Fall leaned closer, his words barely more than breath. "It saw you too."
The fire dimmed behind him. Not in colour, but in confidence. Like even the flame was listening.
"It knows your shape. Your scent. Your soul. You stepped into its sanctuary, wounded it in a place where it cannot be wounded and then you fled." Neo looked pale, his hands trembling slightly where they cradled the now-forgotten bowl. Fall's eyes didn't blink.
"There are things in the Rim that do not move," he said, "not because they are asleep, but because they are waiting. Waiting for something to walk too far. Something curious. Something alive." His voice was cold now, not raised, but flat in a way that made the room shrink. "You blink through cracks like a beetle crawling between walls. But someday, something will crawl back."
Neo looked down, unable to meet his gaze, the truth in Fall's words settling like ash in his lungs. Fall rose again, slow, the silence around him returning like a cloak. "I have walked close to the Rim," he said. "Closer than any Nephilim should. And even I do not know what waits in its centre." He looked down at Neo with the full weight of judgment. "But you child of dust you passed through it. Not as a guest. Not as an invader. You passed like something familiar."
Neo's lips parted, but nothing came out. Fall stepped back not far, just enough to give him breath again but he didn't return to the corner. He lingered nearby, close enough that his presence didn't release the room from its grip. He watched. Measured. Waited. There were still questions. And now, there was fear.
Silence held them in place after that, thick and unmoving. Neo stared at the fire like it might begin speaking. His breath was shallow, his shoulders tense. Even now, even with Fall a few steps away, the weight of what he'd said still hung in the air, unbroken.
Alinda exhaled softly, the only one who moved like the room hadn't been rewritten. She didn't lean forward. Didn't reach for him. But her voice came light, intentional, sharp enough to cut the silence without trying to kill it. "Well," she said, folding her arms, "that got heavier than breakfast usually does."
Neo blinked once, the words barely registering. He didn't laugh, but she hadn't expected him to.
"I could make tea next time," she added, her tone more playful now, like it might coax the moment back into something almost human.
Fall didn't react. His gaze hadn't moved from Neo. Then, without warning, he spoke again. "Where is Thal?"
The question dropped like a blade, and Neo's head came up slowly. There was something about the way Fall asked things that made it feel like a wrong answer might crack the earth beneath his feet.
He wet his lips, eyes flicking toward the wall before settling back on the fire. "He left," Neo said quietly.
Fall's eyes narrowed. "With who?"
Neo hesitated. "Some humans. One of them I know. Nyra."
Alinda arched a brow slightly at that, but didn't speak.
"They came to Snowdrift weeks ago," Neo went on. "Said they needed a guide through the Kruul Lands. Thal agreed to take them."
Fall said nothing. The fire whispered softly between them its warmth unable to melt the tension that now filled the space. Neo didn't offer anything more. He wasn't lying. But he wasn't telling the whole story either. Not about Luken. Not about Valen. Not about what they were really going to do.
Alinda's eyes flicked toward Fall. She knew him well enough to recognize the shift just a slight twitch in his jaw, the stilling of his shoulders. He didn't like the answer. Not because it was wrong. But because it was true.
Fall turned his head toward the window, his voice low and steady. "He left his post."
Neo flinched. "He didn't…"
"He left," Fall repeated. Not loud. But final.
Alinda frowned, her voice calm but firm. "It wasn't like that."
Neo tried again. "He didn't abandon anything. He said it was important. He said if he stayed here, he'd just be waiting for something worse."
Fall turned toward Neo slowly, his gaze cold and pressing, like winter fog against glass. "He was waiting for the Harbinger."
Neo looked down, guilt sinking beneath the bruises and half-formed memory. "He told me if something happened here, I'd know what to do."
Fall was silent for a long moment, the words hanging there like dust in still air. Then, quieter: "He left it to you?"
Neo nodded. "He trusted me."
Fall didn't return the gesture. He didn't blink. He simply said, "That was a mistake." He still hadn't moved, but his silence had grown sharper, more surgical. Neo could feel it cutting closer now.
Fall's eyes stayed locked on him, unblinking, colourless, heavy. There was no aggression in them but there was gravity. Like the pressure in the air before a storm, when the sky forgets how to breathe, and every living thing holds still. Neo didn't shrink from it, but it was there all the same.
"You're not saying everything," Fall said at last. It wasn't a question.
Neo opened his mouth, then closed it again. The words didn't come.
Fall's eyes narrowed, just slightly. "You mentioned the Archons. The Kruul King. But you hide the shape of it. The root." His tone didn't carry anger. It carried disappointment and that hit harder. "Thal followed them into this," Fall said. "A war not his own. A conflict born of mortal spite and now he trades eternity to guide the dust-born through their own mess."
Neo tried to speak, but Fall interrupted him. "Why?"
The word hung in the air, bare and unsparing. Neo looked down, then back toward the fire. "Because it's more than just some border skirmish. The Kruul King has started wiping out entire human territories. Not just armies. Cities. Villages. He's dragging the Archons out of hiding and using them as weapons."
The silence thickened. Neo pressed on, his voice hardening. "He's doing it because he can. Because he knows no one can stop him."
"And so, you stop him?" Fall asked. There was no sarcasm in it. Just cold realism.
Neo nodded. "Someone has to. The humans started it but what the Kruul King is doing now… it's not justice. It's cruelty. He's not fighting anymore. He's making them suffer."
Fall stared at him. Then, finally, he spoke again, his voice measured and quiet. "Pointless."
Neo blinked. Fall stepped forward not far, but enough to make the floor creak beneath his boots. "All of it. Pointless. The humans strike first. The Kruul retaliate louder. Then the humans scream for justice, and the cycle begins again. It doesn't matter who starts it. The result is always the same."
Neo frowned. "That doesn't mean we do nothing."
Fall's voice lowered. "You are one of them." Fall's gaze sharpened not cruel, but cutting, clinical. "A Kruul. Fighting Kruul. Killing Archons. Speaking like you understand the shape of what this is."
Neo's shoulders tightened. "I didn't ask to be born Kruul."
"But you were," Fall said. "And now you carry their war. Their hatred. Their fire. All wrapped in Thal's shadow and your own confusion."
"I'm trying to do what's right," Neo said, the growl in his voice barely restrained.
Fall raised a brow. "Right? For whom?" Neo didn't answer and Fall didn't press. Instead, he turned, the lines of his voice dropping even lower, like they were being buried as they were spoken. "Let them tear each other apart. These are matters of the dust-born. Their wars. Their gods. Their lies."
He paused, his words cold enough to chill the heat from the hearth. "Thal should have known better."
Neo's jaw clenched. "You really think all of this means nothing?"
"I know it does," Fall said. "Because I have watched it burn before. And it will burn again. The names change. The flags change. But blood never does." with a final glance toward Neo, his voice like the weight of something falling slowly: "The moment Thal joined them… he made himself small."