When the dusk returns — purple first, then black — they don't run for shelter or bury themselves in old dens. Not tonight. Tonight, they stay awake beside the black tree, the hush's scorched mind still towering above the ruin it left behind.
Rafi stands closest to its charred bark. Ash clings to his hair and shoulders like snow that forgot how to melt. He lays his palm against the trunk, half-expecting the hush's voice to coil up his arm again, whispering come back, stay forever.
But there's only silence. A silence he does not fear.
The braid girl circles the tree slowly, lantern swinging from her wrist. The flame inside dances shadows along the roots — roots that once dragged nightmares through tunnels and bones, now little more than splintered fingers clawing at the soil.
They built a low fire near the base, just enough to keep the worst cold at bay. Sparks drift up like restless fireflies before dying into the black leaves overhead.
Neither speaks much. Words feel too small against the night, too easy to spoil the honesty of what they're doing: standing guard over the corpse of a monster that once wore their grief like a crown.
Rafi drifts toward sleep more than once. Each time he jolts awake with the taste of ash on his tongue, the memory of that endless hush pressing at the edges of his mind. But it never pushes through.
The braid girl watches him from across the embers. Her eyes catch the glow and return it twice as bright. She doesn't ask if he's afraid the hush might regrow in his dreams. She doesn't have to. He knows she watches because she'll drag him back if it tries.
Near midnight, he whispers, barely shaping the air:
Why are we still here?
She doesn't answer with words — just sits beside him, shoulder brushing his. They both stare up at the blackened crown where once the hush's voice nested. Maybe, if someone else were here, they'd see two feral children worshiping a burned idol. But Rafi knows better: they are the priests of its end. Its last witness and final gravekeeper.
Hours pass. The fire dwindles to coals, then to a glow no brighter than a moth's wing. Somewhere in the forest an owl calls, sounding nothing like a whisper. Just a bird. Just a night.
Rafi pulls his knees to his chest and rests his head on the braid girl's shoulder. She lets him. He dreams of a house with no locked doors, a mother's voice at breakfast, and a place where the hush never took root.
They hold vigil until the first vein of dawn bleeds along the horizon. When light breaks over the black tree, they stand and watch it glisten like an old wound finally dry.
No more hush. No more fear that the night might speak back.
They survived the longest night. Tomorrow is unspoken, unwritten — but tonight, they won.