Clive's POV
The air still crackled with the aftermath of fire and fury. Smoke curled from the scorched earth where Maedra's malformed children had once crawled and hissed. The scent of burned flesh and seared sorrow clung to my lungs like a memory I didn't want.
Grimpel hovered silently behind me. Unusual. Too unusual.
I glanced over my shoulder. "What is it now? Forgot your favorite punchline?"
He didn't answer immediately. The blue glow in his single eye pulsed irregularly.
Then he said it—low, and almost reverent.
"I heard something. In the rubble. A voice."
I turned fully. My staff, still warm from the spell I'd channeled through it, hummed in my hand. The battlefield was quiet—just blackened soil, flickering embers, and the fading stink of half-born curses.
"Nothing survived that," I said. I was sure of it. I had to be sure of it.
But Grimpel floated closer to one of the charred husks. His eye glowed a little brighter. "Not nothing. Not her."
Something stirred in the ash. A slow, crawling motion, like the earth had begun to exhale.
And then, she rose.
A figure pulled herself from the scorched ground like a ghost clawing free from its own grave. Her motions were deliberate, trembling, but filled with a kind of stubborn will that reeked of unfinished magic.
She coughed, spat black smoke, and stood. Her cloak was tattered. One eye shimmered silver her curves showedwith her tattered cloak barely covering her nakedness. Ritual stitching crisscrossed her limbs—but it was unraveling, threads twitching and sliding free like they no longer wanted to hold her together, I was entranced by her. Maybe because she was the first woman I had seen in months.
I raised my staff. Magic sparked at my fingertips. "You should be dead."
"I was," she rasped, voice low and broken. "Then you set me free."
Grimpel's glow intensified. He drifted forward like a warning.
"Clive, don't. She's not done bleeding shadow. You saw what she was."
She raised her hands—palms up, empty.
"Let me come with you. I can help."
I scoffed. "Help? You were crawling and hissing with the rest of them. You were a curse wearing a face."
Her eye didn't flinch. "And now I'm not. That flame—it burned something out of me. It hurts, but it's real. Pain is real. That's how I know I'm not hers anymore."
Grimpel hovered between us
"She's bait, Clive. Dressed in ash and memories. You take her, and you'll wake up with your throat kissed by regret."
She looked past him, locking eyes with me. "Clive. I know what you're looking for. The shards. The memories. The thing beneath all of this. I know where Maedra buried the next one." I could kill her, she knows could that be the reason she's saying these words?
My chest went tight. Every word she spoke felt like it was digging claws into my ribs.
"You're lying."
She took a careful step forward. Her burn scars trailed down her neck and shoulder, barely hidden beneath her torn cloak. Her voice dropped to a whisper:
"I remember Lena."
I staggered. The name struck like a falling star, searing and unstoppable.
Grimpel groaned. His tone was rising now, wild and urgent. "Clive. No. She's stitched with Maedra's venom. That name isn't hers to know."
My knuckles whitened around my staff.
"Why do you remember her?"
"Because Maedra whispered her name in her sleep. Over and over, like a lullaby she hated herself for singing. I listened. I remembered."
I turned away. My eyes stung. My grip trembled.
"You're not coming."
Silence.
I took a step into the forest's edge.
Then her voice came again—quiet but sharper than before:
"Then you'll never find the Gate."
I stopped.
Grimpel pulsed once, harshly. "She knows, Clive. She knows."
My voice cracked. "How do you know about the Gate?"
"Because I was made to watch it. Guard it. Until you burned that purpose out of me. I was bound to the edge of its magic—until you unbound me."
I turned slowly, facing her fully.
She looked raw. Real. Wrong.
And yet...
I saw no malice in her. Only pain and purpose.
"You can walk behind me," I said. "Not beside. Not ahead. And if you lie to me—"
"You'll finish what you started," she said, finishing my threat before I could.
She stepped forward, careful and slow, to walk a few paces behind me.
Grimpel floated closer to her, his voice a whisper of poisoned silk.
"You shouldn't be here."
She smiled. Not warm. Not cruel.
"Neither should you."
The moon above us gurgled, a sound like wet laughter spilling from a cracked throat.
We walked into the thickening woods.
Three of us now.
One chasing pieces of himself.
One hiding a truth that could shatter the journey.
And one carrying a secret so dark, it might unravel the very soul Clive was trying to reclaim.
And the Loud Moon watched.
It always watched.