The fire barely held.Thin curls of smoke clung to the ceiling stones before slipping through cracks to vanish into night. The air was thick with the smell of damp moss and the sharp sweetness of the herbs the girl had burned to keep the cold away.
Kael sat close to the flames, palms hovering just above them. His skin still ached from the basin's light, though the pain had dulled into something steady and alive, like a pulse beneath the surface.
Across from him, the girl sat cross-legged, her face half in shadow. The fire's glow traced the outline of her cheek and caught the edges of the small scars along her jaw — old, pale marks that looked almost deliberate.
Neither spoke for a long while.Only the fire moved, cracking softly, as if afraid to disturb the silence that had become their language.
Kael broke it first."Back there," he said quietly, nodding toward the basin, "you said it remembers whoever drinks. Have you ever… tried it?"
She didn't look up. "Once."
"What did it show you?"
She poked the coals with a stick until they sparked, eyes fixed on the fire. "It didn't show. It took. Memories don't belong to us the way we think. The shrine keeps what it wants."
Kael frowned. "So you don't remember?"
Her lips curved slightly. "Enough. Sometimes remembering hurts more than forgetting."
He nodded, understanding too well. The image of the burning stronghold flickered at the edge of his mind like a dream that refused to fade. He focused on the fire instead — the way it bent with each breath, the rhythm of its hunger.
"Your arm," she said suddenly. "Does it still burn?"
He turned his hand over. The Lines glowed faintly beneath his skin, steady now, not violent. "It's quiet," he said. "Like it's listening."
She leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Listening to what?"
Kael hesitated. "Me, maybe."
"Or itself," she said.
He smiled faintly. "Is there a difference?"
Her gaze lingered on him for a moment longer before dropping back to the fire. "There used to be," she said softly.
They sat in silence again. The warmth of the shrine seeped into their bones, slow and deep. Outside, the forest exhaled — a faint shift of air through leaves that sounded almost like words.
Kael asked, "When you said this was your mother's place… what happened to her?"
The girl didn't answer at first. When she finally did, her voice was low and even. "She taught me how to breathe with the Lines. How to survive the noise of the world. Then one day, she stopped breathing."
"I'm sorry."
"She isn't."There was no anger in her tone, only distance. "She believed death was just breath leaving one rhythm for another. Maybe she was right."
Kael looked at the firelight reflected in her eyes. "You talk like someone much older than you are."
She smiled — a small, weary thing. "And you talk like someone who used to be older but forgot how."
He laughed quietly. The sound felt strange, fragile, like something the world might break if it noticed. But she smiled too, and for a moment the cold of the past loosened its grip.
Later, when the fire burned low, Kael lay on his side facing the wall. The glow from the coals painted faint red lines across the stone — echoes of the marks beneath his own skin. He traced one with his finger, half-asleep.
Behind him, the girl's voice broke the quiet. "Why do you keep going?"
He opened his eyes. "Because stopping feels worse."
She thought about that for a while, then said, "You remind me of the trees here. Burnt at the edges, still growing anyway."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's the only kind worth giving."
He turned over. She was lying on her back now, hands folded under her head, watching the smoke curl up into the cracks above them. Her face looked softer in the dim light — less like a survivor, more like someone who'd forgotten to guard herself for a moment.
Kael wanted to ask her name again, but something in the air told him not to. Whatever she carried, it wasn't ready to be spoken. So instead, he said, "Thank you. For bringing me here."
She closed her eyes. "Don't thank me yet. The hard part starts tomorrow."
The fire gave a final pop and collapsed into embers. The room filled with a red glow — the same color as Kael's Lines. For a moment, the two lights pulsed together, in perfect rhythm.
Kael felt sleep creeping in. The last thing he saw was the girl turning toward him, her eyes half-open, reflecting the same faint red.
"Kael," she said softly, as if testing the sound of his name for the first time.He murmured something — maybe a word, maybe just breath — and drifted into the quiet between heartbeats.