"What?" I was unable to listen to what she said.
She didn't repeat and we kept running.
The Grivvin's screech faded, swallowed by the swamp as the sewn mouth creature forced it deeper into the mud.
They were attacking each other like storms trying to erase the sky.
After a while, I couldn't move.
My legs were heavy.
My chest felt too small for all the air
it needed.
Mira wasn't looking at the fight anymore.
She was looking at the creature.
At him.
Her hands were shaking.
"Mira..." I whispered.
But she didn't hear me or maybe she couldn't afford to.
The sewn-mouth creature was losing its strength. It tried to fight back but the Grivvin twisted its limb trying to drown it into the mud, its stitched mouth splitting slightly with every movement.
Dark red drops kept sliding down its chin like a memory, a wound.
Mira whispered something under her breath.
A name.
I couldn't hear it.
Maybe, it wasn't meant for me.
Finally, the Grivvin retreated, crawling back into the fog like a beast ashamed of its own fear.
It was hurt but it left the sewn mouth creature in a much worse state.
Mira fell to her knees.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
Like someone who had been carrying too much for too long and the ground finally let her rest.
"Mira," I stepped towards her.
She flinched.
Not away from me.
Away from the memory.
"Please don't come close to me right now." she said softly.
Her fingers dug into the mud, trembling.
She didn't look up.
"This isn't fair," she whispered.
Her voice wasn't sharp or strong like before.
It was... tired.
"This place keeps him," she said.
"Keeps what's left of him.
Why? Why won't it let him go?"
I knelt beside her.
But the ground beneath us shifted- rippling, shaking.
The world was reacting.
To her grief. To her pain.
To the truth she couldn't hold in anymore.
"Hey! Are you okay?" I asked. "Talk to me."
Mira pressed a hand to her chest.
"Vehan... you don't understand."
Her voice cracked, raw and honest.
"He wasn't supposed to become that. He was supposed to come back."
I swallowed my words. "Now, I knew what she said when I didn't listen."
"What happened to him?" I asked softly.
She laughed in a sarcastic tone trying to numb the pain.
"He drowned," she whispered. "In himself."
The air around us changed. The fog grew darker, thicker, pressing against our skin like wet cloth.
Creatures getting drawn not by hunger, but by her sorrow.
The world was listening.
"Stop," I whispered to it expecting it to listen.
But it didn't stop.
It answered.
The tree's red glow brightened, pulsing faster and louder.
Like a heartbeat learning to run.
Mira choked on a breath.
"Vehan, don't come closer- something in this place reacts to you. More than me. More than anyone else I've seen."
She wiped her eyes, but the tears wouldn't stop.
"He protected you."
"Even now. Even in this shape." she said quietly.
"He remembers me. Right?" I said.
She shook her head.
"No, Vehan. He remembered who you remind him of."
I froze.
"What does that mean?"
She didn't answer.
Because the tree did.
The ground trembled under my knees, and the red pulse shot through the soil like veins trying to reach my skin.
I felt it climb up my arms.
Warm and alive.
"Vehan... " Mira whispered, voice breaking.
"You need to step away from the tree." But I couldn't.
My heartbeat was syncing with it again. Faster...
As if it knew me.
As if it wanted me.
Behind us, he had stopped moving.
He lay half-sunken in the mud, chest rising and falling.
It watched Mira with eyes too soft for its shape.
And the world went silent. Too silent.
"Mira..." I breathed. "He was protecting you, wasn't he?"
She shut her eyes like she wished she could unhear me.
Yes...
The air thickened.
Something was coming.
Something inevitable.
And beneath everything-I heard a faint crack.
Inside me.