Smoke.
Evelyn tasted it before she opened her eyes—bitter, clinging, not from fire but memory. The scent of scorched hay and charred leather, of her father's coat. Her breath caught, her body instinctively curling in on itself.
She was cold, yet sweating.
A hand pressed gently to her shoulder. Torren's.
"You're awake," he said, softly. "You've been under almost two days."
She sat up too fast. The world stuttered, smeared at the edges. Trees leaned closer than they should. The canopy above was… wider. Deeper. Every crack of bark, every falling leaf struck her ears like a drumbeat.
"I dreamed," she murmured. "She was singing."
Torren didn't ask who. He looked tired—more lines around his mouth, his eyes sunken. She could see the dried blood at the edge of his sleeve, the splint on his arm. She could also see the heartbeat in his throat.
Literally. The pulse, the flicker of red within flesh. Just for a second.
Then it was gone.
She blinked, and the world resumed its shape.
"I'm not the same," she whispered.
"No," he said. "You're not."
They broke camp near dawn, beneath the bent branches of dusk-birch and twisted vine. Torren moved with steady purpose, ever the practical one, while Evelyn took longer to gather her bearings. Her limbs felt wrong. Not in pain—but reconfigured. Her hands flexed too smoothly. Her feet met the ground before she expected.
The shard was gone—consumed, merged—but something in her chest remained warm. A pulsing ember behind her sternum.
She pressed a hand there. The warmth flared slightly.
Her skin didn't burn. Not yet.
By mid-morning, they reached the edge of the foothills. A ruined cart lay overturned beside a broken trail—gnawed wheels, shattered axle. Blood, but no bodies.
Torren knelt, inspecting the marks.
"Dragged. South, toward the ridge. Echoed or worse."
Evelyn squatted beside him, and before she realized what she was doing, her vision shifted.
The blood wasn't just red. It was tainted. Threads of deep violet flickered at its edges, veining toward the earth.
"Poisoned," she murmured. "Or altered."
Torren looked up sharply. "How can you—?"
She blinked. The colors were gone.
"I don't know," she said.
But she did. Somewhere in her, something understood. Some instinct was reordering the world. Every breath she took, every beat of her heart—it moved through her as if she were part of a larger rhythm.
A drumbeat not of war, but of… becoming.
They passed through silent glades. Once, they heard a distant howl—but it broke midway, shattered into choking silence. No birds. No crickets.
The Hollow was listening again.
And Evelyn, for the first time, felt it was listening to her.
That night, they made camp in the lee of a stone outcropping near a dried riverbed. Evelyn carved a ward-post without thinking, the glyphs flowing from her hands as if they had always known the shape of her fingers.
Torren watched.
"You ever going to tell me what that thing did to you?"
"I don't know how," she said. "I just feel… like the silence is full of words now."
He grunted, throwing another log on the fire.
"I don't like it. You didn't ask for this."
Evelyn looked into the flames. "Does anyone ever ask to be changed?"
Torren didn't answer.
Above, clouds moved fast across the stars. The fire cracked. Somewhere deep in the trees, a second heartbeat pulsed.
And Evelyn listened.