The sun actually rose.

It was more than a creeping light through the narrow tunnel connecting our souls to the sky, reflecting from the clouds and leaves above us to cast a humble glow into our small clearing.

No.

The dawn came.

It broke my sleep in a heartbeat, from the instant the trees allowed its existence. They parted their leaves in eager hungering anticipation for something they had been missing for days.

I opened my eyes to the blue and green I hadn't seen for ages. To the morning dew of spring lingering on a forest of trees I had stumbled through in a flight for my life, but had never glimpsed.

I stood up facing what had been the abyss, staring into the place we had come from. I had been right about the trees. They were sparse, and moss and underbrush covered the floor of a shaded forest so thick and consistent, it formed its own sub-canopy. I took a breath in to smell the pine and larch that had been muffled by Hunak. This type of forestry meant we had reached the hills that bordered the north and east edges of Durn. We were likely well off the path, but we were alive. Vox's canteen had saved us. Jenny's light had rescued us. The dawn had pulled us from the endless ocean.

I turned back towards them. Jenny was awake, and struggling to fit on her boots.

"Don't look at me," she snapped.

We hadn't had a fire, nor much of a meal besides a few herbs Vox had spared for us from his strange pouch garden belt around his waist, but the conversation had kept us awake well past what might have otherwise been sundown. Jenny had slipped her boots off midway through for comfort.

I looked over at Vox. He was just sitting on the fallen tree, completely calm. I gave him a slight nod of appreciation, and he returned it in acknowledgement.

"It was a cold night," I said.

He nodded. His garments were well and neatly bundled around him, a composition that must have worked well in winter and overheated in summer. But he didn't exactly seem like the sort of man who would have much more than a cabin to visit infrequently. And from our conversation the night prior, he never said much about himself. He never said much at all, in fact. He was clever that way.

"AH!" screamed Jenny. "Why? Why! Why are you not getting on my foot!"

"A side effect, most likely," said Vox.

"From what?" she demanded.

"You overused magic," he said. "It's not the same for everyone, and not everyone experiences anything, but swollen feet after casting as much magic as you did?"

"That was days ago!"

"And you only took off your boots last night," he pointed out. "You've been sleeping with them on."

"But wouldn't her feet have swollen with her boots on?" I asked. "She would have felt them getting tighter."

He raised his brow. "Didn't you?"

She stopped struggling with her boot for a moment and considered the question. "How should I know?" she asked dismissively. "I wasn't exactly walking around in them."

"Here, let me help," I said, starting towards her.

Jenny leapt to her feet, boots in hand. "No! No. Look, I'll admit, neither of you seem particularly shitty. You're alright. For Kindred. But you—" she pointed at me, "—need to understand something."

I flapped my arms at my sides. "Okay?"

"You're dangerous. Not just in the 'could-kill-me-with-her-pinkie' kind of way. You attract danger. This? All of this? Hunak? That doesn't just happen to people. People don't just randomly get trapped between two fucking ARMIES using spells like Hunak! And I don't know what the fuck you're doing with Eskir, but something weird's going on with you two, and it's not normal! What, we have a Deacon just crossing our path, and that's? Normal to you? In what world is that a normal thing!"

"I never said it was normal," I started, but she cut me off with a finger.

"Don't speak. Don't say another word. I don't want to hear anything, I don't want to know anything, I just want to go my own way and not get proximity murdered by whatever happens to you next. You think I don't have stuff to do?! I have shit to resolve!"

Jenny picked up her boots in a huff, then turned to leave.

"I'm sorry," I said.

She jabbed a finger out to silence me. "NOT A WORD! And yes, if I see Eskir, I'll tell him you're alive. I can't really promise he'll want to be around you either, but I'll tell him. Now, where the hell is my coat?"

Vox picked it up from the fallen tree, where she must have placed it before I woke up, and handed it to her.

She took it from him and nearly started to walk away before rounding back on me. "And another thing!" Vox covered his ears. "THE NIGHT WE MET! Someone was trying to break into our room! AND YOU WERE ASLEEP! Whatever sort of lunatic would pick a fight with you is NOT someone I want to meet!" She looked over. "Sorry Vox."

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'It's fine,' he gestured.

"I'm not going to die here, Xera!"

With that, she turned on her heel and walked away, with only a moment of hesitation at the threshold of Hunak's former boundary.

And then she was gone. Off into the sparse trees. I watched her until she was properly out of sight.

"Interesting life," said Vox.

"Apparently."

"Your friend. I don't know where he is, but someone's been moving out that way since I woke." He pointed away from where Jenny had stormed off.

I let my senses broaden properly for the first time since Hunak. I hadn't done this regularly since my time in Senvia, but that had changed since Eskir had found me, and it was a relief to actually be able to see and hear things properly again.

Vox was right. Somewhere off in the trees, I heard some rustling. Distinctly with it, the sounds of clothing. A human.

"Thank you!" I shouted back. I should have said goodbye, given a proper thanks, even just waited for his reply, but I was already speeding through the forest.

It wasn't just excitement. The sounds were from a ways off, and I hadn't been sure at first. Everyone has a unique cadence to their walk, to their breath, but it wasn't like I'd memorised Eskir's. I didn't walk around with my senses augmented at all times. I wasn't a dog. Even as I was running, I only expanded it briefly, to avoid hurting my ears from the sounds of my own body crashing through the forest. I wasn't exactly concerned with moving gently. Because every time I listened, the rustling sounded more and more like Eskir, and if it was Eskir, it meant I hadn't let him die.

The noises were coming from the near side of a ridgeline I could somewhat make out through the canopy, and heading straight towards me. The last time I opened up my hearing, it was still some distance away. I adjusted my course to his, guessed the time it would take to reach him, and careened in his direction.

He isn't very far now, is what I thought to myself when I crashed through a bush and heard a grunted "Oof!"

I slowed to a stop as fast as I could, but my momentum kept me moving for some distance past the bush and into a clearing. I braced my stop against a tree at the far side of the clearing and trekked my way back at a more human speed until I found the bush again.

"Owww," came a voice from the bush. I pushed my hand in past the thick tangle and grasped an arm, then pulled out the human trapped inside, trying to minimise the bush's scratching with my spare arm.

Eskir fell upwards into my arms and grappled on like a baby monkey.

"Xera!" he wailed. "You're alive!"

I held him tight in relief. I hadn't known for sure until that moment that he had survived.

"How did you make it through?" I asked, after he'd let me go and stepped back to reassure his eyes that it was actually me.

"I didn't expect to get bodied into the ground like that. I heard some rampaging thing coming straight at me, I thought you were a bear! Perspective, Xera, perspective. What else was I supposed to think? I'm alone, and then no, there's something speeding towards me faster than a horse, and I can hear it snapping every branch in the forest like they're twigs, and then I'm just on the ground. Learn to slow down! But, where's Jenny? I'm assuming she's still running to catch up? It'll be awhile before she arrives, I'm sure."

"She left," I said. "Thinks travelling with us is too dangerous. How did you survive?"

"Well, that's a shame. Sort of. She was fun. To tease. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Well, at least she survived. Not too sure about me though, my chest still hurts."

"Eskir, how did you survive?"

"Actually, I have something you need to see. It's just over a ridgeline over there."

I grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him into the air. "How. Did. You. Survive."

His mouth twitched. "I can't say."

I tossed him back into the bush, a little too hard. He fell back through the hole in the tangle where I had dragged him out.

"Ow," he complained through the leaves and twigs. "I'm sorry!" he called. "You know my voice was stolen."

"How could survival possibly connect to that?" I demanded. "What, did the people who stole your voice come and save you? Do you have a weird ability that plucked you out from Hunak? What happened!"

He fell quiet, trying in vain to garble out a few sounds. I hauled him out of the bush again. His eyes fixated on my shoe. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

I closed my eyes. Breathe, I told myself. He was okay. He was alive. We'd get his voice back eventually.

"What did you want to show me?"

He looked away. "I don't want to show you," he admitted. "But you need to see it. And from what I can tell, we're not far from Bell Haven. The path would have taken us on a detour, but since we're in the middle of the forest now..."

"We have no horses or food anymore," I said. "We dropped the bags we'd taken back in the forest."

"Oh, I have mine!" said Eskir. "The ones I grabbed, they're over here."

He led me over to three bags: his own rucksack, Jenny's backpack, and a small sack of salt.

"Since she's left it, I suppose the backpack's ours now?" he suggested. He leaned over to unbuckle the fasteners.

"No. We'll hold onto it for now," I said.

He frowned. "Damn. Well, you're carrying it then."

He had a small, empty canteen attached to his own rucksack. It would have been how he'd survived the thirst, at least. I assumed he'd had some food in his pack.

I took another look at the three bags before strapping the salt to Jenny's backpack and swinging them both onto my back, loosening the straps to make them fit.

"How did you survive?" I asked again, more in wonder to myself. The man had kept track of all of this even through the attack by the shades, and he somehow looked well-nourished and hydrated.

He pinched his lips and turned towards the ridgeline, leading me over to its summit. It wasn't very tall, but it was enough to obstruct our view of what lay beyond.

The sight that greeted us over that ridge was something I remember even now, and I think I always will.

There was nothing. Not life. Not greenery. Barely a blue sky.

It was a wasteland.

The ground, for as far as I could see before the valley closed off to larger foothills in the distance, was painted red. Crushed white decorated the base of planted banners and littered weapons. Carriages were broken, shattered apart and their contents made unusable, not by intent, but as a byproduct of their destruction. Some pieces of horses lay scattered, but most of the rubbled bodies were humans and Kindred alike, as close to unrecognisable as bodies could get before blending back in with nature.

Though nature was a stretch.

Nature had abandoned this place, even inside of Durn.

"This can't have been the battlefield for Hunak," I whispered. My spine hurt. My legs were weak. My tongue burned cold. Even without my senses, the ridgeline was the only thing masking the scent of this place, and it invaded my mouth with ease.

"No," said Eskir. "This was the Deacon."