There was too much blood. Even Ember could tell that much. People weren’t meant to bleed this much. She’d seen her fair share of injuries growing up—split knuckles, gashed knees, the occasional bruised bone. But nothing like this. Never anything like this.

“Hold on,” she wheezed, her voice trembling, the words as much a plea as a command. The flames of that furnace inside her still burned, driving her forward. She was running, faster than she’d ever run before, Penta’s lifeless body cradled in her arms. He wasn’t smiling or joking anymore. That twisted her gut more than anything.

“Just hold on a little bit longer,” she repeated, her words meant for him as much as her own ravaged feet and burning legs. “We’re almost there.”

Or so she hoped. So she prayed.

The needle of the Augur’s Compass hadn’t flickered since she’d snatched it back from him. Dead set. Unyielding. Pointing straight ahead. Whether it led to the estate, some forgotten ruin, or another nameless place in this cursed expanse, she didn’t care. As long as it led somewhere safe. Somewhere she could treat his wounds.

With Penta like this, there would be no wards—the ones that had bought them a single night of uneasy rest. She didn’t know a first thing about them. She only knew it was dangerous to stay still. Even the brief moments she’d crouched over him, trying to keep panic at bay, had been enough to hear them—the things creeping closer. Shadows in the mist. Creatures that never slept, only hungered. Like the one that had nearly killed them both.

Maybe had killed one of them.

“Please,” she begged, her voice barely more than a whisper now. “Just a little longer.”

The mist coiled endlessly around them, gray and unchanging. It smothered the world, uncaring, unyielding.

How long had she been running? Across a dead earth that stretched on, endless and the same? Minutes? Hours? Days…?

No. It couldn’t have been days. Penta wouldn’t survive that long.

Would he even survive this long?

She couldn’t think like that. Not now. Not when the compass still pointed ahead, unwavering as her desperate hope.

Her legs burned, her arms ached from holding him close. His blood soaked through her clothes, warm at first, but now so cold it seemed to leech the strength from her skin. And still, she ran.

Every step was a prayer. Every breath a promise.

Just a little longer.

Only the thunder of her own pulse and the steady rhythm of her footfalls marked the passage of time. That, and the inferno burning in her chest—a roaring flame of defiance, refusing to accept the world as it was. Refusing this place, his wounds, her exhaustion.

Just another dozen steps. Just a little further. The compass had to be leading her somewhere. It had to.

Her legs screamed, her arms trembled, and her back felt like it might split in two. Blood marked the trail where her bare soles had passed across the cracked earth, each step carved in pain. Yet it all burned away in the raging heat surging within her. The fire drowned out everything else. There was only the next step, and the one after that.

Faster. Further. She ran mindlessly, chasing the unwavering needle of the compass.

Just another step. And the one after that. Creaking joints and hazy eyes.

A mind numbing pain that she barely felt. There was a lot of things she barely noticed. Her wheezing breaths, her straining heart, an exhaustion that filled her veins like sluggish tar. She barely even noticed the first flicker of light brushing against her face. The rapid beat of tiny wings stirring the air, leaving a faint buzz in her ears. Warmth touched her skin, accompanied by a soft breeze and the gentle scent of summer.

For a moment, the sensations caught her off guard, and then, a cold dread prickled down her spine. Was she slipping into one of her memories again? Had the creature returned, twisting her senses to claim them both?

Then her foot caught on a root. She stumbled forward, falling with Penta still cradled in her arms.

He wouldn’t have been in her memories. That thought grounded her as she twisted mid-fall, catching the brunt of the impact on her shoulder.

The ground beneath her wasn’t cracked and lifeless anymore. It was soft, damp, alive. Moss spread out like a carpet under her battered body.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

After what had felt like days of running across barren, dead earth, here was something real. Something different.

The mist retreated. It clung to the edges of the world like a wounded beast, no longer suffocating her. Above her stretched a twilight sky, endless and vast. Stars—bright and unfamiliar—scattered across its indigo depths, glittering with a faint, ethereal shimmer.

The air smelled of things she didn’t recognize. Warm, earthy, alive. Glowing bugs—or something like them—danced in the air above her, their tiny bodies pulsing with a soft, golden light.

Emberlyth lay still, her breath shuddering as reality caught up with her. Her arms clutched Penta close, her body shaking with exhaustion and relief.

They had made it.

They had left the Mistlands behind.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, Ember felt like she could cry.

A few ragged, unsteady breaths were all Ember allowed herself. Penta still lay cradled in her arms, his body growing heavier with every heartbeat she could no longer feel.

“Damn it,” she hissed through clenched teeth, forcing her trembling arms to shift him aside. Freeing herself felt like an impossible task, but she managed to lay him down gently in the moss. Where a roaring furnace had blazed in her chest moments ago, there were only embers now, faint and smoldering. The heat had left her hollow, her pulse weak, her body wracked with the metallic taste of spent power.

Her knees scraped against the earth as she struggled upright, every movement an ordeal. Blood trickled from her split lips, and her fingers, trembling like brittle branches, curled into the moss beneath her. She was drained beyond exhaustion. Her limbs were leaden, her thoughts clouded as if wrung dry by some cruel hand.

Breathing hurt. Every inhale was like a razor drawn over raw, burned flesh. Every exhale brought a rasp of smoke curling from her nostrils. Her veins felt scorched, as though they had carried fire for far too long and now held only blackened ruins.

But Ember forced herself to focus. She had to focus. Penta was dying, his blood soaking the moss in an unbroken stream. If she didn’t do something, if she didn’t act now—

Her gaze flicked upward, catching the glassy expanse of a lake stretching before them. The water gleamed, its surface clear and cool, edged with reeds swaying in a song she couldn’t hear over the pounding of her heart. Some desperate part of her longed to throw herself into its depths. To gulp down its clarity until the soot in her throat was washed away, until the fire in her chest was quenched.

But no. Not yet. Penta came first.

Stop the bleeding. She repeated the thought like a mantra, shaking her head as though to dislodge the haze clouding her sight. A few trees rose by the edge of the lake, leaning out over its waters. Birch bark—was that right? Could it stop bleeding? Or was it holly? Or...

Her frantic thoughts stilled as her eyes caught movement among the trees.

There, beneath the broad reach of a leaning birch, stood a figure. It hadn’t been there moments ago. A stag, massive and still, its antlers spreading like bare branches against the twilight sky. Its body was heavy, its stance poised, and its dark eyes locked on her with an intensity that stole the breath from her lungs.

It did not move. It did not blink. It simply watched, its gaze weighted and knowing, as if it saw through her desperation to something deeper. Something Ember hadn’t yet grasped herself.

It was an eerie thing, but it didn’t seem immediately hostile. Even so, Ember’s first instinct was to shift, dragging herself until she crouched between the stag and Penta, shielding his still form with her own.

“Stay—” she coughed, the sound tearing through her throat like gravel, “stay away.” The words were barely audible over the pounding in her ears, her blood rushing with the sound of grinding stones.

Her strength was slipping through her fingers like sand. Whatever fire had driven her this far was now little more than stubborn embers, smoldering deep within her chest, impossible to snuff out. And perhaps it was from those coals, flickering on the edge of consciousness, that the hallucinations came.

Because for a moment, it seemed as if the stag was speaking.

“I’d worry less about him and more about yourself, human child.”

The words echoed in her mind, though no voice broke the air. It was as if they had been placed there, heavy and undeniable. The stag hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted. Yet Ember felt the weight of its gaze pressing against her like a physical thing.

“He’ll survive,” it continued, the tone patient yet firm. “But you may not.”

“Wounded,” Ember rasped, her voice little more than a whisper. “He’s… wounded. Bleeding.”

“Is he?”

The question was so absurd it stilled her for a moment. More absurd even than the notion of a talking stag. But despite herself, Ember glanced back toward Penta’s body, her breath catching as she did.

There was blood—she remembered it vividly, pooling beneath him as she’d carried him—but now, there was none. The moss beneath him was clean, untouched by scarlet stains. The only blood she could see darkened the ground where she herself knelt.

Her shaking hand reached for him, tugging at the reddened fabric of his shirt. What she found beneath was not the gaping wound she’d feared but a blackened scar, the edges of it knitting together before her very eyes. Thin lines of ink traced the wound’s edges, pulling it closed in a way that made her breath hitch.

His Aethermarks.

“See?” the stag’s words pressed against her thoughts again. “Worry about yourself, child, before you exhaust what little vitality you have left. You’ll burn yourself to a crisp. Is that what you prefer?”

“I… I don’t know how to stop,” Ember murmured, her voice trembling with a quiet, desperate plea. Maybe she’d been aware all along, but had pushed the thought aside in favor of saving Penta. Now, she could deny it no longer. The fire beneath her skin was spreading, consuming. She was burning, her body little more than kindling for a blaze she couldn’t control.

“I see.” There was something almost pitying in the words, as if the stag had expected no different. “Then return to a place where you can burn no more. Sleep.”

The final word was a command, resonating through her with a force she couldn’t resist. Ember’s body sagged, her arms giving way as she collapsed to the moss. The world darkened, her vision narrowing to a single point of light before vanishing entirely.

And as she slipped into unconsciousness, she heard the stag’s voice one last time, low and final.

“When you wake, leave this place. His kin is not welcome here.”