Nyra's breathing had steadied, the weight of her nightmare beginning to settle in the back of her mind rather than pressing against her chest. The cold air had helped. So had the stars, and in some strange way, so had Thal.
Then, casually—too casually—he spoke. "You up for a fight?"
Nyra blinked. "What?"
Thal shrugged, rolling his shoulders. He stood there nearly eleven feet tall, stripped down to a strip of charred cloth around his waist. The Threshen's claws had left no marks—his skin was unbroken, smooth bronze over dense muscle. His hair still fell uneven and short from the fire's embrace, but his beard was entirely gone, burned away to nothing, revealing the stark architecture of his jaw and the hollows of his cheeks in unfamiliar clarity. He looked younger without it. Exposed. The golden eyes seemed larger, more ancient against the stripped architecture of a face she had never fully seen before.
"You're awake. I'm awake." He tilted his head. "Might as well do something with it."
Nyra let out a dry, incredulous laugh. "You're joking."
Thal said nothing. Of course, he wasn't.
Nyra sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You really think sparring is what I need after…" She gestured vaguely to the surrounding wasteland. "…all that?"
Thal didn't miss a beat. "It worked when you were younger."
Nyra froze. She remembered. The first time he'd found her crying, broken, lost—she had thought he would comfort her. Tell her things would be okay.
Instead… he had thrown a punch at her.
She had barely dodged it in time, stumbling backward with shock and rage. It had been the first time since she lost her family that she had felt something other than grief. A distraction. A challenge. Something to focus on besides the past. And gods help her, it had worked.
Nyra huffed, shaking her head. "You're an ass."
Thal exhaled through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly—neither confirming nor denying it.
She exhaled sharply, rolling her shoulders. "Fine. Let's do this."
They faced each other in the grey space between the cave and the tree line. The Shadowfern loomed—twisted black trunks silent now, the Threshen's death having stolen their immediate hunger, but still watching. The sky above lightened from black to charcoal, the stars fading into the approaching dawn.
"Rules?" Nyra asked, falling into a stance.
Thal's golden eyes caught the dim light. "Don't die."
He moved.
No wind-up. One moment he was standing and the next he was inside her range, dropping into a full split that should have been impossible for a man his size, his fist coming in low toward her ribs. Nyra barely twisted in time. She struck back with an elbow; he flowed backward, spine bending like a reed, then coiled and rose, driving his shoulder toward her. She jumped, drove a knee down, and he caught it—stopping her cold as if she were weightless—then twisted and threw her.
Nyra hit the scorched earth hard. She rolled, came up swinging, and he wasn't there. He moved around her with long, gliding steps, centre of gravity dropping so low he seemed to skate across the ash. When she lunged, he dropped into that impossible split, her fist passing over his head, his body stretched flat against the ground. She chased him, striking at smoke, and he was everywhere she wasn't—rolling under her guard, rising inside her range, bending away from her kicks with inhuman flexibility.
She pressed harder. She ducked under a swipe meant to push her back, twisted, and drove a kick into his side. He actually stepped back. Half a step, but a step.
She grinned. "Oh? Was that an actual reaction? Did the great Thal actually—"
He moved. She was on her back again, staring at the stars, the wind knocked out of her.
"Okay," she coughed. "That one was on me."
Thal just grunted.
By the time they stopped, she was panting but exhilarated. She hadn't felt this alive in days. She rolled her shoulders, stretching aching limbs, and let herself collapse fully to the ground, legs sprawled in the scorched dirt. She lay there a moment, panting, the nightmare truly gone now, replaced by the simpler pain of bruised ribs and split knuckles
Thal walked over and sat beside her. Not close—three feet of ash between them—but close enough. He stared up at the sky too, his bare jaw catching the first hint of gold from the east.
They sat in silence. The Shadowfern creaked around them. Her breath slowed, her heart settling. She watched his chest—still. No rise, no fall. He simply sat, patient as stone, while the sweat dried on her skin and the adrenaline drained from her muscles into the earth.
Nyra turned her head. Without the beard, he seemed like a stranger wearing familiar eyes. She had never seen his full face before—the hard line of his jaw, the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the way his mouth settled into a natural severity when unhidden by hair. He looked younger, as if the beard had been holding years in place, but also more severe. More exposed.
"What am I?" she asked.
Thal looked at her. At the arm. His mouth opened slightly — the shape of a man reaching for something and finding the shelf empty. He closed it again. His gaze moved to the Spine.
"I don't have that answer," he said. "I knew one, once. That's all I have."
Nyra waited.
"Alinda." He said the name the way you say a name you don't say often. "She was from Solharra. Your desert." He paused. "We travelled together for a time. Long time ago."
"And she was like me."
"Maybe. I don't know if the blood is the same." His forearms rested on his knees. "She was strong the way you're strong. That particular kind — not just the force of it but the wrongness of it, the way it didn't fit inside a human frame." He was quiet for a moment. "But she never showed me what she could truly do. Whatever lived underneath — the healing, the body — she kept it locked away. Did it in the dark, alone, if she did it at all." His jaw tightened slightly. "She never told me what she was. And I never saw her with anyone from Solharra who might have known. She travelled alone before me. After me too, I think."
Nyra looked at her arm. Thought about the cistern. The obelisk. The village walls that had been clay even in her dreams.
"So there's nobody left who knew," she said.
"You're showing me more than she ever did," Thal said quietly. "That's something. I just don't know what to do with it yet."
Nyra followed his gaze to the Spine. "You keep looking at it."
Thal was quiet for a moment. "There's a reason it's there," he said. "The mountains."
She looked at the peaks. "What do you mean?"
"Before my time. A Berserker." He paused, choosing the words the way you choose footing on bad ground. "He fought everyone. Humans, Elves, Dwarves. Nephilim too, eventually. Turned himself against the world and didn't stop." His eyes stayed on the ridgeline. "The Spine is what he left behind. A scar. That's all anyone calls it now — the Empyrean Spine, like it was always there. Like the land made it."
Nyra stared at the mountains. "What happened to him?"
"He stopped," Thal said. "Eventually. That's all the story says."
She looked at him. "That's not a full story."
"No," he agreed. "It's not." He looked away from the Spine and back at his hands. "But it tells me your blood is old. Real. And that it can go a long way in the wrong direction if it goes wrong."
Nyra said nothing for a moment. She thought about the dream. The red haze. The thing she couldn't stop.
"Or the right one," Thal said quietly.
Nyra pressed her thumb into the place where the join had been. Nothing. Seamless.
"My family would have known," she said. Not a question. Not quite.
Thal was quiet for long enough that she thought he wasn't going to answer.
"Maybe," he said.
She huffed. Looked up at the last of the stars. "Great. So the only people who could've told me anything are gone."
"You're still here."
Simple. Blunt. She turned to look at him and he was already looking at the Spine again, his bare jaw catching the first suggestion of gold from the east, his eyes on the ridgeline the way a man watches something he intends to return to.
She followed his gaze. The mountains were vast and unchanged and said nothing back.
After a moment he stood, unfolding from the ground in one smooth motion, and offered his hand. She took it warm and real. She let him pull her to her feet. He turned toward the cave, and she followed, the weight of the Spine still pressing against her shoulder blades.