They found shelter in the hollow of an old storm-felled elderpine, its interior burnt and half-rotted but still dry. The ravine's edge loomed above, casting jagged shadows as dusk deepened. The creature—whatever it had been—was gone, but Evelyn still felt its gaze.
She had barely spoken since the fall.
Torren lit a small fire with trembling hands, his flint sparking on the third try. "We need warmth. I think you're fevered."
"I'm not cold," Evelyn murmured. She stared at her hands. They looked like hers, but not. Veins too bright, fingers trembling in subtle syncopation with an unseen rhythm. Her pulse wasn't just in her chest—it throbbed from deeper within, beneath bone, beneath thought.
"I can feel it. The core… it's changing me."
Torren sat back on his heels, lips tight. He didn't deny it. "That thing at the ridge. It knew you."
"It called me ember-child." She whispered the name like it was a curse.
He shifted, unstrapping his short blade and placing it beside him. "You've always been strange, Evelyn. Not in a bad way. But your mother, those glyphs, the way you hear things others don't…"
She hugged her knees. "I never wanted to be strange."
The fire crackled.
Outside, the wind shifted. No birds. No insects. The silence of the forest was becoming familiar—ominous.
Torren offered a strip of dried meat. She waved it off. Her stomach churned.
"It's in me," she said finally. "The core. I didn't just carry it. It entered me. I feel it like… like a second self."
"You didn't consume it."
"Not yet."
He froze. "Evelyn—"
"I can feel the line. The edge of it. Like if I reach, just a little more, it will take me somewhere else." She touched her chest. "Somewhere hollow."
Torren looked away. "Your mother would've known what to do."
"She'd tell me not to touch it. And then stay up all night reading until her hands bled."
There was nothing else to say. The past was burned behind them.
Later, when Torren dozed fitfully against the wall of the hollow trunk, Evelyn sat awake. The fire's glow reflected in her eyes.
In the dark between thoughts, she heard it again.
The hum.
It wasn't a sound. It was a feeling. A call. Like a heartbeat in stone.
She stood, barefoot on the cool forest floor, and walked to the ravine wall. Her palm met the stone.
And in that moment, she remembered.
Not a memory of her own. Not exactly. A vision, or an echo.
A woman in silver fire, stepping through a broken gate. Her arms were empty, her eyes hollow. She looked at Evelyn.
And smiled.