The night wrapped them in a tense quiet. The tower loomed in the background, dark as if unaffected by happenings. But Talia's trembly breaths told a different story.
Ashen sat down next to her, trying to catch her eye. She ducked away, holding her shoulder. The sleeve was in tatters, fabric eaten away as if fungus bloomed over decades. Underneath, her skin looked normal—nearly too normal. No burn, no scars, no hurt.
But she trembled as if frost had taken hold in her body.
"Let me see," Ashen repeated.
She hesitated, then spread her cloak back. Pale, though not unusually so. At least, not yet. Ashen placed his hand lightly against her arm. Warm. Alive. But still, her shiver persisted.
Marrec leaned against a rock, watching with weary eyes. "It takes nothing to guess. That fog wasn't made to kill outright. It wants time. It wants to settle in her."
Ashen glared at him with a dagger eye. "You're not helping."
The old man shrugged. "Better to tell what we all think than to lie and act as though she's okay."
Talia flinched at what he was saying. "He's correct," she gasped, barely above a breath. "I feel it. It's inside me, just… waiting. As though something has placed a weight against my chest. Not that it pains, but it's there, breathing as I breathe."
Ashen froze, what she'd stated echoing eerily in what he'd experienced in the chamber—the breathing that hadn't been theirs.
He grasped his notebook, flipping rapidly to the final drawing of the spiral. His hand hovered over the page, shaking. "If it branded you, then you're linked to it now. Not just touched—chosen."
Her eyes widened. "Chosen?" "These are how such things happen," Marrec stated, his voice devoid of inflection, although his gaze showed a suppressed discomfort. "Ancient magic does not squander power. If it grasped after you, it wanted something."
Talia hugged her knees. "I don't want to be seen."
Ashen sat back, slamming the notebook shut. The words wouldn't come. He needed to reassure her that she'd be fine, that there was a way to reverse what the fog had instilled in him. But the vow was too heavy, too delicate to speak aloud.
Instead, he promised her, "You're not alone in this. Not while I'm here."
She looked up at him, as if deliberating whether to trust him. And then, in a soft voice, she nodded.
The fire they kindled later was simple, hardly sufficient to drive back night's chill. Talia sat closest, gazing intently at the leaping flame. She wouldn't sleep. The slightest sag in her lids made her sit up straight, grasping her chest as if her breath might get away if she relaxed her hold.
He pretended to sleep, yet Ashen knew that his lids were open behind closed eyelids. When it came to Ashen, he could not sleep, scribbling, sketching, filling the silence with paper and ink.
The spiral. The fog. The touch.
And under it all, one question that could not leave him.
If the fog had chosen Talia, what did that make him—the one who had brought her here?