With the girl's reluctant help, I dragged the bodies toward the dying bonfire, our boots kicking up puffs of dirt and ash in the flickering glow. One by one, we rolled them into the flames. Heat licked our faces as fabric singed and flesh crackled. The air thickened with the acrid stench of burning hair and cloth, turning my stomach.
I gripped the glaive, frustration bubbling up from its earlier demands. "Be silent now and feed on the dirt!" I slammed the blade-first into the soft earth. The metal sank with a resonant thud. For a moment I felt a prickle of annoyance from it, then it settled.
The girl glanced at the weapon, violet eyes lingering for a beat, but she did not ask. She turned back to work.
I closed my eyes and whispered a quiet prayer for the dead, wishing for safe passage and better luck in the next life. A single tear traced a warm path down my cheek, cooled in the night air, and I wiped it away. I sank to the ground before the flames. The woman's solitary eye watched me like a sentinel.
"Are you okay?" the girl asked. "What was with you earlier? You really scared me. Your eyes, they w—"
She looked up at the charred husk glaring back and went white. "Never mind. We'll talk later," she said, sullen.
My gaze drifted to the glaive's blade, still embedded in the soil. Flakes of ancient decay had fallen away, revealing glints of clean metal, and every trace of blood had vanished, as if the weapon had drunk it.
So you drink blood. What in the hells are you? … What am I?
Staring into the flames, I wondered at my own nature and found I had no answer. I sank against a tree, and the girl sat nearby. Her eyes kept flicking between the woman in the fire and the ground, like a scolded dog.
We waited as the fire dwindled to embers. Night deepened until my vision shifted to familiar grays, the world flattening into shadow. The woman remained a charred statue of bone and ash. Only one eye gleamed faintly.
The girl had drifted against my side and dozed until I nudged her. "Help me with this," I said, low and firm.
She had scavenged a robe from the cultists' pile, fashioning it into a black dress of sorts that hung loosely on her slight frame, the fabric swallowing her horns and lending her a spectral air.
I stepped through the cooling ashes, embers glowing faintly underfoot and kicking up fine gray clouds. I took what remained of the woman in my arms. She was fragile, like a hollow shell baked too long, and heavier than she looked. "Come on," I told the girl. "Help me move her."
She wrinkled her nose. "This is… wrong. And gross. She's basically ashes now. Even for someone like her, how is she still alive?"
"You know her then?" I asked, adjusting my hold. "I don't know how anything survives burning like that. But if she is still alive, she deserves to die in peace."
We carried her eastward, guided by faint stars through breaks in the canopy. I took the lead, my night vision cutting the gloom, while the girl stumbled behind, breaths short and weary.
"Can we rest? Just a minute?" she asked more than once, leaning on a trunk. She looked like a typical young girl at that moment—soft edges, vulnerabilities on display. A flicker of jealousy stirred. I felt robbed of something basic. I did not have a childhood—or if I had, it lay lost in fog. Did she?
As the woods whispered with nocturnal rustles, I glanced back. "What was your childhood like?"
"Huh?" her voice pitched up. "We're hauling a burnt statue through pitch-black woods and that's what you ask? Where do you even come from? Are you a bumpkin or something?"
The words stung, sharp as a slap. "No," I muttered. "I was just thinking."
Silence stretched, broken only by the crunch of leaves. Then, softly: "My name's Mara. What's yours?"
"Bella," I said. "For now."
"For now? What's that mean?"
I nodded in the dark. The woman's eye seemed to track me as I spoke. "I was in an accident. My memory is gone. A nice old man found me and called me Bella, so I let it stick to honor him."
We stumbled across a dry riverbed as loose rocks slid beneath our feet. Mara winced with each step.
"Why didn't you take any of their footwear?" I asked. "There were at least three pairs."
She smiled thinly. "It's part of my punishment."
She fell quiet again. We emerged near the stables; the farmhouse loomed like a weary sentinel.
"Thanks, Bella," she said at last, softer. "For everything."
I shrugged it off. "Appreciated."
We paused outside to catch our breath, the cool air soothing sweat-damp skin, then hauled the charred form inside.
"This place again?" Mara asked. "You're sure it's safe?"
"If anything else wants to try its luck, I'm on a streak," I said. "Unfortunate for the living."
Down the dim hall to the first room on the left: an intact space with a sagging bed that had not seen use in years. "Lay her here," I said, and we eased the body onto the mattress. Dust puffed up in a faint cloud.
The woman's eye still stared, unblinking. "We're going to sleep now," I told her. "You should too. If any of the dead wander in, I'll prioritize us."
Her eye dipped, then closed under a crust of blackened lids.
I led Mara to my room, the only other bed in the place. Moonlight through the roof hole cast silvery patches. She looked less on edge.
I propped the glaive near the bed, stripped to my chest wrap and lace shorts, and brushed away splinters from the fight. I flopped onto the lumpy mattress with a sigh. Exhaustion settled like a heavy blanket.
Mara hovered, shifting awkwardly. "Uh… should I sleep here too? I've never slept next to anyone. So it's a little strange."
"Yeah, unless you prefer the floor," I said, blunt. Her face darkened in the grayscale of my vision.
"So you want me to s-sleep with you?"
"Don't be weird about it," I grumbled. "If I wake to anything strange, I'll beat your face in."
"O-okay." She climbed in and I turned to the wall.
"I'm cold… can I share the covers?" she whispered.
I sighed and lifted the cloak. She slid under, shifting closer until an arm draped over my stomach. Her body pressed to mine, warm and unfamiliar. A shiver ran through me.
"What's the plan for tomorrow?" she murmured.
"Sleep. Then I'll think," I said. "We'll see in the morning."
She nodded against my back. Her breathing deepened. Exhaustion pulled me under too.
The dreams returned and thrust me into another life. I was him again.
I crept down a dim hall, implants sharpening shadow to crisp edges, AI overlays feeding data to my neural link: heat signatures, structural scans, tactical pings. My lancer, a sleek gun-blade hybrid, hummed in my grip, barrel raised.
I rounded a corner to the highlighted room. The target slept, oblivious. I kicked the door and stormed in to deliver Terran Federation justice to a technocratic spy.
He jolted upright, hands in the air. "Don't shoot!" he yelled, voice cracking.
"Too late," I growled, and squeezed the trigger. White-hot tungsten slugs tore into him. He crumpled in a spray of blood.
Movement flickered left. I swung the lancer, finger on the trigger. A young boy stood there, wide-eyed and trembling, the image of his father. The man I had just executed. The boy screamed; terror echoed off the walls.
Orders flashed across my link: Household elimination.
I jolted awake to the mid-morning sun pouring through the gap in the roof. My stomach hollowed and growled. I had not eaten or drank anything in two days.