The bars were slick with rust, sweating with decades of old breath and mildew. Asher Vale pressed his palms flat against them and felt the cold seep into his bones. The corridor smelled of piss, of rot, of the kind of damp that never dries. He shut his eyes halfway—not out of weariness, but to tighten the world down to a pinhole.
One thought. One breath. In. Out. Hold.
The thought unspooled, and with it, his flesh.
It began in his hands. First came the loss of heat, the sharp prickling as his skin thinned and blurred, like paper pressed too close to a flame. His veins hummed and then hollowed, and soon his arms felt more like fog than flesh. Asher leaned into the iron, and the bars—unyielding for every other soul who had clawed at them—let him pass, because there was nothing solid left to stop.
Pain came with it. Not sharp, not cruel, but steady, like the ache in a scar before a thunderstorm. He welcomed it. Pain meant he was still tethered to something real. Without it, the mist might swallow him whole.
On the far side of the bars, he stumbled once before gathering himself together. Shoulders. Spine. A body reassembling bone by bone. The aches returned too, settling back into place like birds on a wire. He flexed his fingers, stared at the dirt trapped under the nails. Human again. Or near enough.
A voice slithered out of the darkness two cells down. "Angel." The word came in a gasp, spit thick on cracked lips. "Angel, angel, angel…"
Asher turned. The man's hair hung in greasy ropes. His eyes bulged too wide, like he was trying to drink every shadow in the corridor. He stumbled forward, arms stretched in devotion or madness, Asher couldn't tell which.
"Back," Asher said flatly.
The man clawed closer. Fingers, bony and bleeding, scraped at Asher's sleeve. For a moment Asher thought of letting him hold on—what harm was a madman in a cage? But hunger stirred in his chest, fast and sharp, and he shoved the thought down. He caught the wrist, turned it aside. Fragile bones slid under skin like a trapped animal. The man whimpered and folded to the floor, whispering faster, as if speed might turn the words into prayer.
Asher moved on. The corridor reeked, but beneath it all there was something else. A thread, thin but unbroken: lavender, faint and stubborn against the stink. The scent tugged him left, to the third cell. He knew what he'd find before he saw her.
"Elena," he breathed.
She was a shape curled small in the corner, arms locked around her knees. When she lifted her head, hair clung to her face in dirty strands, but her eyes—green and clear even in the dim—pierced through the dark. Her cheeks were hollow, her lips dry. And yet she was still the most dangerous, beautiful thing in this graveyard of bodies.
"You shouldn't be here," she said. Her voice cracked like an old hinge. She tried to smile, but it broke halfway.
He knelt, brushed a curl behind her ear. The old scent rose—lavender, skin, memory. It hit him in the chest harder than any guard's blow. Hunger chased it, quick and savage, but he caged that too, pressed his tongue hard to his teeth until the urge dulled.
"I told you I'd come," he said. "Late. But I came."
"You're always late." This time the smile almost reached her eyes.
Above them, boots struck stone. Heavy. Measured. Chains rattled, metal against metal, and a laugh—low, humorless—rolled down the stairwell like thunder. Dust rained from the ceiling, fine gray snow settling in her hair.
Asher rose to his feet. His shadow stretched, crooked, across the wall. He pressed his forehead against the bars, felt their cold bite into his skin. "They don't know what they've locked away," he murmured.
Elena's fingers clutched his wrist, weak but desperate. "Don't," she whispered. "Not for me."
"It's not for you," Asher said, his mouth curving in a smile that wasn't kind. "It's for them."