I don't remember the walk home.
I remember stone on my face, ribs cracking when I tried to breathe. I remember the smell of my own blood, thick, metallic, too heavy in my mouth.
Then I was on my cot, though I don't remember how I got here. My boots are still on, crusted with ash. My satchel lies open beside me, the journal inside swollen with damp ink. My hand is still burning faintly with script, though the glow flickers now, dying down like embers.
I should be dead.
Every time I breathe, fire lances through my ribs. My arm is stiff, bound by chains of script that dig into my skin like wire. My shoulder is torn open again, blood dried into black flakes.
I don't know how long I've lain here.
Hours. Days. Time slips sideways.
---
The fever comes.
It always does, after a Hunt. My body breaks, and the Mark fills the cracks with fire.
I sweat until the sheets are soaked through. My skin burns and freezes. My head feels packed with voices, fragments swirling, colliding, cutting me from the inside.
When I close my eyes, I see her.
Lyra.
Her face just as I remember it, soft, sharp, alive. For a moment, I forget. For a moment, I almost reach out.
Then her eyes hollow.
The void pours from her mouth like smoke, her skin peeling away into script. She smiles as the black seeps from her, a smile that isn't hers.
"You left me," she whispers.
My chest caves.
The fever drags me deeper.
---
Nights blur.
Sometimes she is sitting at the end of the bed, humming. I know she's not real, her hair doesn't quite move right, her lips don't always match the song. But I still listen. I can't not.
Sometimes she's lying beside me, her breath brushing my cheek. I turn, desperate, and her face is gone. Just a hollow mask, letters spilling out where her eyes should be.
Other times she's standing over me with black veins crawling up her throat, and the Mark flares in my hand as if it knows she doesn't belong.
I scream until my voice cracks.
The neighbors must hear, but no one comes.
---
The journal grows heavier.
Even through fever, I write. My hand moves when I don't want it to. Words spill out in a scrawl I can barely read. Names. Places. Moments that don't belong to me.
I write until the candle burns down. I wake to find pages filled with lines I don't remember. Some in my hand, others in script burned into the paper like scars.
One page holds her name.
Over and over.
Lyra. Lyra. Lyra.
Written until the paper tore, until the pen snapped.
I don't remember writing it.
But I can't tear the page out. I tried. The Mark wouldn't let me.
---
The fever worsens.
I dream of our house before the Gap took her. Lyra at the table, flour dusting her hands. She turns when I walk in.
"Kael," she says.
Her voice is perfect. My throat closes.
But when I blink, her mouth is wrong. Too wide. Her teeth all letters.
I stagger back. She tilts her head.
"You're mine now," she says.
The Mark sears. I wake with my palm pressed into the wall, words burned into the wood. My arm aches as though I branded myself in my sleep.
The words say:
REMEMBER HER.
---
I stop leaving the house.
The market's voices would be too much. I can't let anyone see the veins crawling higher on my arm, black and alive beneath my skin.
I drink what little water I have left. I eat bread gone hard as stone. My body wastes away, ribs sharper every day, but the Mark still burns.
The fever keeps me inside. The fear keeps me inside.
I don't want anyone to see me like this.
I don't want anyone to see what I'm becoming.
---
The house whispers.
At first I thought it was wind. The old wood creaking.
But then I heard her voice.
Soft, low, just behind my ear.
"Why didn't you come with me?"
I spin, my injured ribs screaming, but no one is there.
Then the walls themselves start to whisper. Names etched into the plaster. Songs hummed through the beams.
And always, her.
Lyra calling me closer. Lyra telling me to rest. Lyra asking me to open the door.
I dig my nails into my arms until blood runs.
The whispers don't stop.
---
I find myself at the journal again.
Pages I don't remember filling crawl with her. Her eyes. Her laugh. The tilt of her head when she scolded me.
And twisted versions too, her hands dripping ink, her body unraveling into script.
I don't know if I'm writing them, or if the Mark is.
I don't know which are real anymore.
---
Tonight, I dream of her more clearly than ever.
We're sitting at the table. The lanternlight is warm. Her hands are folded, her eyes steady.
"You can stop this," she says.
My chest tightens.
"Can I?" I whisper.
She smiles, soft and sad. "All you have to do is put the book away. Stop writing. Stop Hunting. Stay with me."
Her hand reaches across the table, warm against mine.
For a moment, I believe.
For a moment, I want to.
Then the Mark surges, blazing white-hot. My palm sears against the table.
Lyra's hand blackens, skin peeling, bone turning to letters. She screams, voice splitting, shattering.
The table burns away. The house splits.
And I wake, on the floor, the journal open, my hand pressed to the page, script carved so deep it nearly tore through.
The words burned there read:
YOU CAN'T STOP.
---
I lie there for hours, chest hollow, body broken, pages whispering in the dark.
I want to believe she was real.
But I know the truth.
The Mark is all I have left.
And it will never let me rest.