Eva woke with the first grey light filtering into their stone shelter. The deep, rhythmic thrum of the Behemoth was a constant in her bones. She checked the others—Leo snoring softly, Maya curled tight, Jordan in a state of rest so still it seemed meditative. One space was empty.
She slipped out from under her blanket and into the misty, pre-dawn world atop the living island. The air was cool and smelled of damp stone and distant salt. She found him not far, but high up. He'd climbed one of the taller, fin-like ridges that rose from the Behemoth's back like a natural watchtower.
Wolfen sat on the edge, legs dangling over a drop of several hundred feet to the creature's rocky "side." Below, the Pacific was a vast, dark sheet of hammered lead, still and endless. He wasn't moving. He was just… watching.
Eva climbed up to join him, the stone warm under her palms from the creature's internal heat. She sat beside him, not too close. The silence was comfortable, filled only with the wind and the deep, distant sound of the ocean being parted.
"You okay?" she asked finally, her voice quiet.
"What? Yeah," he said, not looking at her.
"Why don't you sleep, Wolfen?"
He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. Then he said, "I can't."
"What does that mean?"
"Exactly what it means." His voice was flat, devoid of its usual sarcasm or theatrical boredom. It was a simple statement of fact, heavy as the stone they sat on.
Eva let it sit. She looked out at the horizon, where the black was slowly bleeding to a deep, bruised purple. "I never saw you sleep. Not once. Not in the bunker, not on the road."
"Nevermind all this," he said, brushing the topic aside like a gnat. He shifted, pointing a finger out over the water, south and slightly west. "You ready? We'll be there in a day."
She followed his gaze. At first, she saw nothing but more ocean. Then, as the light grew, she saw them—dark, jagged shapes breaking the monotony of the horizon. Not clouds. Land. A chain of them, some large, some just specks.
"See those islands under us?" Wolfen said. "That's Hawaii. Or what's left of it."
The name was a relic from a geography lesson in a dead world. A place of vacation and sun. Now, just another set of ruins in their path.
"We're not stopping," he continued. "The old boy here doesn't do stops. He'll pass right by. Then it's open ocean for another stretch before we hit the next stepping stones. The Marianas Trench is… deep. Even for him."
He spoke about the geography of the apocalypse with a casual, weary familiarity.
"You've done this before," Eva said, not a question. "Not on this… thing. But this route. This crossing."
"A version of it," he admitted. "A long time ago. The map changes. The ocean doesn't care."
They sat in silence again, watching the islands grow slowly more distinct. The first rays of the sun speared over the eastern horizon, painting the underbellies of the clouds in fiery orange and painting a shimmering path across the water directly toward them.
"Can't sleep," Eva said softly, revisiting it. "Is it the… the fire? Your… condition?"
Wolfen let out a short, humorless breath. "It's not the fire. The fire is quiet when I tell it to be. It's the silence that comes after. It's too loud." He glanced at her, his golden eyes catching the dawn light. "When you close your eyes, what do you see?"
Eva thought. "Darkness. Sometimes memories. Plans. Lily's face."
He nodded slowly. "I see time. All of it. Stretched out. Every mistake, every face I've forgotten, every star that's died since I learned to count them. It's a noisy crowd in there. Sleep requires peace. I have none."
The confession was so stark, so devoid of his usual armor, that Eva had no response. They just sat, two small, mortal sparks on the back of a timeless creature, watching a broken world roll by beneath them as the sun, indifferent and beautiful, rose on another day of their impossible journey.