The red sun sinks below the ragged edge of the town, bleeding its last light into the grey mist.
The fog rises from the floorboards of Budsle, swallowing the lanes and crawling over the fresh mounds of dirt.
Leonard stands motionless before the small graves—the travelers, the little girl.
A cold weight strikes his cheekbone. A single drop of rain tracks through the dirt on his skin, snapping the fog from his eyes.
Above, the clouds are a bruised black, closing the sky like an iron lid.
The downpour begins.
Heavy splashes cut through the noise of the wind.
Grace bursts through the screen of fog, her sleeves still pinned high on her forearms, her breath hitching.
She stops three paces from him, the water flattening her hair against her skull.
"What happened?" she demands, her voice straining against the wind. "Henry isn't right. He won't speak. Did something happen out here between you two?"
Leonard keeps his eyes on the muddy mounds.
"I know you're keeping things from us, Leonard." She steps closer, her boots sinking into the wet clay.
She reaches around, forcing her way into his line of sight to lock eyes with him. "What is it? We are in the belly of this place. We cannot afford to live in the dark. I thought you would understand that before anyone else."
Leonard turns his shoulder away from her.
"You don't have to worry about anything.
Everything is fine. The town is just pressing on our seams, that's all. Go back to the house. It's getting dark."
"Look at me when I speak to you!" Grace's hand shoots out, grabbing his leather cuff, her fingers digging into the wet hide.
"You don't get to slide away into the shadows. You are the one holding the rafters up. You are supposed to keep us together. You can play the stoic soldier all you want, but I see the cracks, Leonard. I see straight through you."
She squeezes his wrist, her grip fiercely tight. "Tell me what's wrong. We stay together, or we rot. You are doing exactly what this town wants you to do—"
"Just go back!"
The roar rips from Leonard's throat, louder than the thunder rolling over the trees.
He wrenches his arm back, tearing his wrist from her fingers with a sharp, violent twist. His eyes are wide, dark, and hollow. "I don't need your comfort, Grace. I am done with it. Go back."
He turns his back on her and strikes out towards the woods.
Grace reaches out, her palm open to the rain, but her fingers freeze in the grey air.
She doesn't follow. Her jaw sets into a tight, quiet line as she watches his massive silhouette fade into the white fog.
"Come back before the sun completely goes," she calls out, her voice flat but steady against the storm. "You haven't eaten. I'll have the bread warm."
Leonard doesn't look back.
Grace turns toward the house, wiping the sheet of water from her face with both hands, and runs through the mud.
The rain turns the forest path into a grey river. Leonard doesn't walk into the woods.
He just stands at the edge of the tree line, his boots anchored in the mud, staring deep into the black, tangled timber. Ice-cold water drips from the pine needles above, soaking the nape of his neck.
He remains still, a stone shape against the storm.
"You did well."
The syllables are light, carrying a faint, musical lilt that cuts cleanly through the roar of the downpour.
Leonard freezes.
His boot remains pinned in the mire. His ribs tighten around his heart until the bone aches.
He slowly turns his head.
On the collapsed porch of an abandoned timber house sits Rose.
The pink wool dress is dry, untouched by the storm.
Her long red hair hangs loose over her shoulders, vibrant against the rotting, blackened logs of the cabin.
Her lips are parted in that small, familiar smile she always kept for the evenings after the forge went dark.
She rises from the porch, her movements slow, unhurried.
"I knew you'd come," she says.
Leonard's legs move.
The rational voice in his skull the iron-forged veteran who knows the the horror of Budsle—is drowned beneath a thick, suffocating tide of black guilt.
His boots drag him across the yard.
Every instinct screams trap, but his hands are already reaching out.
He needs the illusion more than he needs the truth.
He stops an inch from her chest.
Rose lifts her hand. Her fingers are small and pale against the grey rain.
She reaches up, brushing a wet lock hair away from his forehead.
Her skin moves down his cheekbone, leaving a trail of intense, shocking heat.
"...You still love me," she murmurs.
Leonard's jaw trembles, the old scars twisting. "Always..."
Rose's smile deepens. "I knew you wouldn't let anyone take my place."
She leans up on her toes, her hands sliding to his neck, and presses her lips to his.
Leonard goes rigid.
The warmth is absolute.
It is the exact, soft heat of her skin from years ago, before the blood went cold in the snow.
His breath hitches in his throat.
For so many nights, he had tried to rebuild this exact sensation from memory, watching it fade a little more each winter until he could no longer remember the weight of her mouth.
Now, it floods his senses. His knees buckle beneath his tunic.
Rose brings her arms around his neck, pulling his heavy frame down into her chest.
"I missed you so much," she whispers against his skin.
Leonard drops his forehead against her shoulder, his arms wrapping around her waist, crushing the pink wool against his leather vest, anchoring himself to the touch.
"I..." His voice breaks, a jagged, wet sound.
Rose's hand paths through the hair at the back of his head, her touch soothing, rhythmic.
"Shhh I know everything," she croons. "You'll be free from everything soon honey."
She takes his calloused hand in hers, her fingers cold but steady. "Come."
Like a man walking through a grey lake, Leonard follows her through the broken door of the cabin.
Above them, the shingles are gone, the rain pounding against the rafters, but where they stand, the water doesn't seem to fall.
Thunder shakes the foundations.
Outside, the fog presses against the broken window panes until the glass turns solid, opaque white.
Rose guides him to the edge of a rotting straw mattress.
"Sit," she says.
He drops onto the edge of the bed, the old ropes groaning under his weight.
She slides down beside him, her thigh pressing against his grease-stained trousers.
For a long minute, the cabin is silent save for the storm.
Leonard doesn't turn his eyes away from her face.
He doesn't blink.
The terror that she will vanish the moment his lids close keeps his eyes wide, straining in the dark.
Rose reaches up, her fingers cupping his jaw.
Her thumb moves across his cheek, wiping away the cold rainwater still clinging to his skin.
"Such a good boy," she murmurs.
Leonard closes his eyes, letting his weight sink into her palms.
A sharp, hot spike of pain bites into the flesh beneath his jaw.
His eyes snap open.
Rose is still smiling at him, her face inches away.
But her short, pale fingernails have driven deep into the soft skin of his throat.
Thin, dark ribbons of crimson spill out from beneath her fingertips, staining the linen of his collar.
"W-What...?" Leonard's voice is a wet click.
Rose doesn't speak.
With a wet, sliding pop, the entire left side of her face and body drops away, liquefying into a grey, steaming oil that slithers into the floorboards.
What remains is a vertical bisection.
A living half-being.
From the center of the half-skull, a solitary, sulfur-yellow eye rolls in its socket, fixing onto Leonard.
The single arm, long and multi-jointed like a spider's limb, terminates in a jagged bone hook dripping with it's own blood.
Leonard freezes.
His lungs refuse to draw breath.
Every instinct screams at him to move, to fight, but his body no longer belongs to him.
The creature bends its elongated, half-spine, lowering its split face until the yellow eye fills his entire field of vision.
Then, from the remaining half of the throat, Rose's soft, sweet voice spills out from a single twitching lip.
"You're going to be my main dish, honey."
The bone hook drags down his cheek, leaving a smear of hot blood across his skin.
"So be a good boy..."
The voice multiplies, echoing from the flat, open void where her left side used to be.
"...and watch me devour your friends first."