Esen's grin looked crooked.

He stood just inside the ring of lights with snow packed to his shins and a bundle of cut branches hanging off his shoulder like a bad joke. A split ran across his sleeve from armpit to cuff, cloth stiff and dark at the edge. Ichiro was worse - coat scraped, one glove glossy with blood at the wrist, the kind of steady in his jaw that meant he was choosing not to shake.

Everyone crowded without being asked. Feris first, chin high. Keahi hovered near the perimeter, hands open and ready. Lynea watched with the stillness of a person memorizing angles.

"What did you see?" Raizen asked.

"Shadows" Esen said, then stopped, because the word felt too small. He swallowed. "Wrong shadows. Moving ahead of us. Like we were walking into our own footprints."

Ichiro's voice was flat. "Reflections that didn't wait for us. The snow changed texture when it passed. Then - Nyxes. Fast ones. Fortitude five or six. Not sure though."

"You fought?" Keahi asked.

"We ran" Esen said, and looked almost ashamed about it until Ichiro tilted his head in a quiet yes. "We ran and threw noise down the slope. They didn't chase far."

"They weren't chasing" Ichiro said. "They were watching."

Silence thumbed the tent walls. Someone stirred soup and forgot to stir. The generator coughed once and recovered. Raizen took in the cuts, the way snow clung to hair and lashes, the way Esen kept counting nothing with his thumb against his fingers.

"Rest" Lynea said. "Eat. Then we talk."

No one argued.

They made a fire, low and careful. Orange light found faces and made them look older, then younger, then like themselves again. The wind hovered beyond the tents like it had been told to wait its turn, and the light behind the clouds was a pretty shade of orange and pink.

Feris tossed a stick into the flames like she was feeding a pet. "To not dying twice" she said, raising a tin cup.

"That is a low bar" Obi said, dropping beside her with his bandaged hand cradled like a prize. He sniffed the steam rising from the pot and made a face. "What is this? Melted boots?"

"Roots" the cook said from behind a scarf, offended. "And dignity."

"Perfect" Obi said. "Dignity? One of my favorite flavors. Roots? Not so much"

The first mouthfuls didn't taste like anything. Then they did. Hikari sat with the med kit between her knees and tightened the wrap around Ichiro's forearm with neat hands that hid how tired she was. He didn't flinch.

"You lose a lot?" she asked.

"Enough" he said. "Not too much."

"That is not a number" replied, and tightened the bandages enough to finally make him flinch.

Esen had started to warm up, literally and otherwise. He held his bowl under his chin and talked fast like he could outrun the memory if he got the words out first. "It was like - okay - imagine your shadow is excited to go home and keeps leaving without you? That. And the snow… it - I don't know. It looked back. And then those Wraiths showed up and acted like they knew the route better than we did, like they were shepherding us, which is rude. I'm the shepherd."

"Of course you are…" Lynea said dryly, blowing on her… Let's just call it soup.

Keahi cut him a look. "How many?"

"Three" Ichiro said. "Maybe four… I don't know, alright? We didn't count twice! Who knows how many more would appear? Six, seven?"

Hikari finished the wrap, checked pulse and color, and let Ichiro's hand rest. She reached for her own bowl and realized it was still empty. Raizen took it, filled it, and set it in her hands without comment. She blinked at the unexpected kindness like it might break.

"Thanks" she said.

"No problem. But eat" he said.

"Bossy" she said, but the warmth in her voice made it sound like permission.

Conversations found little eddies around the fire. Small jokes. Small plans. Lynea and Keahi made a list without writing it down. Feris teased Obi about dying heroically and he told her he'd schedule it for a weekday because weekends were for romance. Esen confessed that the soup was actually good. The young cook pretended not to hear.

Raizen sat with his back to a crate and let his shoulders drop by inches. The heat found his face. It didn't get far. The cold felt thoughtful tonight, like it was learning manners.

Hikari ate five spoons, slow, the way a tired person negotiates with their own body. Then she set the bowl down and lightly checked the bruise under Raizen's cheekbone, almost by reflex.

"You always hold it together" she murmured. It wasn't a question.

"Someone always has to" he replied.

"Then… At least don't break when the rest of us can't" she said softer, like a wish disguised as advice.

He looked at her. The fire made her beautiful blue eyes even shinier. The day had taken the color from her face and left the shape of her. Her earrings caught the light and threw it back as if refusing to keep it.

"I'll do my best" he said.

"You always do… And that's a lot" she whispered, and leaned. It was the most natural thing in the world. Her head found his shoulder. Her breath evened. The camp noises retreated, polite for once.

He didn't move. Not because he didn't need to, but because he didn't want to.

Obi saw it, grinned, and said absolutely nothing, which was the most generous version of him. Feris saw it, smirked, then hid the smirk in her cup. Esen saw it and mouthed an overacted "aw" and got kicked by Keahi, not too lightly, but not hard enough to make him scream.

They stayed like that for a while. The fire settled. The soup pot steamed. A light flickered and chose not to fail. Everyone's bones remembered being warm once and enjoyed it. No more voices were heard. No more mimics. For now.

When the talk thinned and the yawns won, Raizen tilted his shoulder a fraction and eased Hikari so her head rested against a rolled jacket instead. She made a small, protesting sound in her sleep and then forgave him. He pulled his coat tighter, checked the shadow-line along the tents, and stood.

"Checking the perimeter" he said to no one, which meant everyone.

Keahi nodded like she'd already accounted for it in a plan he hadn't seen. Feris waggled her fingers in a teasing goodnight. Obi pantomimed handing him a bell. "If the mountain tries to passionately kiss you, ring twice."

Raizen took the long way around the tents first, the drift to where the dark began. He wasn't trying to be brave. He was trying to breathe without making other people's air heavier.

Snow muffled the world to a manageable size. The clouds had pulled a thin veil over its face. His footprints sounded like someone else making a promise.

He thought of the two miners, killed with too much intent. He thought of the Nyx turning its head, curious, almost. He thought of Alteea's voice when she said "reinvented itself" and the way Hikari's hands had steadied even when the beam burned her hand. He thought of the way he'd said we were late, and how the word we had felt like a lie in his mouth.

It's always the same, he told himself. Learn faster. Move cleaner. Try harder. Hit the wall at a better angle. And still - late.

He stopped and let the quiet press his coat flat.

"You were never too late, Raizen" said a voice. A very familiar one.

He didn't move for a heartbeat. Two. The kind of stillness that decides whether it's going to be fear.

His body turned before his head did, like his bones recognized the sound and wanted it more than the rest of him did.

Halfway up the slope, just past the lip where the camp's light fell thin, a figure stood.

The cold didn't find her. The wind went around her like she was a rock in a river. Snow rested neatly on the ground at her feet and nowhere on her hair, nowhere on her sleeve. She wore the coat she always wore in winter, the gray one with the elbow mended twice where he'd gotten too tall and careless and rough. Her smile was the kind that took the ache out of a room.

His chest tried to invent new ways to hurt.

She didn't move. The light behind him cast a long, tidy shadow.

The rest of the world forgot to exist. The lights. The fire. The breath curling from his mouth. All of it sank somewhere deep. Memory poured itself into his bones - hands at his shoulders, a forehead kiss before a door, soup that never burned, a laugh he had tried not to forget and failed.

He took one step.

He took another.

The slope was the same slope it had always been. The sky was the same low, cloudy sky. The only new thing was the piece of him that had sprung awake like a dog with its ears up, listening for what was wrong, what was off, what was about to hurt him and turn into something he couldn't fight with anything but leaving.

"It can't be…" He said, his voice trembling.

"…Mother?"

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