The cave wasn't much.

Just a hollow in the cliffside left behind by some ancient water flow—barely wide enough for three people to huddle without brushing elbows, and shallow enough that a determined crawler could sniff them out if it bothered to.

But it was shelter.

After everything, that was enough.

Bright Morgan slumped against the cold rock, breath ragged, muscles molten with exhaustion. His ribs ached. His eyes burned. Every inch of him screamed for rest, for oblivion, for even a heartbeat of stillness.

He didn't get it.

Not truly.

Because silence let the memories come back.

Larkin's corpse.

The stolen cores.

Estovia's contempt.

Baggen's strained breathing.

Hailen's blood spilling through his fingers.

The Covenant infiltrators watching from the shadows.

Bright clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked.

He wasn't shaking from exhaustion.

He was shaking from thought.

From the realization of how close he had come to losing everything again.

And how much worse the world truly was.

A faint crunch echoed near the cave mouth. Bright snapped alert—danger sense thrum quickening—but it was only Estovia returning from her scouting circuit. She ducked inside, shoulders brushing the stone.

Her armor, usually pristine, was scraped and dulled. Her braid was frayed. A cut crossed her cheek—thin, scabbed, defiant.

Her eyes flicked to Bright.

It wasn't hostile anymore but still not trusting.

Somewhere in between. A fragile in-between.

Baggen snored faintly near the entrance, collapsed in a sprawl of gear he had been too tired to remove. His broad chest rose and fell with steady rhythm—finally unconscious after hours of pushing far beyond his limits.

Estovia knelt opposite Bright.

"You're awake," she said quietly.

Bright raised an eyebrow. "You say that as if I slept."

She huffed. "You should try. You look like you're about to fall apart."

"Already did," he replied. "I'm just pretending I haven't."

Her gaze lingered on him. Something thoughtful, hesitant.

A crack in her usual armor of superiority.

For a long minute, neither spoke.

The cave breathed around them—slow, damp, whispering with the wind threading through fissures.

Finally, Estovia exhaled. "Baggen is stable. The bleeding slowed."

Bright nodded silently. Baggen had been barely conscious when they carried him into the cave.

"You didn't answer my question earlier," Estovia said. Her voice softened, barely.

"Why did you stay back in that mess?"

Her voice wavered between confusion and anger.

"You could've pushed ahead—hell, with what you can do, you should've been halfway to Vester before the rest of us even started running. Why carry extra pain when you didn't have to?"

Bright stared at her, unreadable.

"Because I needed to be seen."

Her brows lifted.

He continued, "In Grim Hollow, I kept everything to myself. Every ability. Every instinct. Every trick I'd learned in the Shroud. I thought… hiding made me safer."

"It didn't?" she asked.

"It did," he admitted. "But it also isolated me. If I kept walking alone, during that fight, someone would've died. And it wouldn't be because they were weak. It would be because I refused to share the truth."

Estovia leaned back slightly, studying him.

"You're… not what I expected," she murmured.

"Good," Bright said flatly. "Expectations don't survive out here. They break. They always break."

She laughed softly—a tired exhale. "You think I don't know that?"

"Do you?" Bright countered.

Her eyes hardened, old pride resurfacing—before it faltered again.

"My family," she said, voice thinner now, "once held honor. True honor. Not the kind passed down through titles or patrol routes. My ancestor was a very powerful man. He fought in the first Shroud incursions. His legacy should have secured my bloodline."

"But it didn't," Bright guessed.

"No." Her jaw clenched. "They squandered it. Politics. Cowardice. Comfort. When I enlisted, people whispered that I was clinging to faded glory. Trying to resurrect a dead house. And they're right. I am."

"This is about legacy," Bright said.

"This is about reclaiming what was stolen from us," she corrected sharply. "I will make the Armand line respected again."

Bright understood her in that moment—far more than he expected.

Because her fire… wasn't so different from his.

"You know what I want?" he said.

"What?" she asked.

"To become so strong that no one can ever bend me again. No one can toy with my fate. No one can treat me like a piece on their board." His voice lowered. "Strong enough that when the powerful make decisions, they think twice before ignoring me."

Estovia stared, absorbing every word.

"That's your dream? It's nothing. You don't understand the world yet. No one escapes answering to someone. Believing you can is naïve…but that's on me for expecting maturity from a sixteen-year-old."

Bright slumped still and reflected on her words.

The cave fell silent again.

A heavy, mutual understanding settled between them—neither warmth, nor friendship, but the first stone in a bridge neither had expected to build.

"Still I… misjudged you," Estovia whispered.

"And I misjudged you," Bright admitted.

Her lips tilted in a small, tired half-smile.

"Then we're even."

ATHEON POV

The forest blurred past like streaks of shadow.

Branches snapped under boots.

Monsters howled in the distance.

The air smelled of iron and rot.

A newly trained initiate would have collapsed long ago—but Atheon the fist of men was no freshly minted recruit. He ran like a creature carved from discipline and fury. His team followed behind him in a long, relentless line.

They had been running for hours.

Fighting for hours.

Bleeding for hours.

And they did not stop.

Because stopping meant dying.

A crawler lunged from the brambles. Atheon didn't slow. He pivoted mid-stride,

Broke its spine with a single swing, and kept moving before its corpse hit the dirt.

"Keep formation!" he barked.

His team tightened ranks.

One initiate—Teras, barely a year into his rank—stumbled. His breath hitched. His steps faltered.

"Commander… I—"

A bone burrower erupted from the soil beneath Teras' legs.

Atheon spun—too slow.

The burrower's fangs clamped around Teras' calf. He screamed, collapsing.

Atheon's blade sheared the burrower's head clean off.

But it was too late.

Teras trembled, eyes wide with understanding.

Atheon's jaw flexed.

He didn't respond.

Didn't nod.

Didn't mourn.

He simply turned.

"Move," he told the others.

And the team sprinted on.

Behind them, Teras' screams cut short under a second wave of burrowers.

Atheon didn't look back.

Not because he didn't care.

But because he carried the weight of every death in a place far deeper than sorrow. A place where names became knives. Where failure became fuel.

And because Outpost Vester still felt impossibly far away.

SILAS POV

Silas hadn't meant to get lost.

But after the chaos, the separation, the blood and monsters flooding the cliffs—he had climbed a tree to escape a swarm of groundwalkers.

Just for a moment.

Just to breathe.

He had closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the world had shifted.

The trail of the others were gone.

The night was thicker.

And he was alone.

"Brilliant," Silas muttered, balancing on the high branch. "Absolutely brilliant. Should've let the bastards chop me up. Would've been kinder."

He scanned the forest.

Nothing but crooked trunks and endless dark.

He hopped down, landing lightly—silent as a whisper. His joints bent in ways they shouldn't. He had always been flexible, but since the Shroud…

His body had changed.

His instincts had sharpened.

His talent—still forming, still undefined—leaned toward illusions, misdirection, the unseen path.

He licked his dry lips.

"South," he told himself. "Just keep going south."

He trudged forward, branches swaying overhead.

Every crack of twig set his nerves alight. Every shift of shadow made his fingers curl, ready for reflexive violence. But he pushed on.

The workers would go south.

The recruits would go south.

The captain and the others would fight to go south.

So he followed.

Even if he had to wander through the dark like a lunatic until the night gleamed, Silas would push southward.

Cursing every second.

"Next time," he muttered, "I'm sticking to the captain like sap on bark. No more main character situations for me ."

He paused, listening to distant roars.

Then he walked faster.

BRIGHT POV

Estovia eventually drifted into a thin sleep near the entrance. Baggen snored deeper.

Bright remained awake.

He watched the stone ceiling.

He listened to the wind whip outside.

He felt the faint pulse of the cores in his pocket—the ones he had taken from Larkin and still not used or given out.

"No one survived this world alone." He thought.

That doctrine chewed at him from the inside out.

Strength didn't grant immunity.

If anything, it made the isolation heavier.

A crack of thunder rolled far away.

Bright sat up.

Tomorrow, they would move.

Tomorrow, they would have to slip past the crawlers and burrowers, through the ravines, toward Vester.

Tomorrow, the world outside the cave would demand everything they had left.

He closed his eyes.

He whispered, barely audible:

"No more running alone."

The vow settled into his bones like heat.

He looked at Estovia—sleeping lightly, brow furrowed.

At Baggen—exhausted but alive.

These were his people—regardless of how recently they'd met.

His burden and his reason.

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