Nikos found himself laying on his back in a soft bed of grass, staring up at a shattered blue sky. Obscured behind an alien canopy of verdant green leaves, shifting and dancing in the wind, a golden sun hung, a dark crack in the sky splitting it in two.

  For many long moments, his mind was silent as he simply laid there.

  Then, finally…

  ‘I’m alive.’

  He… was fine. He wasn’t drowning anymore, although he was still drenched. He didn’t hurt anywhere—the cut in his side was gone. His body hurt everywhere from pushing it too far, and his head pounded… although it didn’t burn like it had after he’d gone against the will of the Incarnation. The headache seemed to just be as a result of pushing his mind too far, too.

  The sky was blue, marred by black cracks. The sun above was golden. The grass and leaves were green. He was alive. All of it was absurd and alien.

  One thought trumped all others, however.

  “Cassie,” Nikos breathed.

  The name left his lips before he registered saying it. He sat up too fast, his vision swimming slightly and heart hammering as he twisted around, scanning the alien forest until he spotted her—laying face-down, everything but her legs hidden behind the thick trunk of a tree.

  He staggered to his feet and ran.

  His heart nearly stopped when he reached her. She was frighteningly still, her right side coated in blood. She was tangled in her own cloak, making it difficult to understand her condition.

  “Shit,” Nikos muttered as he fell to his knees beside her, hesitating a moment before rolling her over, and…

  Cassie’s right arm was missing almost entirely, severed a couple of inches above the elbow. Yet, a heavy sigh of relief escaped him, because she was breathing. She, like him… seemed perfectly fine aside from the missing limb. The stump had healed over.

  Like him, she was somehow alive.

  He let out a shaky breath. Then another; and suddenly, the strength left his limbs. He slumped forward, burying his face in the curve of her neck as his arms closed around her. Warm, silent tears escaped his eyes as he struggled to breathe.

  She was alive. He had never been so relieved before.

  He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that—but it could not last forever.

  Nikos heard something approaching and lifted his head, hand tiredly going to the handle of his dagger as it came nearer and nearer.

  He let out another sigh of relief when the ‘something’ became visible, however—it was Selinia, atop her salkor.

  “Nikos!” Selinia said, bringing her mount to a stop some distance away before slipping off of it. “Is Cassie—”

  The words died in her throat the moment she came close enough to see Cassie. She stopped, her eyes wide as she gaped at the state of her. Missing an arm, covered in blood and with Nikos’ back blocking the fact she was still breathing…

  It probably looked like she was dead. Selinia opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a hesitant sound before it snapped closed again.

  Selinia had seen blood and death before—more than most people. The majority of it was not human—she was a hunter, after all… though she’d seen people die, too. Hell, she’d been responsible for two deaths not long ago, and her boots were soaked in their blood even now.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Yet, what she saw now—Cassie missing an arm, drenched in blood—both hers and her brothers’, her comatose body held to Nikos’ chest…

  It was more than enough to render her speechless.

  “She’s alive—and looks like she’ll stay that way,” Nikos reassured quickly, his voice hoarse.

  It took her some seconds to regain her wits, drawing in a deep breath and shaking her head. She was alive, but…

  “Is… is she okay?” Selinia asked. Of course she wasn’t—what was she even saying? Even beyond the missing limb… she was certain Cassie would never be the same.

  Nikos flinched at the question. It took him a few seconds to answer. “No.”

  She had a lot of questions for him, but she reigned them in for later. For now…

  “We should leave,” Selinia said, grabbing Jelhan’s reins and bringing him closer. “Get on,” she told him, kneeling beside the two and gently slipping her hands underneath Cassie’s back, waiting a moment to see if he would resist, as she half-expected him to.

  He didn’t, letting Selinia stand with his technically-daughter cradled in her arms. Drenched in water—and, to a lesser extent, a more crimson liquid—she was much heavier than usual. She was just glad to feel the young girl’s breath ghosting over her collarbone.

  Nikos grunted as he stood unsteadily, and she worried that she’d need to put Cassie down to help him onto Jelhan, but he managed it on his own after some time. Handing Cassie back to him, Selinia climbed onto Jelhan with ease, waiting as Nikos settled Cassie between them.

  And then… Selinia realized that she had no clue where to take them. She had pieced together where Nikos and Cassie would be upon realizing that peoples’ positions in relation to one another seemed to roughly correspond to where they had been before, leading her to where the docks would have been, but…

  Tarrow was completely gone. Nothing was left of the city but its people, and presumably, that extended to every other location she knew of—meaning no place was safe from the monsters of the forests. The ones she had to avoid at all costs.

  And that wasn’t even taking into consideration that she’d never even heard of a forest like the one they were currently in.

  “Gods,” Selinia groaned to herself.

  Her head throbbed with the effort of making sense of the senseless.

  Beneath her, Jelhan snorted, getting impatient. Behind her, she guessed Nikos was wondering why she was taking so long.

  ‘I’ll just take us away from Tarrow for now and look for a safe-ish place to rest,’ she finally decided, rubbing her forehead.

  So… further North, then; that would take them out further into what had previously been the ocean. There was effectively no risk of running into any Tarrow-related problems. With a heavy sigh, she finally urged Jelhan into a slow trot—which, to the salkor, was faster than she could sprint. Despite the trees, her mount could manage the speed easily. It had been sprinting through them only a couple of minutes ago.

  Even if Jelhan was fast and agile, it wasn’t like her job was going to be easy. In fact, it probably made it harder. She needed to focus.

  Above, the distance that the golden sun had traveled was tremendous. It was as though entire solens had passed, despite the fact she was certain only an hour at most had gone by. It now hung just over the horizon rapidly dipping towards the horizon.

  That disturbed her even more deeply than the cracks running through the sky. Frigid night was coming, bringing with it many dangers.

  They’d been following a narrow game trail sloping downhill, for a while now—and, finally, she saw something that prompted her to tug on Jelhan’s reins, bringing the salkor to a stop.

  A distance away, along an inclining ridge, a shallow stone outcropping jutted from the hillside, its face draped in trailing moss and wild ferns. Lichen covered the underside in a patchwork of dull green and pale blue. Beneath it, the slope dipped into a small hollow.

  The space wasn’t much more than—a strip of shelter from above, a wall of rock to their backs—but it was better than anything else they’d encountered.

  “That’ll do,” Selinia said, waking Nikos from his dazed, half-asleep state. As she guided Jelhan closer to the overhang, she handed the unstrung-but-ready bow that’d been sitting in her lap back to Nikos and slid out of her mount’s saddle.

  Nikos said nothing, handing Cassie to Selinia. She turned to place the young girl down on the innerstone wall beneath the overhang, before quickly returning to help Nikos off the salkor. It was harder to do than most people would expect, and he was exhausted.

  “I’ll keep watch,” she said, patting Nikos on the back as he went over to the outcropping. “Get some rest… although you’ll have to tell me what in the gods’ names happened to you two later.”

  Nikos nodded faintly, leaning back against the rock, one arm draped protectively over Cassie.

  Selinia stepped just outside the shelter, resting her bow across her knees as she settled beside Jelhan.

  Above, the stars were beginning to emerge—and, of course, they were different.

  She frowned up at the sky.