They buried the dead at sunset.
Yuna's body screamed with every step as she followed the procession through the refuge's southern gate. Her muscles felt shredded, reassembled wrong, and bruises painted her side in fading purples and greens. She walked anyway. She owed them that much.
The burial ground occupied a hillside half a mile from the refuge, dotted with stone markers stretching back further than anyone could remember. Chen Wei said people had been buried here since before the Unraveling, since the days when Valdris had still been whole.
Twelve new graves. Twelve new stones.
Marcus read the names aloud as each body descended into the earth. Petra Vos. Simon Crane. Eliza Thorne. Names Yuna had barely learned, faces she could only half-remember, threads she'd felt snap during the battle and would never feel again.
They trusted me, she thought. They fought because I said I could protect them.
"It's not your fault." David stood beside her, voice low enough for only her to hear. "The Herald broke your connection. You couldn't have—"
"I know."
But knowing and believing were different things.
The seventh name was Jun Mao, a boy who'd arrived at the refuge only two months before her. Seventeen years old. He'd been standing on the wall when the boost failed, and without the borrowed strength to hold on, he'd fallen. The Hollow had found him before anyone could help.
The tenth name was Miriam Cross, the woman whose thread Yuna had felt break during the first wave. She'd had a sister back on Earth. A job she'd hated. A cat named Herbert who was probably still waiting by her apartment door, wondering why she hadn't come home.
I didn't even know she had a cat. I felt her die and I didn't know anything about her.
By the twelfth name, tears streaked Yuna's face. She didn't remember when they'd started.
* * *
The wake was held in the main hall.
Someone had produced alcohol from somewhere, a harsh clear liquid that burned on the way down and settled in the stomach like a hot coal. Yuna took a cup, drank too fast, regretted it immediately.
"First time with Valdris whiskey?" Aria appeared at her elbow, a faint smile on her lips despite the occasion. "Careful. It sneaks up on you."
"Everything here sneaks up on me."
"Fair." Aria settled onto the bench beside her, her single arm cradling her own cup. Fresh bandages wrapped her ribs, visible beneath her loosened shirt. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm not sure I am."
"Good. That means you're still human." Aria took a sip, wincing slightly. "The ones who come out of battles feeling fine are the ones you have to worry about."
Across the hall, David was deep in conversation with Marcus, their heads bent over what looked like a map. Chen Wei stood near the entrance, speaking quietly with a group of senior defenders. Vance was notably absent.
"Where is he?" Yuna asked.
"Who?"
"Vance. I didn't see him at the burial."
Aria's expression shifted, became carefully neutral. "He was wounded during the battle. Nothing serious, but Chen Wei ordered him to rest."
"That's convenient."
"It is, isn't it." Aria's voice went flat. "Some people grieve by mourning. Others grieve by avoiding. I've learned not to judge."
But Yuna remembered what Vance had said the night before the attack. When you fail, when the Herald tears through your pretty little technique, who do you think they'll blame? Had he stayed away because he was wounded, or because he couldn't resist the urge to say he'd been right?
She took another sip of the whiskey. It burned less this time.
"The Herald," she said. "Korvain. You know about him?"
"I know the stories. Former Seer. Hollowed during the first years of the Unraveling. One of the most dangerous creatures in Valdris." Aria paused. "Why?"
"When we connected. When I pushed back against him and he pushed back against me." Yuna struggled to find the words. "I felt something."
"Felt what?"
"Something alive." She turned the cup in her hands. "Like there's still a person buried inside all that emptiness. Almost gone, maybe. But not quite dead."
Aria was quiet for a long moment. "That sounds like hope."
"It sounds like insanity."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive." Aria finished her drink and set the cup aside. "The Heralds have been our enemies since before I was born. No one's ever suggested they could be anything else. If you're right, if there's something left of Korvain that could be reached..." She let the sentence hang.
"Or nothing. Maybe it changes nothing, and he just comes back and finishes what he started."
"Maybe." Aria's eyes met hers, dark and serious. "But you're not going to know unless you try. And trying is what you do, Yuna. You keep trying even when it hurts. Even when it seems stupid."
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Before Yuna could respond, a commotion at the entrance drew her attention. Chen Wei had stepped out into the corridor, and a moment later, Yuna felt a familiar thread approaching, cold and bitter and radiating wounded pride.
Vance entered the hall.
He looked terrible. His left arm hung in a sling, dark circles carved beneath his eyes from days without sleep. But his gaze found Yuna immediately, and the expression there made her stomach clench.
"Congratulations," he said, loud enough for the room to hear. "Twelve dead, and you're the hero of the hour. Chen Wei must be so proud."
The hall went quiet.
"Vance." Marcus's voice carried a warning. "Not here. Not now."
"Why not? She wanted everyone to know how special she was. How powerful." Vance's lips pulled back from his teeth. "Well, now we know. Powerful enough to get twelve people killed."
"That wasn't—" Yuna started.
"She didn't—" David stepped forward, hands clenching into fists.
"Enough." Chen Wei's voice cut through the tension like a blade. She hadn't raised it, but somehow it silenced everyone. "Vance. My office. Now."
For a moment, Vance looked like he might argue. Then something in Chen Wei's expression made him reconsider. He shot one last look at Yuna, contempt mixed with something that might have been fear, and limped out of the hall.
Silence stretched for several seconds after he left. Then, slowly, conversations resumed. People turned away. The moment passed.
But Yuna could still feel the weight of those words sitting in her chest. Powerful enough to get twelve people killed.
Maybe he was right.
* * *
Chen Wei found her an hour later, sitting alone on the refuge walls.
"May I join you?"
Yuna shrugged. Chen Wei sat beside her, movements careful and precise, grey eyes fixed on the distant horizon where the Herald's army had disappeared.
"Vance has been disciplined," Chen Wei said. "Confined to quarters for two weeks. After that, we'll reassess whether he can be trusted in combat."
"He wasn't wrong."
"Wasn't he?"
"Twelve people are dead because my technique failed."
"Twelve people are dead because the Herald has spent decades learning how to destroy Seers." Chen Wei's voice remained flat, unemotional. "Your technique didn't fail. It was overwhelmed by a power greater than yours. There's a difference."
"Is there? They're still dead."
Chen Wei was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Let me tell you about the Heralds."
Yuna looked at her, surprised. In all the weeks she'd been here, Chen Wei had never volunteered information about anything.
"There were seven originally," Chen Wei continued. "Created at the height of the Unraveling, when the old Council thought they could weaponize the very thing that was destroying us. They took the strongest Seers, the ones who had the deepest connections to the CHORD, and they hollowed them. Stripped away their humanity, their memories, their capacity for love and hope and joy. Left only the power."
"Why?"
"Because the Council believed that connection was the source of the Seers' weakness. That if you removed everything that could be hurt, everything that could be lost, you'd have pure strength." Chen Wei's laugh was bitter. "They were right, in a way. The Heralds are stronger than any Seer ever was. But they're also completely beyond control. The first thing they did after their creation was slaughter the Council that made them."
"Korvain was one of them."
"Korvain was the second. He volunteered, actually. Believed he could maintain his sense of self through the process, use the power to save his family." Chen Wei's eyes grew distant. "His daughter's name was Lyra. She was twelve years old. He watched her die during the hollowing process. The trauma of it completed his transformation."
Something twisted in Yuna's chest. Twelve years old. A daughter. A father who'd tried to save her and instead—
"I felt him," she said quietly. "During the battle. Something still alive inside him."
"I know." Chen Wei turned to look at her, and there was something new in her expression. Something that might have been hope. "Marcus told me what happened. That you touched his consciousness. That you saw something."
"A spark. Tiny. Almost gone."
"But not quite."
"No. Not quite."
Chen Wei was silent for a long time. When she spoke again, her voice had changed, softer now, almost uncertain. "The Seers believed that no one was truly lost. That even the most broken connections could be rewoven, if you had the skill and the will. It was heresy to the Council, they thought some damage was simply irreversible, but the Seers kept trying anyway."
"Did any of them succeed?"
"We don't know. The Heralds killed them all before we could find out." Chen Wei's hand found Yuna's shoulder, gripping gently. "But you're something new. Trained differently. Arrived differently. And you've already done something no Seer ever managed: you've touched a Herald's consciousness and lived."
"I got lucky."
"Maybe. Or maybe luck is just what we call it when preparation meets opportunity." Chen Wei stood, brushing grey dust from her clothes. "Get some rest. Tomorrow, we start developing countermeasures for the Herald's thread-breaking. And we start thinking about whether that spark you saw can be reached."
She walked away, leaving Yuna alone with the stars and the empty horizon.
* * *
David found her an hour later, still sitting on the wall.
"Everyone's been looking for you."
"I needed to think."
He climbed up beside her, settling into the space she'd unconsciously left for him. Their shoulders touched. Neither of them moved away.
"What Chen Wei said," David began. "About reaching Korvain. About the spark. Do you really think it's possible?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe I just saw what I wanted to see."
"What did you want to see?"
Yuna considered the question. What had she wanted, in that moment of connection? A monster she could defeat? An enemy she could understand?
"A person," she said finally. "Someone who used to be human. Someone who might still remember what that felt like."
"That's a lot to hope for in a creature that just tried to kill us all."
"I know."
David was quiet for a while. Then he said, "My brother used to do that. Hope for people even when they didn't deserve it. He'd make friends with the kids no one else would talk to. Give money to homeless people even when we didn't have enough for ourselves. Trust people who'd already proven they couldn't be trusted."
"What happened to him?"
"He drowned saving a kid who'd bullied him for three years. The kid lived. My brother didn't." David's voice went rough. "Sometimes I hate him for it. For dying for someone who didn't deserve it. And sometimes I miss him so much I can't breathe."
Yuna reached for his hand. He let her take it.
"The Herald might not deserve it," she said. "Korvain. Whatever he is now. He's killed hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. He tried to hollow me. Tried to turn me into what he is."
"But?"
"But he used to be a father. He used to love someone. And if there's even a chance that some piece of that is still in there..." She trailed off, uncertain how to finish.
"Then you have to try." David squeezed her hand. "Even if it's stupid. Even if it gets you killed. Because that's who you are."
"Is that a compliment or a criticism?"
"I haven't decided yet." He managed a faint smile. "Ask me again when you either save the world or get us all killed."
She laughed, surprising herself. It felt wrong to laugh, with twelve bodies fresh in the ground, but it also felt necessary. Something she needed to do to keep breathing.
"Thank you," she said.
"For what?"
"For not telling me I'm wrong. For not trying to talk me out of it."
"Would it work if I tried?"
"Probably not."
"Then I'm saving my energy for battles I can win." He leaned against her, warm and solid. "Get some sleep, Yuna. Tomorrow's going to be hard."
"Every day here is hard."
"Yeah. But some days are harder than others." He stood, offering her a hand up. "Come on. I'll walk you to your quarters."
She took his hand and let him help her to her feet. Her body still ached, her heart still hurt, and somewhere out in the grey wastes, a monster was planning its next attack.
But for the first time since the battle ended, she felt something other than grief.
She felt direction. Purpose. A question worth answering.
Can a monster remember how to be human?
She intended to find out.