Taking a slow, steadying breath, I placed my palms flat against his chest.
His skin was cold.
Not the cold of rain or wind, but the deep, bone-deep cold of something already leaving.
I could feel the stillness beneath my fingers—the absence of life, the hollow silence of a body that had given up.
I called the light.
It came slowly at first, flickering at my fingertips like a candle in a storm.
Pale gold.
Warm.
The goddess’s power, the same power that saturated every inch of this mountain, the same power that had chosen me for reasons I still didn’t fully understand.
I pushed it into him.
And nothing happened.
His body rejected it.
The light pooled on his skin, refracting off the blood, and then dissipated into the air like smoke.
I tried again, pressing harder, willing it to take.
Still nothing.
My heart started to race.
Then I felt it.
A pull.
Faint at first—barely a whisper against my consciousness.
But then it grew.
It swelled.
It became a hunger so sudden and so violent that my wrists snapped forward, my hands slamming flat against his chest.
My power was flowing now.
Pouring out of me in a torrent I couldn’t control.
No—not flowing.
Draining.
The man’s body was pulling at me like a drowning man pulling at a rope.
Like a starving beast that had finally found something to eat.
The energy rushed out of me so fast that my vision went black at the edges.
My knees buckled.
I braced myself against the bed frame, gasping.
If we weren’t inside this place, I thought dizzily, he would have drained me dry.
But we were inside this place.
The goddess’s power was everywhere.
In the walls.
In the ground.
In the very air I breathed.
I had always known it was strong—stronger than anything I’d ever felt.
But I’d never tapped it like this.
Now I felt it.
Endless.
Bottomless.
A reservoir so vast it made my own power feel like a single drop in the ocean.
And the man in front of me was drinking from it like a man dying of thirst.
The corruption on his wounds began to retreat.
I watched it happen—watched the dark, oily shimmer peel back from the edges of his gashes like frost melting under sunlight.
The blackened flesh slowly turned pink.
The wounds themselves began to close, the skin knitting together in jagged seams.
But the stab wound remained.
It sat there, just below his ribs, black and pulsing and wrong.
The darkness around it didn’t retreat.
It fought.
It pushed back against my light with a fury that made my teeth ache.
What in the Abyss stabbed you?
I gritted my teeth and pushed harder.
The golden light flared.
The room went white.
Then everything stopped.
The corruption vanished.
The wound closed.
The man’s chest rose—slowly, shakily, but it rose.
And my strength collapsed with it.
My knees hit the floor.
The impact jarred through my bones.
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t lift a finger.
My arms hung limp at my sides, my hands still faintly glowing, and my head lolled forward like a puppet with cut strings.
The room spun.
The firelight blurred into a smear of orange and gold.
The edges of my vision darkened.
I could still smell the demonic energy lingering on him—faint now, but present, like the memory of smoke in a burned room.
My eyelids felt like lead.
The bed beside me looked impossibly comfortable.
Maybe I would just lie down for a— “Syly?” The voice came from far away.
Muffled.
Like hearing someone through water.
I ignored it.
“Syly?” A clatter.
The bowl of water hitting the floor.
Slow footsteps, hesitant and trembling.
Then a poke.
Right in the middle of my shoulder blade.
“Syly?” A pause.
I could hear his breathing—ragged, panicked, hitching.
Then the crying started.
Loud.
Very loud.
The kind of crying that came from somewhere deep, somewhere primal, somewhere that didn’t care about dignity or pride.
“PLEASE DON’T DIE!” I closed my eyes.
Maybe if I ignore him long enough, he’ll stop.
“SYLY, NO!” Apparently not.
His crying somehow became even louder—a high, keening wail that pierced straight through my skull and made my temples throb.
I heard him drop to his knees beside me.
Felt his small hands grab my arm and shake it desperately.
“Please, please, please—” I genuinely didn’t understand how a child his size could produce that much noise.
Of all the luminaries in existence, why did mine have to be him?
A loud child.
An emotional child.
A child who cried at everything—at storms, at beetles, at the sight of a wounded bird.
And now he was screaming in my ear like I’d already been buried.
“If you don’t shut up,” I muttered weakly, “I’m actually going to die.” Silence.
So sudden, so absolute, that I almost thought I’d actually died.
I opened one eye.
Theo was staring at me, his face blotchy and tear-streaked, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen.
His lip trembled.
“Syly…” His voice cracked.
“You’re alive?” I stared back at him.
“You weren’t?” His eyes widened.
The trembling intensified.
And then, to my absolute horror, his face crumpled and the tears returned in full force.
“I am!” He wrapped his arms around my neck, and sobbed into my shoulder with such force that I nearly toppled over.
“Thank you, Goddess!
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!” I stared at the ceiling.
The fire crackled.
The rain pattered against the roof.
Theo’s tears soaked through my collar.
Should I have just died?
I exhaled slowly.
Then, with what little strength I had left, I reached up and patted his head.
“You’re fine,” I said.
“I’m fine.
We’re both fine.” He sobbed harder.
I closed my eyes and let the warmth of the fire wash over me.
Theo’s crying eventually softened to hiccups, then to sniffles, then to the slow, steady rhythm of sleep.
He’d curled up against my side like a cat, his small fingers still clutching my sleeve.
I didn’t have the heart to move him.
So I lay there, on the cold stone floor, with a sleeping child pressed against me and a mysterious stranger bleeding on my bed.
Just another night in the mountain, I thought dryly.
And then I let the darkness take me.