Chapter 62: Inside

Azura’s POV

We had been riding and fighting and pushing forward for days. Now we were finally here, standing at the line between the ordinary world and whatever that place was. Every single person had gone completely still.

Then Torin swung down from his horse.

Nobody said anything. We all watched him land on the ground, roll his shoulders once, and walk straight across the line without breaking his stride, like he had decided that somebody had to do it and it might as well be him.

He took three steps in.

Then his whole body started shaking.

Not slightly. Not a tremor. His knees buckled and he went down hard, both hands going to his head, his whole frame folding toward the ground like something had reached inside him and pulled.

Rhydor was off his horse before I had finished processing what I was seeing.

He crossed the line in two strides and dropped down beside Torin, one hand on his shoulder, calling his name sharply.

"Torin."

No response. Torin was still curled forward, shaking.

"Torin." Rhydor’s voice dropped lower, more urgent. "Look at me."

Torin looked up.

But something was off, he wasn’t struggling, he was laughing.

Not a small laugh. A full, genuine, completely delighted laugh, the kind that came from somewhere deep and was almost impossible to fake. He looked up at Rhydor crouching over him with that urgent expression and laughed harder.

Rhydor stared at him.

"I never knew," Torin managed between laughs, sitting up slowly, "that you loved me this much. Truly. I am moved."

The silence from the rest of the group was the specific kind that follows when genuine fear turns into genuine irritation. I felt it move through the warriors around me like a wave. Someone behind me exhaled very slowly and deliberately.

Rhydor stood up. He looked down at Torin for a long moment with an expression so flat it could have cut glass. Then he turned and walked back toward his horse without a single word.

Torin was still grinning as he got to his feet, brushing the ground off his knees.

Silas looked at him from the other side of the line with the expression of a man who had long accepted that some things in this world could not be changed.

"Your idea of playing around," Silas said, "has always been terrifying to everyone around you. Every single time."

"That is what makes it work," Torin said cheerfully. He turned to face the rest of the group and spread his arms wide. "Come in. All of you. It is not poisonous. You are all standing there staring at it like it is going to reach out and grab you. Come in."

Nobody moved immediately. Then one warrior stepped across. Then two more. Then the rest followed in the way groups move when the first few people have made the decision for everyone else.

Rhydor came back to his horse and took the reins, leading it forward across the line. I was still on the horse, so I crossed in with it, and the moment we were on the other side, I felt the air change. Not dramatically. Just different in a way I could feel but not describe.

I climbed down and looked around properly.

Liona landed beside me a moment later and I watched her face move through several expressions before settling on something that was trying to be composed. Then she spotted the flowers near the base of the closest tree and took one step toward them, her hand already coming up.

Torin moved fast.

His hand closed around her wrist before she got within a foot of them, firm and certain.

"No."

She looked at him, surprised. "It is just a flower."

"That," Torin said, and the lightness from a moment ago was completely gone from his voice, "is exactly the reason you should not touch it. The most beautiful things in a place like this are beautiful for a reason and that reason never benefits you."

Liona pulled her hand back, slightly embarrassed.

I walked over and put my arm around her shoulders, steering her gently away.

She looked at me sideways. "What am I, a two-year-old child?"

"I did not say anything," I said.

"You are steering me like I am a cart going the wrong way."

I kept walking. She grumbled quietly but moved with me, her eyes going back to the flowers only twice, which I counted as a win.

Rhydor was already looking at Torin.

"Tell me what you are picking up," he said.

Torin stood still for a moment, his head slightly lifted, breathing slowly, his eyes moving through the trees with that focused quality he had when he was actually working rather than performing.

A long pause.

"There is a lot here," he said carefully. "Too many layers. It is like trying to pick out one voice in a room where everyone is talking at once." He paused again. "But I cannot pick up any human scent. No recent movement of people. And that scent I caught near the footprints this morning, I cannot find it here either."

"Nothing you can track?" Rhydor said.

"Not yet."

Rhydor looked up at the light coming through the canopy, calculating. "We find somewhere to rest. We move again at first light."

Nobody argued.

We moved deeper in, looking for a clearing with enough open ground to see in every direction. The forest was quieter than I expected as we went, not silent but arranged somehow, like it had decided exactly how much sound to allow and had removed the rest.

After a while, we came across a small body of water sitting in a clearing between four trees. Perfectly round, perfectly still, the surface so clear I could see straight through to the smooth pale stones at the bottom. It looked placed rather than formed.

Everyone slowed.

One of the warriors, a broad-shouldered man named Corvin, stopped completely. He stared at the water with the expression of someone who had already made a decision.

"I need to drink," he said simply. "I cannot hold out any longer."

Before anyone could respond he crouched down, cupped both hands, and drank.

The silence that followed was the tightest I had ever stood inside. Every person watched Corvin with the focused attention of people expecting something to happen.

He stood up and turned around.

He held up one hand. Fingers spread. Everything is fine.

The collective exhale from the group was almost audible.

"Water is good," he said, looking pleased with himself.

We kept moving.

After some minutes, I noticed Corvin stop because Axel noticed first and said his name in that particular tone I had learned to pay attention to.

I turned around.

Corvin was standing completely still in the middle of the path, not moving, his head turning slowly from side to side like he was trying to recognize something that was not there.

"Corvin," Axel said again, louder.

Corvin looked at him. Then at the trees. Then at the warriors nearest to him. His face was doing something I had never seen a face do before, a confusion that went too deep, too total, like he was not just unsure of where he was but unsure of everything that had led to this moment.

"What am I doing here?" he said.

The words landed in the quiet as if stones dropped into still water.

Axel moved toward him slowly, hands up. "We came to find the children. You have been with us since we left. You know this."

Corvin shook his head slowly. "What children? I do not know anything about children." He looked around again, his breathing picking up. "I do not remember coming here. The last thing I remember is being at home. I was with my family. My wife was making food." He took a step back. "I am not supposed to be here. Something is wrong. I need to go back."

He said it with the complete certainty of a man who believed every word.

"Corvin." Axel kept his voice level. "You volunteered for this journey. You were there when we fought the rogues on the road. You helped carry the supplies this morning. You remember that."

"No." He shook his head harder. "No that is not right. I need to go home." He started moving backward. "Let me go. You cannot keep me here. I need to go back."

Two warriors moved to hold him. He fought them off with the frantic strength of someone who genuinely believed they were being kept somewhere against their will.

Axel got around behind him and brought him down in a controlled tackle. Another warrior already had the rope.

They tied his wrists and ankles and lifted him carefully onto the back of Axel’s horse, securing him so he could not fall. He did not stop talking the whole time, saying the same things in different orders, that this was wrong, that he did not know any of them, that someone needed to explain how he had gotten here.

I stood there and watched them and felt something cold settle in my stomach.

The rogues on the road had come at us with teeth and claws and burning saliva. That was something you could fight. You could raise a weapon against it, run from it, or stand your ground against it.

This was different.

This had walked into Corvin’s mind while he stood right next to all of us and taken something out of it. No sound. No warning. No moment where any of us could have stepped in. Just a man drinking water and then, some time later, a man who did not know why he was standing in a forest.

You could not raise a dagger against that.

Silas looked around at the group, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet, but it reached everyone.

"Three rules from this point," he said. "Nobody drinks anything. Nobody touches anything. And everyone stays aware of where they are at all times. You feel something strange, anything at all, you say it immediately. You do not decide it is nothing. You say it out loud."

The warriors nodded. No arguments.

I turned to look at Liona.

She was standing just to my left and she was not looking at me.

She was looking at a cluster of flowers at the base of the nearest tree, her head tilted, her fingers moving slightly at her side the way fingers move when a hand is thinking about something the brain has not fully approved yet.

"Liona," I said.

Every head in the group turned toward her at once.

Liona looked up and found fourteen pairs of eyes fixed on her with varying degrees of alarm and exhaustion.

She raised both hands slowly, palms forward, fingers spread wide, the look of someone caught in the middle of something they were not technically doing yet.

"I did not touch anything," she said, with complete sincerity. "I promise. I was just looking."

Nobody said a word.

She looked around at all of them still watching her.

"I promise," she said again.

Oh, Liona, what’s going on in that mind of yours?