Chapter 67: Separated

Liona’s POV

I wasn’t a fighter.

I had never pretended to be one. Back home my parents were healers. Respected people. Our house always smelled like herbs and medicines and the quiet confidence of people who knew exactly what they were doing in the world. I grew up learning how to help people feel better. Not how to fight things that would not die in a cursed forest in the dark.

But here I was.

The rope around my wrist was the most comforting thing I had felt since we entered this forest. It connected me to Silas on my left and a warrior on my right, and as long as I could feel it pulling slightly with every movement around me, I knew the people I was tied to were still alive and still there.

Azura was not on the rope.

She had been separated from us when everything broke apart, and the fog came rushing in, and I had heard her voice for a few seconds after, and then nothing. Just white. Just the sounds of everything happening around me and the space where she should have been.

I pushed that away and focused.

My job was simple. Watch the backs. Everyone else was fighting and I was going to make sure nothing came at them from behind while they were looking forward. I could do that. I could stand here and turn and watch and hold this rope and do that one thing.

Silas fought like he had been made for exactly this. Calm and precise, cutting legs and pushing the Borne back, directing the warriors around him with short sharp words. Torin worked beside him, moving fast and clean, handling his weapons like someone who had been doing this since before he could properly walk. Axel said almost nothing, yet he did everything, quiet and efficient, always exactly where he needed to be.

And Corvin fought with them.

He had been in and out since they tied the ropes. His body remembered what the water had taken from his mind and he moved through the fight like the warrior he had always been. But something about him had been sitting wrong with me for a while. I could not name it exactly. Just a feeling. The way he paused sometimes between strikes for just a moment too long. The way his eyes went somewhere else and then came back.

I told myself it was nothing.

But then he stopped fighting.

Not because something hit him. He just stopped. Stood completely still while everything moved around him and looked at the fog. That pale white smoke sitting at the edges of everything, soft and quiet, and Corvin looking at it like it was saying something only he could hear.

My chest tightened.

He turned.

Not toward the Bornes. Toward the warriors closest to him on the rope. He looked at them for a moment with an expression that I felt in my stomach before my mind caught up with why.

Then he spoke.

His voice was so calm that it was the most frightening thing I had heard all night.

"Tell my wife I will always love her."

Nobody moved for a full second.

Then Silas was already crossing toward him.

"No." His voice came out hard and fast. "Corvin. Listen."

Corvin looked at the fog one last time.

He reached down and cut his rope.

One fast motion. Then he walked forward into the white, and the fog closed around him, and he was simply gone. No sound after. Nothing. Like the forest had been waiting for him specifically and had finally gotten what it wanted.

"Corvin." Something broke at the edge of Silas’s voice that I had never heard there before. He said the name again louder. "Corvin."

The fog gave nothing back.

The two warriors who had been closest to him on the rope were calling his name now too. One of them, a younger one with a scar along his jaw, was already reaching for his own rope with shaking hands. His face said everything his mouth had not finished saying yet.

Axel saw it.

"Do not." His voice came out sharp as a blade. "Do not cut that rope."

"He is my brother." The words came out quietly and completely final. "I am not standing here while he walks in there alone."

"You will die."

The warrior looked at Axel for one long second.

Then he cut the rope.

"Tell the Alpha I apologize," he said. "For this."

And he walked into the fog after Corvin and the white swallowed him the same way it had swallowed everything else tonight and then there were two people gone instead of one.

Axel stood very still.

The fight was still happening. The Bornes were still coming from the trees, and the warriors were still holding the line, and none of the danger had paused for any of this. The fog sat thick and pale at every edge of the camp and the shapes moving through it could have been anything.

Axel turned to Torin.

"Do you have a drink on you?"

Torin looked at him. Reached into his coat without asking why. Pulled out a small flask and handed it over.

Axel looked at the group.

"Everyone get low. Right now. Get on the ground and stay down."

Nobody argued. Everyone dropped. Warriors, Torin, me, all of us getting as low as we could get. I pressed close to the ground and felt the cold of it through my clothes and did not care even slightly.

Axel raised his voice toward the fog.

"Rhydor. Azura. Corvin. Anyone in that fog who can hear me. Get down. Stay low. Do not stand up until I say."

His voice went out into the white.

Nothing came back.

He did not wait.

He opened the flask, took a long mouthful, and held it without swallowing. Walked to the nearest burning branch still going at the edge of camp. Leaned forward and spat hard.

The spray hit the flame, and the fire exploded outward in a wide, hot burst, jumping far further than fire had any right to jump, and the Borne nearest to us screamed that horrible, soundless scream and scrambled backward away from the heat. Falling over each other trying to get away from it.

Axel took another mouthful.

Moved to the next flame.

Spat.

Another burst. Wider. The Bornes on that side lurching back, retreating fast, that frantic flinching spreading through all of them at once like the fire reached something deeper than skin.

Again. Moving to the next flame. And the next. Each burst sent another wave of Bornes stumbling backward toward the trees, the screaming cutting through the fog each time, the line pushing back further and further with every burst until the space around us was clear and the things that had been pressing in from every side were retreating fast.

I was flat on the ground watching all of it from low down, seeing the fire jump and the Borne scatter from an angle I never wanted to be at again in my life.

Torin was on the ground beside me.

I glanced over at him.

He was lying on his back with both hands folded behind his head, looking up at the branches above like he was spending a pleasant morning outside somewhere nice. As the fire burst and the Bornes screamed and the whole world seemed to be falling apart around us, Torin was lying on the ground staring at the sky.

And whistling.

Softly. Something tuneless and easy, barely a sound at all, like a person with nowhere particular to be and nothing much on their mind.

I stared at him.

He turned his head and looked at me.

"What," he said with one eyebrow up.

"Nothing," I said.

He looked back at the sky.

I looked back at Axel still working through the last of the drink, moving from flame to flame, each burst smaller now as the flask emptied but still enough to keep the Borne moving back. The screaming had changed. Less frantic. More distant. The things were pulling away from the light and not coming back toward it.

Then the fog started changing.

So slowly I thought I was imagining it. The white at the edges of the camp began thinning, pulling back toward the trees in small quiet degrees, and the shapes that had been moving through it were becoming less and less until there were none. And the sky above the branches was not black anymore. Something pale was pushing through the gaps. Grey at first. Then lighter.

Morning.

The fog kept going. Retreating the way it had come, thinning out more with every passing minute until the camp came back around us piece by piece. The silver trees. The ground. The faces of the people still connected by rope, blinking and looking around like they were seeing the world properly for the first time in hours.

Axel lowered the empty flask.

"Up," he said.

Everyone stood.

I looked around the clearing. Counted faces. Silas. Axel. Torin. The warriors are still on the ropes. I counted twice because the first time did not feel right.

No Corvin.

Then Silas’s voice came from behind me.

"Where are Rhydor and Azura?"

I turned around slowly.

Silas was scanning the clearing the same way I had just scanned it. His eyes moved from face to face and found something missing every single time. Torin straightened up beside him and looked around too.

"Rhydor," Torin said sharply and clearly.

Nothing.

My own voice came out before I decided to use it.

"Azura."

Nothing.

The morning air sat quiet around us. The trees stood silver and still. The fog was gone, and the Bornes were gone and the night was finally over.

And four people were not standing in that clearing where they should have been.

Corvin and his brother

Rhydor and Azura.

Silas called the Alpha’s name one more time. Loud and clear, putting everything behind it, sending it out into the pale morning and the empty trees and the silence that had settled over the Wraithfen like it owned the place.

It came back with nothing.

Not a sound.

Not a single thing.

I was about to turn back when movement caught my eye. Near the treeline, crouched low against a silver tree, the warrior who had cut his rope. He was alive. He had made it back.

I crossed to him quickly, but frowned immediately.

He looked up when I reached him and his face was the color of old ash. His sleeve was dark and wet, torn at the shoulder, and the skin around the wound was already doing something wrong. The edges of it had darkened. Spreading slowly outward in a way that had nothing to do with ordinary bleeding.

He was bitten.