The world came back in pieces.

  Sound first.

  A distant ringing in his ears. The creak of swaying branches. Crows calling to each other somewhere beyond the treeline.

  Then sensation.

  Cold ground pressed against his cheek. Dirt and ash itched against his skin. Every muscle in his body ached—not like bruises, but like he’d been hollowed out and filled with molten metal that had cooled in all the wrong places.

  Then sight.

  Joren forced his eyes open.

  A grey, washed-out sky stared back. No divine light. No cracks in the heavens. Just clouds slowly drifting past morning sun.

  He blinked.

  Pain lanced up his spine as he pushed himself onto his elbows.

  The clearing was a grave.

  The campfire was nothing but blackened stones. Trees were split down the middle, claw marks carved deep into their trunks. Dirt churned like something massive had tried to tear itself free of the earth.

  And scattered through it all—

  Bodies.

  Joren’s breath caught.

  Bran knelt a few paces away, sword fallen from slack fingers, torso slumped over like he’d tried to stand one last time before his strength finally ran out.

  Tyren lay half-crumpled near a shattered tree, arm still locked around the broken remains of his spear.

  Lira had fallen near the treeline, close to cover she’d never reached. Her bow was snapped in two.

  Sera lay on her back, cloak fanned around her. Her hands were outstretched, fingers stained faintly with the residue of healing light that had never finished forming.

  Joren crawled.

  His legs trembled too much to support him, so he dragged himself through the dirt until he reached Sera. He knelt beside her, chest heaving, fingers shaking as he brushed dried blood from her cheek.

  “I… I couldn’t save you,” he whispered.

  The words felt too small. Too late.

  No one answered.

  Of course they didn’t.

  His vision blurred.

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  It isn’t your fault.

  The thought slid through him, quiet as breath.

  Joren’s head snapped up, heart hammering.

  “Who’s there?” he croaked.

  Silence.

  He looked around—a ruined clearing, demon ash, the massive corpse of the Revenant split nearly from head to torso.

  Nothing else.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clenched.

  I hit my head, he told himself. I broke something. I’m hearing things.

  His hand brushed against cold metal.

  Bran’s sword.

  Warmth surged up his arm—not from the steel, but from somewhere behind his ribs, answering it.

  Move your feet. Don’t plant yourself in the open.

  Joren jerked his hand away like he’d touched fire.

  “No,” he whispered. “You’re dead. I watched you—”

  We know, something answered. Not voice—feeling. Familiar. Steady. We were there too.

  Branches snapped in the distance.

  Voices.

  “Over here!”

  “Smoke—there, through the trees!”

  The Echoes inside him went quiet, retreating like breath sucked between teeth.

  Joren turned toward the sound, wiping his face with the back of his hand, trying to scrub away the blood and tears.

  Torches pushed through the forest.

  Hunters, guards, villagers with whatever they could grab—pitchforks, axes, nothing at all. At the front walked Elder Rowan, staff in hand, lantern hanging from its hooked head.

  He stepped into the clearing and stopped dead.

  His gaze swept from demon corpses and scorched earth—

  To the bisected Revenant.

  To the four fallen.

  To Joren, swaying on his feet in the center of it all.

  “By the old stones…” someone whispered behind Rowan. “That’s a… Revenant-class, isn’t it?”

  “That shouldn’t be possible this far from the core zones…”

  “And he’s the only one standing…”

  Rowan raised one hand. The murmurs cut off.

  He approached slowly, eyes taking in every detail with a practiced hunter’s precision. The way the Revenant had been torn through. The radiating cracks in the ground around where Joren must’ve stood. The faint residue of Aether still clinging to the air, wrong and new.

  “Joren,” Rowan said quietly. “Can you stand?”

  Joren realized then that he was half-leaning on his sword.

  He straightened, nearly falling. “I’m… fine.”

  Lie.

  His legs shook. His arms trembled. His chest ached with each breath.

  Rowan reached out and steadied him.

  “Tell me what happened,” the elder said, voice low, leaving no room to dodge.

  Images crashed over Joren in jagged bursts.

  Sera’s apology.

  Lira’s last shot.

  Tyren’s final charge.

  Bran, bleeding, still standing.

  The swirling lights.

  Pain. Heat.

  The Revenant screaming as its mask split.

  Joren’s throat closed.

  “We found the encampment,” he managed. “There was a Revenant. It… it killed them. All of them.”

  His gaze drifted to Bran, to the others being lifted now into careful arms.

  “I tried,” he whispered. “I couldn’t… I wasn’t fast enough. Then there was… light. Voices. Pain. And when I woke up…” He nodded at the Revenant’s corpse. “It was dead.”

  Rowan watched him in silence.

  “Voices?” the elder repeated softly.

  Joren flinched.

  For a second, he felt four faint presences stir inside his chest—like the weight of hands pressed against glass.

  Careful, something steady and familiar murmured.

  He swallowed.

  “Maybe I hit my head,” Joren said quickly. “I don’t remember clearly.”

  Rowan’s eyes lingered on his face.

  He didn’t push.

  “Gather the fallen,” Rowan said to the others, voice steady but tight. “They go home with honor.”

  Hunters moved at once.

  As they lifted Bran’s body, a sharp ache pulsed behind Joren’s ribs, like something inside him reached toward it by reflex.

  His hand pressed against his chest.

  “What is it?” Rowan asked.

  “I’m fine,” Joren said automatically. “Just… dizzy.”

  Tyren’s broken form was raised next. Lira. Sera.

  Each time, that warmth inside him flared—different each time. Brief, sharp, gone.

  By the time the search party started back toward Graythorn, Joren felt like he was walking with stones lodged in his lungs.

  Rowan rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “You walk with us,” the elder said. “You’re not staying here alone.”

  Joren nodded.

  But as he took his first step away from the ruined clearing, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d left nothing behind.

  Everything that mattered was still inside him.

  Whether he wanted it there or not.