The corridors outside the archives were nearly silent, save for the distant rumble of the storm. Lyra and Caelith half-carried, half-dragged Julen toward the healer’s wing, each step leaving a darker, stickier smear of blood across the stone floor.

  Julen gritted his teeth. “You’re both… terrible at pretending this doesn’t hurt.”

  Lyra tightened her grip. “We’re trying to keep you alive, stop complaining.”

  “Complaining is what keeps me alive,” Julen muttered, his voice thinning near the end.

  Caelith said nothing. His jaw was set, his breath shallow, each step measured with rigid control, as if anything less might pull him apart.

  Even with Julen’s weight between them, he kept his injured side angled away, refusing to shift any of the burden onto Lyra. Blood had soaked through his tunic, a dark, spreading stain he tried, and failed, to hide with a braced forearm.

  When they reached the healer’s chamber and transferred Julen to the cot, Caelith stepped back like he couldn’t stand to take up space there. The healer, still bleary from sleep, rushed to Julen’s side and began her work. Lyra hovered next to her friend until Julen squeezed her wrist lightly.

  “I’m not dying,” he murmured, although it was laced with some uncertainty. “Go make sure your brooding shadow doesn’t bleed out in the hall.”

  Lyra’s heart clenched. “He’s not my—”

  “Lyra,” Julen whispered, eyes flicking toward the doorway, “go.”

  She took a roll of bandages and a damp cloth with her from the healer as she left. Caelith was in the corridor, bracing a hand against the wall, shoulders hunched, blood dripping steadily at his feet, each drop striking the stone with a soft, echoing tick.

  “Caelith. Gods, sit down,” Lyra said, rushing to him.

  “I’m fine,” he said through his teeth.

  “You’re not. You’re barely standing.”

  He didn’t fight her when she guided him into the small antechamber beside the healer’s quarters, but the tension rolling off him was palpable. When she pressed him into a chair, he winced despite trying not to. She'd never seen him in such a vulnerable state before.

  Lyra knelt in front of him, hands hovering. “Please. Let me look.”

  “No.”

  For the briefest second, panic flashed wild in his eyes before he forced them calm.

  Lyra softened her voice. “I’m not asking. I’m helping you.”

  He went still. The storm outside cracked thunder across the sky, and in the echoing silence after, he finally exhaled a long, frayed breath.

  “…Fine. If you insist.”

  He peeled back his blood-soaked coat, then his tunic. Lyra sucked in a breath.

  The wound was worse than she’d thought. The wraith’s claw had carved a jagged line across his ribs, deep enough to show the white edge of bone beneath. Bruising bloomed around it, black-purple like ink spreading through paper.

  “Why didn’t you tell Julen his wasn’t the worst injury?” she whispered.

  “Because Julen was conscious,” Caelith said softly. “And I needed him to stay that way.”

  The admission hit her harder than expected. Not because of the words, but because Caelith almost never explained himself.

  “Hold still,” she murmured, reaching for the clean linen.

  He flinched when her fingers brushed his skin. Not from pain - she could tell the difference - but from proximity. Something tightened in her chest.

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  “Caelith,” she asked softly, “how dangerous is this? For you. If you lose too much blood… is it the same...”

  His gaze flicked to hers, brief and evasive.

  “My blood doesn’t clot the way yours does. It… dissipates. It burns through me faster when I’m wounded..”

  A pause.

  “If I lose too much, I don’t weaken slowly. I fall. All at once.”

  Unbidden, her mind flashed to the street, to the beaten Umbralyn’s blood on the stones, how quickly it had pooled, how wrong it had looked against the grey. She’d told herself then it was shock. Panic. Fear.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  The cloth slipped. “So that could have happened back there?”

  “It nearly did,” he whispered. “But… I’ll heal. Quicker than Julen.”

  A cold draft slid under the door, dimming the lantern flame. For a moment the shadows climbed the walls like reaching fingers.

  Lyra swallowed, furrowing her brow. There were too many things tonight she didn’t understand. His sudden appearance, the way the shards had pulsed, the creature that shouldn’t exist outside old stories.

  “Caelith,” she said softly, “tell me the truth.”

  His shoulders stiffened.

  “You recognised the creature didn't you?” she murmured, pressing the cloth to his ribs. “You knew it.”

  The storm cracked again. Caelith’s breath stilled.

  “I’ve heard stories,” he said carefully.

  “But you reacted like—”

  “Lyra.” Her name came out strained, low, almost pleading. “Not tonight.”

  She wanted to push. She wanted answers. But the exhaustion in his voice wasn’t something she’d heard before, not even in the ruins. So she nodded and focused on cleaning the wound.

  He watched her with a guarded expression, jaw tightening every time she pressed the cloth firmly. She tried to ignore the heat of his gaze, the way his breath stuttered once when her fingers brushed too close to his ribs.

  “Why were you alone in the Archive?” he murmured, something brittle under the words.

  “I wasn't. Well, not completely. Julen was there. But he left because something was happening with the fragments. It was like it knew what was coming, although we didn't know it was going to be... that.”

  “I might not always be there to save you, Lyra.”

  Lyra froze. “Why? What else is there?”

  His eyes flicked to hers. Too quickly. Too honest.

  “…Not tonight,” he repeated. “Let’s not have this conversation tonight.””

  She swallowed hard and then decided not to push further. Not yet, anyway.

  When she wrapped the bandage around his torso, he lifted his arms slowly. The movement forced him closer, his breath brushing the top of her head. Her hands trembled, just once, as the heat of his skin seeped into her palms.

  His voice was rough when he spoke again. “Julen will be all right.”

  “Yes.” She tied the bandage firmly. “Because of you.”

  He huffed a quiet, humourless breath. “He’s going to hold that over me, isn’t he?”

  “He already does.” Lyra looked up. “Your arm,” she said quietly.

  Caelith glanced down as though only now remembering it. The wraith’s claw had carved a long, shallow cut along his forearm, blood still seeping sluggishly from it.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s bleeding, too,” she replied, already reaching for another strip of linen. She took his wrist before he could protest, turning his arm into the lantern light. His skin was warm beneath her fingers. The muscle in his forearm tightened instinctively at her touch.

  When she tied the knot, her thumb brushed the inside of his wrist.

  Caelith went completely still.

  For a moment neither of them moved.

  He looked at her. His pupils were blown wide, his breath uneven. The charged silence between them felt almost physical, thick enough to press against her skin.

  “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt,” she whispered.

  His jaw flexed. “I told you. I’m fine.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  Her hands were still on him. She felt the tremor that ran through his muscles. Heard the breath he dragged in too sharply. He looked away for a heartbeat, at the storm through the window, before his eyes found hers again, even darker than before.

  “You’re… shaking,” he murmured.

  “I’m not.” She was.

  “Lyra.” His voice dipped, something warm and dangerous threading through it.

  Her breath caught, as she tried to build up the courage to tell Caelith how she really felt. “I thought—when you fell—I thought you—”

  He leaned toward her without meaning to. Or perhaps meaning to entirely.

  She didn’t move.

  For one suspended heartbeat, the whole world narrowed to the warmth of him, the storm-light flickering across his face, the tension wound so tightly it hummed in the air.

  “Lyra,” he whispered again. His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth.

  Her fingers twitched. Then she reached, lightly brushing his hand where it hovered in the space between them. He froze, not pulling away, his breath catching as though her touch had stripped him of all the walls he’d been holding up.

  A sudden sting flared behind her eyes. She blinked hard, refusing to let it spill.

  Caelith's hand shifted, turning under hers, their palms brushing in a soft, hesitant slide of heat. His breath stuttered, his fingers tightening around hers. For a moment, it looked as though he might pull her even closer.

  But he let go. Slowly. Deliberately. As if forcing his hand to obey him.

  “Lyra,” he said quietly, and there was something raw beneath her name that made her chest ache. “Don’t. Please.”

  He leaned back, breaking the fragile closeness between them, jaw locked tight. “Not like this. Not when you’re frightened. Not because you think you’re about to lose someone.”

  Then someone shouted from the healer’s room. The moment shattered.

  Lyra rose too quickly, nearly stumbling.

  “I should—Julen—”

  “Yes.” Caelith’s voice had returned to something clipped, distant. “Go.”

  She hesitated at the doorway and dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t look at her, but his fingers curled slowly at his side, as though still remembering the shape of her hand. When she finally left the room, the storm swallowed the silence between them.