Gemma returned to consciousness as if rising through the thick surface of a frozen lake, feeling that every inch she ascended was resisted by a silent force determined to keep her submerged in the place where memory and hallucination blended into one another. Her breathing arrived first, harsh and uneven, as though her body had briefly forgotten the simplest rhythm of life. Then came the heaviness of her limbs, the awareness of damp skin chilled by sweat, the stiffness at the base of her skull, and the steady, frantic pulse beating inside her temple. And behind all of that, like a shadow that clung to her even in waking hours, lingered the fractured visions she had witnessed during her collapse. They were always the same: the shape of Anxio, or the suggestion of him, coming to her in shards of imagery too vivid to dismiss and too distorted to grasp.These visions moved in flashes rather than sequences. She saw fire that burned without devouring, and blood suspended in the air as though gravity had forgotten its purpose. She saw contorted silhouettes emerging from the Light like malformed creations expelled from a realm that did not tolerate imperfection. Threaded through everything was a sense of power that did not roar so much as unfurl, ancient and inevitable, awakening with the slow confidence of something that had been dormant for a century. Yet the most unsettling element was not Anxio himself, but the woman’s voice that seeped between all things, sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming, sometimes swelling until it felt like a chorus of a hundred indistinguishable cries. Esyra. The sound had no coherent language, only a raw vibration heavy with fury and grief, clinging to her thoughts like smoke clings to damp stone.

  When Gemma finally opened her eyes, she did so with the strange sensation that the scream still echoed somewhere deep in her mind, trapped inside the hollows that memory refused to release. The cell around her was dark and cold. The stone seemed to swallow what little light existed, and the air smelled faintly of minerals and old water. At first the shapes around her blurred together, but slowly the details sharpened: Broko, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands twisting nervously in his lap; Seravin, walking in a tight circle as though calculating escape routes no one else could see; Harla, leaning against the wall with the rigid stillness of a soldier who trusts her instinct more than any plan.

  And slightly ahead of all of them stood Candriela.

  Gemma registered at once the way Candriela was looking at her. It was not a look of tenderness or shock or even suspicion. It was something more restrained, more exhausted, as though Candriela were examining her through a layer of tightly controlled emotion. There was caution in her eyes, and beneath that caution something that resembled fear, but fear turned inward, not directed at Gemma. The sight made Gemma’s stomach tighten with unease.

  She swallowed, trying to coax her voice into steadiness.

  “Candriela… did you find her? Did you find Virea?”

  The silence that followed was thick and unmoving, the kind of silence that makes a room feel smaller. Candriela did not avert her gaze, but her breathing changed, becoming slightly deeper, as though she were choosing her words with careful, painful deliberation. For a moment Gemma wished she would not answer at all, because the tension in Candriela’s face already revealed more than any spoken sentence could.

  At last Candriela replied.

  “Yes.”

  She did not elaborate. She did not soften the word, did not strengthen it, did not offer explanation or context. The single syllable hung in the air like a thread suspended over a void.

  Gemma inclined her head slowly, and she did not ask again, because the truth was already evident. Virea’s weakened voice was still fluttering somewhere inside her mind, faint but persistent, like a whisper trapped behind fogged glass. If she could still hear her, then Virea was not free. She remained held somewhere between life and unlife, suspended in a condition that did not belong to either world. And if she remained chained to whatever held her, then Candriela had not rescued her.

  Yet Candriela had said yes.

  Gemma looked away, a gesture driven more by instinct than politeness. Distrust rose inside her like a cold wave. Candriela was not someone who lied easily, nor someone who retreated from injustice, nor someone who abandoned what she considered sacred. If she had lied, then the truth behind that lie had to be devastating. Gemma sensed the weight of it in the subtle tremor in Candriela’s jaw.

  Digiera stepped forward then, her expression sharpened by concern.

  “How do you feel?” she asked, though the answer was written plainly on Gemma’s face.

  Gemma shifted, the cold stone beneath her back pressing with unpleasant insistence.

  “A little better,” she murmured, although the phrase sounded hollow, more an attempt to diffuse tension than an accurate reflection of her state.

  Digiera did not hesitate long before continuing.

  “Before you fainted, you kept saying that name. Anxio. What does it mean? Who is he?”

  Gemma’s lips parted, but she did not speak. The sound that emerged came from the opposite corner of the cell.

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  Aros.

  He remained injured and pale, leaning against the wall with a stiffness that betrayed the strain on his body, but his voice was steady.

  “Let her breathe. She just woke up. And we should be thinking about how to get out of here instead of interrogating her.”

  His eyes drifted to the barred door, to the guards beyond it, to the impenetrable stone walls. But Digiera shook her head before he could say more.

  “Get out of here? With what? We have no strength, no weapons, no tools, no way to overpower even a single guard. All we can do is wait and hope Talon finds us or someone else decides we’re worth rescuing.”

  Aros did not argue. He did not need to. The silence between them was heavy with the knowledge that she was right.

  Gemma inhaled, feeling the atmosphere tighten around her.

  “It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I will tell you.”

  And when she closed her eyes, the cell dissolved. The cold floor softened, the air thickened, and time began to roll backward like a scroll being unspooled.

  The path no longer felt like a physical route but rather a prolonged passage through exhaustion and blurred awareness. For four days Gemma had been following Jori through the forest, and the days had folded into one another in such a way that she could no longer distinguish where one ended and another began. Her muscles ached with a dull, constant heaviness, and every step felt like an act of negotiation between willpower and fatigue. She moved less like a traveler and more like a shadow being dragged forward.

  Jori, in contrast, walked with a strangely effortless rhythm. His gait had a peculiar lightness to it, almost theatrical, as if he performed the role of a carefree wanderer while concealing a deeper strain that surfaced only in the subtle tension of his shoulders. He had the air of someone who wore sarcasm as armor, but Gemma had already sensed the vulnerability he tried to hide beneath it.

  “Still alive back there?” he asked without turning. “We are getting close.”

  Gemma forced herself to focus.

  “Close to the hunter?”

  Jori gave a small, playful shake of his head.

  “No. Before we get to him, we need to visit someone.”

  She felt a ripple of unease.

  “Someone?” she repeated. “Who?”

  Jori glanced over his shoulder, and there was a glint in his eyes that did not match the casual tone of his voice.

  “You will understand soon.”

  The forest around them absorbed the conversation. Trees rose like twisted pillars, their branches filtering sunlight into slanted beams that painted the ground in shifting patterns. Roots protruded from the earth like the ribs of buried creatures, forcing Gemma to watch each step carefully. The sounds of distant animals, mixed with the persistent whisper of wind sliding through the undergrowth, gave the impression that the forest was listening to them.

  They walked in silence until Jori spoke again, more gently this time.

  “You are thinking about him, aren’t you?”

  Gemma almost pretended not to understand, but the question touched too closely on a thought she had been trying to suppress.

  “About who?”

  “The wounded old man.”

  Aros.

  Gemma hesitated before answering, as though admitting it out loud transformed something intangible into something real.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Jori nodded, and for a moment his expression softened.

  “I know what that feels like,” he said. “I know it well.”

  Gemma studied him, trying to decipher whether he meant the words or simply liked the sound of them.

  “Who do you feel that way about?”

  Jori smiled, but it was a smile touched with melancholy rather than humor.

  “You will understand now.”

  They stepped out of the dense trees and found themselves at the mouth of a narrow cave. The entrance was framed by stones arranged in a half circle, and a cold breath of air drifted outward as if something within exhaled continuously. The interior was shrouded in darkness, and yet Gemma felt an immediate pull toward it, a tug that sparked both fear and recognition.

  She froze.

  “Here?”

  Jori lifted his hands in a gesture meant to reassure her.

  “He will not harm you. He wants to meet you.”

  “Who?” she asked again.

  But Jori only motioned her forward.

  Gemma inhaled the cold, metallic air and stepped inside.

  The darkness eased into dim light as her eyes adjusted. A small flame flickered inside a metal bowl, illuminating a table cluttered with jars, dried herbs, bowls stained with dark pigments, and tools whose purposes she could not guess. The air carried a scent of damp stone mixed with acrid medicines.

  Gemma advanced a few steps.

  Then she saw the figure seated in the center of the cave.

  At first she thought it was a corpse. The body was so emaciated that skin and bone seemed fused, with the flesh stretched thin like worn parchment. The color of the skin was an unsettling mixture of yellow and green, as though whatever life had once filled it had been siphoned out slowly. The figure was completely bald, and the veins that ran along the skull and neck resembled dried roots embedded just beneath the skin. Most unnerving of all were the eyes. They were stained a deep, unnatural yellow, glowing faintly as if illuminated by something internal and unearthly.

  Slowly, the figure raised its head.

  And smiled.

  “Hello, Gemma.”

  The voice struck her with force. Not because of its tone, which was almost gentle, but because she had heard it before. In her fainting spells. In her nightmares. In the moments when the Light fractured around her. Her body reacted before her mind could assemble the understanding.

  “Hello,” she whispered.

  The figure inclined his head with the fragile grace of someone whose bones might splinter under their own weight.

  “At last we meet,” he said. “My name is Anxio.”

  In that moment Gemma understood that every step she had taken, every collapse, every scream of Esyra in the depths of her mind, had carried her inevitably to this cave, to this encounter, to this being who seemed to exist at the edge of life and something far older.

  The world around her tightened.

  And Anxio continued to smile.