Alex didn't move right away.
Standing still felt safer than walking. As long as his feet stayed planted, the world stayed where it was—burned, silent, waiting. Movement felt like permission. Like admission.
Eventually, the ache in his legs forced him to shift his weight.
He looked down at himself for the first time properly.
His clothes were ruined.
Ash smeared his sleeves gray and black, ground deep into the fabric until it felt stiff and unpleasant against his skin. One cuff had burned through entirely, the edge brittle and curled. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, darkened with soot and something darker that had soaked in and dried. His pants were streaked with grime and blood where he'd fallen.
He raised his hands again.
They were worse than he remembered.
Cuts crisscrossed his palms and fingers—some shallow, some deeper, the skin around them swollen and angry. Ash clung stubbornly to the wounds, refusing to brush away. His knuckles were scraped raw, one split open enough that it still bled faintly when he flexed his fingers.
Alex swallowed.
He reached up and touched his face.
Soot streaked his cheek. His hair felt gritty, tangled, heavy with dust. When he ran his fingers through it, ash fell loose in soft clumps, drifting down to settle on his shoulders.
He sighed shakily.
Then his fingers brushed his ear.
He froze.
The shape was wrong.
Not dramatically. Not grotesquely. Just… off. The curve didn't round the way it should. The cartilage tapered where it shouldn't have, narrowing instead of flattening.
Alex's hand trembled.
Slowly, carefully, he traced the edge again.
Pointed.
His breath caught painfully in his chest.
"No," he whispered.
He reached for the other ear, fingers clumsy with panic.
The same.
Longer. Sharper at the tip. Not exaggerated, not elegant—just unmistakably not human.
His stomach dropped.
Alex staggered back a step, heart pounding so hard it hurt. He pressed both hands to the sides of his head, as if he could force the shape back into something familiar through sheer will.
This is wrong. This is wrong.
Dreams changed scenery. They bent time. They blurred faces.
They didn't rewrite bodies.
His breathing went shallow again, fast and uneven. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head once, hard, like that might snap him awake.
Nothing changed.
When he opened his eyes, the village was still burned.
And his ears were still pointed.
A thin, hysterical laugh bubbled up and died in his throat.
"Okay," he said hoarsely. "Okay."
The word meant nothing.
He forced himself to lower his hands.
Standing still wouldn't feed him.
Hunger made itself known then—not sharp, but hollow.
A deep ache that had been waiting politely until fear loosened its grip. His mouth felt dry and thick with ash. His throat burned.
Water. Food.
He needed both.
Alex started walking.
He moved slowly, carefully, scanning the ruins as he went. Each step kicked up soft clouds of ash that clung to his boots. He passed collapsed doorways, charred beams, half-buried household things—bowls, stools, scraps of cloth—that felt too intimate to look at for long.
The bakery was worse up close.
The smell hit him before he reached it. Burned grain. Burned sugar. Burned oil. He covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve and stepped inside what remained of the structure.
The roof was gone.
Light poured in from above, stark and merciless. The counter had collapsed inward, its surface split and blackened. Shelves lay broken beneath it, their contents scattered and ruined.
But not all of it.
Alex crouched and picked through the debris with shaking hands. He found a loaf half-buried beneath fallen wood—burned on one side, hard and blackened, but intact enough beneath. He broke off a piece and hesitated, staring at it as if it might vanish.
Then he ate.
The bread was stale and tasted faintly of smoke, but it was solid. Real. He chewed slowly, painfully aware of how fast his body accepted it. His stomach cramped briefly, then settled.
He ate the rest.
Water was harder.
He searched the fountain next, peering into its cracked basin. The water was murky, filmed with soot and floating debris. He grimaced, then dipped his fingers in and brought them to his lips anyway.
It tasted metallic.
He drank sparingly.
Alex wiped his mouth and stood, feeling marginally steadier. The hunger receded, replaced by a dull, exhausted heaviness that pressed at his limbs.
He wandered deeper into the village.
Not aimless—just without direction.
Everywhere he went, the statues watched.
Some had cracked open entirely, their stone shells split and hollowed. Others bore deep fissures, something dark and glossy visible beneath before he forced himself to look away. A few remained untouched, their expressions frozen in terror or agony, faces half-melted by heat.
He didn't know what frightened him more.
The silence persisted.
No birds. No insects. No wind strong enough to carry sound. Just the soft whisper of ash settling and the faint creak of cooling stone.
Alex was turning down a narrow side street when he saw her.
At first, he thought she was another beggar.
He stepped closer.
The figure lay half-curled against the remains of a stone foundation, sheltered from the worst of the open square by accident rather than intention. Ash clung to everything—hair, skin, cloth—until colors muted into browns and rusted reds.
She was small.
Smaller than he'd expected, though he wasn't sure what he'd expected at all.
Her hair spilled across the ground in tangled waves, a dull, earthy red that blended almost too well with the burned leaves and soil beneath her. It was matted in places, stiff where sweat and ash had dried together. Her cloak—or what remained of it—hung loosely over her shoulders, frayed at the edges, tied with a knot that had been retied too many times.
Alex's eyes traced upward.
Horns.
They curved back from her head, not large, not decorative. Grown, not placed. Their surface was rough, uneven with natural ridges, darkened near the base. One was chipped near the tip, the break old enough to have smoothed.
Her ears, visible through her hair, came to sharp points.
She didn't move.
Alex crouched slowly, keeping his hands where she could see them if she woke.
"Hey," he said, quietly.
Nothing.
He leaned closer, close enough to hear her breathing—shallow, steady. Alive.
Relief came first.
Then confusion.
She looked like the beggar from the square.
Not the same person. But the same state. The same way of existing on the margins, pressed low, overlooked. The same resignation written into the slackness of her posture, as if even sleep had learned not to ask for much.
Alex hesitated.
Helping her meant staying longer. Meant risk. Meant involvement.
Leaving meant walking away from someone who would not follow.
He reached into his pocket and came up with nothing.
No money. No food. Nothing to offer except presence.
He swallowed and shifted his weight, the ash crunching softly beneath his knee.
Her eyes fluttered.
Just a fraction.
Alex froze.
She didn't wake fully. Didn't sit up. One hand twitched against the ground, fingers curling reflexively, as if searching for something that wasn't there.
A sound escaped her lips—not a word. Just breath, roughened by dryness.
Alex stayed where he was.
The village lay in ruins around them, silent and scorched. Somewhere beyond the broken rooftops, smoke still rose in thin, tired columns.
He had survived.
So had she.
For reasons he didn't yet understand.
And for the first time since waking in the forest, Alex had the unmistakable sense that whatever came next would not give him the option of pretending he was alone.