You lied to yourself about splitting up. Told yourself it was logical when you knew you'd never do it.
You lie to yourself constantly. About what you want. About what you feel. About who you are.
Father called it strategic thinking. Maintaining operational distance.
But really? You're just scared. Scared of caring. Scared of losing. Scared of becoming someone who feels.
And yet here you are. Back to back with a girl you met hours ago. Feeling.
"Your hands are glowing," Aya said suddenly.
Everest looked down. She was right. Faint gold light pulsed from his palms, barely visible in the red glow but definitely there.
"So are yours," he said, twisting to see.
Her hands—resting on her knees—were surrounded by a shimmer. Like heat distortion. Making the air around them blur.
Presence. Manifesting.
"What is this?" Aya whispered.
"Presence. We're becoming visible to reality." Everest studied his glowing hands. "Most icons take weeks to reach this point. We did it in hours."
Because you're going mad faster. Accelerating toward power or destruction.
Most certainly destruction.
"Is that good?"
"It means we might survive. If we learn to use it."
Or it means you'll burn out. Lose yourself entirely. Become something worse than Father.
They both stared at their glowing hands.
"Can you feel it?" Aya asked. "Inside? Like something pulling?"
"Yes." Everest focused on the sensation. Like his body wanted to do something but didn't know what. A sickening feeling. A maddening feeling.
"With the silk in the river—I felt it then. This certainty that what was happening was wrong. And somehow I... changed it."
"I feel threads," Aya said. "Invisible connections between things. Like everything is tied together and I can almost see the knots."
Her madness. Different from yours.
"We should practice," Everest said. "While we have time. Learn what we can do before something else tries to kill us."
Practical. Good. Focus on survival, not feelings.
"How?"
"Start small." He held up his glowing hand, studying it. "The presence—it's not just power. It's certainty. Belief so strong reality has to check its notes."
Father's words. Coming out of your mouth. You sound like him.
Use what he taught. Become useful. Even if it means becoming him.
"Belief in what?"
"In something impossible." Everest looked at her. "What do you believe? Deep down. The thing you know is true even when it shouldn't be."
Aya was quiet for a moment.
"That I should be free. That nothing should hold me. Not poverty. Not circumstances. Not—" She gestured at the cavern. "—not even this forest."
"Then believe it. Make it real."
Good advice. Now take it yourself.
What do YOU believe?
He didn't want to answer that question. Didn't want to examine what bone-deep certainty drove his madness.
But the glowing hands demanded honesty.
I believe things shouldn't end for me. I believe every moment is mine and mine alone. I believe every story should progress by my rules.
I can save her. Even when the math says I can't.
"Try something," Everest said, pushing the thought away. "Pick something connected. Something simple. Try to... disconnect it."
Aya focused on a small rock embedded in the cavern wall. Her shimmer intensified.
"I can see it," she breathed. "The thread. Rock to wall. Centuries of pressure holding it in place."
"Can you cut it?"
"I..." She reached out—not physically, but with her presence. The shimmer extended toward the rock like invisible fingers.
Nothing happened. Then she groaned.
Oh oh
"It's like grabbing smoke," she said, frustrated. "I can see it but I can't touch it."
"Because you're trying to touch it. You need to believe it's already cut. Need to be certain. Need to be insane."
Father's lessons again. Madness through certainty. Delusion through conviction.
Aya took a breath. Focused. Her shimmer pulsed brighter. She bit her lip until blood dripped.
"It's cut," she said. Not hopefully. Not questioningly. "It's cut. The thread is severed. The rock is free."
Nothing happened.
Then—
Snap.
Inaudible but felt. Like a guitar string breaking inside reality.
The rock fell out of the wall. Just fell, as if the stone had never been holding it at all.
"I did it," Aya whispered. "I actually—"
The wall where the rock had been began to glow faintly. The stone confused, trying to figure out what happened.
"Small successes," Everest said. "But it's a start."
Your turn. Practice what you preach.
He looked at his translucent shoulder. The dissolution spreading steadily.
Stop it. Just... refuse the progression. Make it wrong. It is wrong.
He focused everything on that certainty: This shouldn't be happening. My flesh shouldn't dissolve. This progression is INCORRECT.
The transparency... paused.
Not reversed. Not healed. Just stopped spreading for a moment.
Then his concentration wavered and it resumed.
"Damn," he muttered.
"You almost did it," Aya said. "I saw it stop."
"For three seconds. Not enough."
Not strong enough. Not certain enough. Still weak.
They practiced for a while. Small attempts. Minor successes. Learning the edges of their madness through trial and error.
Everest managed to slow his fall when he deliberately tipped sideways. Not stop. Just slow. Buying himself seconds.
Aya managed to sever the connection between her pain and her nerves. Her shredded feet stopped hurting—though the damage remained.
"This is dangerous," she observed. "I can't feel the pain but the wounds are still there."
"Use it only when necessary then. Emergency situations."
"Like being chased by spiders?"
"Exactly like that."
They sat back to back again, exhausted from the practice. Their presence glowed brighter now—his gold mixing with her shimmer in the red light.
"We should try something together," Aya said suddenly.
"Together?"
"Our presence—when we held hands earlier, they mixed. Resonated." She turned to face him properly. "What if we tried to do something together?"
Dangerous. Mixing madness Could backfire spectacularly.
"Like what?"
"Fire." She gestured at the cold stone. "We're still freezing. We need warmth. And—" Her crimson eyes were intense. "—the forest is wood. Wood burns. If we could make fire, we could fight back."
Ambitious. Probably impossible. But...
"Fire requires heat. Energy. We'd need to—" Everest thought. "—to make something progress cold to hot. By sacrificing an alternate equivalent progress."
Aya stared at him.
"And I'd need to sever its connection to the cold. Let it be free from the temperature around it."
Progress manipulation and untethering. Combined.
It might work. Or it might kill you both.
"Worth trying," Everest said.
Liar. You just want to see what happens when your madness touches hers.
They sat facing each other. Knees almost touching. Hands outstretched, palms facing.
Everest leisurely reached out and smashed a nearby rock in his palms.
Aya ignored the madness.
"On three?" Aya asked.
"On three."
They counted together.
"One. Two. Three."
Their hands met in the space between them. Gold glow and shimmer colliding, mixing, creating something new.
Everest focused on progression: Cold to warm to hot to burning. The rock suddenly regained shape, and replacing that progress; the rock let out a violent spark. Accelerate. Force it.
Aya focused on untethering: Free from the cold. Free from the air. Let it be what it wants to be.
Between their joined hands, the air began to shimmer differently. Not from heat distortion—from actual heat. Building. Intensifying.
Keep going. Don't break certainty. BELIEVE it's burning.
A spark appeared. Tiny. Fragile.
Then another.
Then—
Flame.
Small at first. No larger than a candle's worth. But real fire, hovering in the space between their palms, fed by nothing but will and madness.
"Holy shit," Aya breathed.
The flame wavered. Nearly died.
"Don't doubt!" Everest snapped. "Believe it's real. Believe it can't go out."
They both focused. Poured certainty into the small flame. Made it real through conviction.
The fire grew. Stabilized. Burned steady and warm and impossible.
"We did it," Aya said, wonder in her voice.
"We did it," Everest agreed.
They sat there, hands joined around the small flame, and for the first time since entering the forest, they weren't cold.
The fire burned between them. Eternal. Impossible. A lie made truth through shared madness.
"Every god began as a lie that refused to die," Everest murmured, remembering something Father had said once. Something about the nature of madness.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just—" He looked at the flame. At their joined hands. At Aya's face painted gold by impossible fire. "Just understanding something."
Madness is democratic only until someone shows up with overwhelming conviction.
And we're becoming convinced.
They sat together, warming by the fire they'd created from belief alone, and somewhere far above them, the mansion waited.
Time passed. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. Hard to tell with no sun and only heartbeats to mark seconds.
They talked quietly. About nothing important. About everything.
Aya told him about her sister—Hana, age seven, chronic illness, medicine they couldn't afford. Her voice cracked when she described how small Hana looked in the hospital bed.
She's giving you leverage. The sister is her weakness. File it away.
Don't. Don't even think about using it.
Why not? It's strategic. It's smart. It's what Father would—
Damn what Father would do.
Everest told her about the Junes—about Genesis, about Friend, about being the last of a hated lineage. His voice stayed flat, factual, but Aya's hand tightened around his anyway.
She's trying to comfort you. It's unnecessary.
It's not unwelcome.
"We're both running," Aya observed.
"And both trapped."
"You think we'll survive?"
Honestly? Your feet are shredded. My shoulder is dissolving. We're being hunted by creatures we can't fight. Survival probability: 15% and dropping.
"We'll try," Everest said. "That's all we can do."
Optimism. Since when do you do optimism?
Since you started lying to yourself about caring?
"Even though I'm probably going to get us killed?" Aya asked.
"Even though I'll probably sacrifice you if the math demands it," Everest countered. The warning. The honesty.
Liar. You already proved you won't.
When you chose her over yourself.
When you carried her instead of running.
When you held her hand and made fire just to keep her warm.
"I'll take my chances," she said.
Fool...
Says the person creating eternal flames for her.
Eventually, the fire began to fade. Not from lack of will—from exhaustion. Their presence could only sustain it for so long. The universe had borne them long enough.
As the flame died, Everest realized how warm they'd become. How close they were sitting. How their hands were still joined even though the fire was gone.
He pulled away. Created distance.
Don't get comfortable. Don't forget what you are. What you have to be.
"We should move," he said. "We've rested long enough."
Translation: I've felt too much. Need to return to tactical thinking before I do something stupid.
Aya nodded. Didn't argue. Just started gathering their dried clothes—still damp, but better than before.
They dressed in silence. Everest in his black silk robe, torn but functional. Aya in her goth outfit, ruined but wearable.
As they prepared to leave, Everest caught sight of his translucent shoulder in the red light. Still dissolving. Still progressing toward nothingness.
Time limit. Unknown but real. Every hour brings you closer to not existing.
"Ready?" Aya asked.
No. Never ready. But we go anyway.
"Ready."
They left the cavern through a passage that led upward—always up, toward the mansion, toward whatever waited.
Their presence lit the way—gold and shimmer mixing, creating enough light to see by.
"We're targets," Aya observed.
"Yes. But we'd be blind without it." Everest studied his glowing hands. "The forest knows we're here anyway."
And now we can fight back. We have fire. We have madness. We have each other.
You have weakness. Sentiment. A fourteen-year-old liability you refuse to abandon.
Same thing.
The passage twisted upward. The red glow from roots became more frequent. The temperature warmer.
Closer to the surface. Closer to—
A sound stopped them.
Not howls. Not clicks. Something else entirely.
Footsteps.
Heavy. Wet. Irregular.
Human.
Thud.
From ahead.
Thud.
Closer.
Everest's hand went to Aya's wrist—tactical signal, nothing more—and they both froze.
Single target. Gait suggests exhaustion or injury. Could be another icon. Could be bait. Could be—
Thud.
A glowing figure stumbled into the red light ahead of them.
And Everest's breath caught.
She was beautiful in a way that made his chest tighten. Not pretty. Not attractive. Beautiful the way a storm is beautiful. The way a knife edge catches light.
Milky white hair fell past her shoulders like clouds. Her face—perfect features, porcelain skin—crossed some invisible line into uncanny territory. Too symmetrical. Too flawless.
She looked exhausted. Bloodied. But even covered in gore, even stumbling, there was something about her presence that demanded attention.
Something that made every tactical instinct in his body start screaming.
The woman raised her head, and her silver eyes were warm. Kind.
And Everest knew—with cold, absolute certainty—that they were in terrible danger.