Grief does not arrive quietly.
It settles into the bones.
It sharpens the breath.
It teaches the heart new, dangerous shapes.
I did not understand that then.
I thought grief was loud — screaming, breaking, fire and blood.
But the truth is, grief is what happens after the noise fades.
The caravan did not stop moving after the attack.
It couldn't.
Stillness was an invitation, and Eden had taught us by then that invitations were rarely answered kindly. Yet the pace slowed, as if the land itself insisted we acknowledge what had been taken. Even the spirits hovered lower, their light dulled, drifting like wounded embers unsure whether to rise or extinguish themselves.
Children walked without speaking.
Parents stared ahead, eyes hollowed out by absence.
The wounded were carried in shifts, the rhythm of their breathing becoming the quiet metronome of our march.
And at the center of it all walked Orion.
He had not spoken since Lyra was taken.
Not a word.
He stayed close to me, though I do not think he knew why. His shoulders were hunched, his hands trembling faintly, stray motes of light leaking from his fingers and dissolving before they could touch the ground. His spirit animals no longer formed instinctively. When they did appear — briefly, accidentally — they came warped. Edges too sharp. Eyes too hollow.
He felt every death he had caused.
I felt them too — through the Echo — but Orion had carried them.
That mattered.
We made camp near dusk in a shallow, bowl-shaped clearing ringed by ancient stone-growths. The rocks there bore old scars — long grooves carved by something massive dragging itself across the land centuries before. It felt like a place that understood endings.
The wounded were laid out first.
Zara organized triage with the same ruthless efficiency she once reserved for battle formations. Broken bones were set. Burns were cooled with spirit-sap and whispered prayers. Eden's flora offered what it could — glowing leaves crushed into poultices, roots that hummed softly when pressed against torn flesh.
Some wounds closed.
Others did not.
A man named Tarek died quietly while Elias held his hand, his breath stuttering once before stopping. No one noticed at first. When they did, no one screamed.
We had no energy left for that.
The bodies of the dead were gathered at the far edge of the clearing as night fell. We could not bury them — Eden's soil was too alive, too restless — so we did what the old stories taught us to do when the ground refuses the dead.
We burned them.
The funeral pyres were built quickly, hands moving with practiced sorrow. Personal effects were placed carefully — a knife worn smooth by years of use, a child's carved charm, a strip of cloth dyed with a lover's colors.
The flames rose slowly, respectfully.
Spirits gathered around the pyres, hovering in silent attendance. Some sang — not in sound, but in vibration — a low hum that made the air ache. Others simply watched, their light flickering in patterns I did not yet understand.
I stood before the fires and felt the Echo stir.
Not loudly.
Not violently.
Just… present.
It remembered their names even as the flames erased their forms.
That was when Orion finally spoke.
"I'm going back."
The words were quiet, but they cut through the clearing like a blade.
Every head turned.
"No," I said immediately.
"Yes," he replied — calm, quiet, terrifying.
Zara stepped forward, already shaking her head. "Kid—"
"I know," Orion interrupted softly. "I know what I did. I know what it cost."
He looked at the pyres, then at his hands.
"I know what I took."
Then his eyes lifted to mine.
They were older now.
Not broken.
Forged.
"But Lyra is alive," he said. "I can feel her. She's scared. And angry. And she's trying not to burn the walls down."
My chest caved inward at the sound of her name.
Orion swallowed. "I can help find her. I can help move fast. I can help watch places none of you can see."
Mara studied him for a long time. Firelight danced across her face, illuminating lines that had not been there before.
"You would walk back into hell," she said, "knowing what it will ask of you."
Orion nodded.
"I already did," he said quietly.
No one argued.
Not because we agreed — but because grief had stripped us of the illusion that safety was still an option.
Later, when most of the camp slept, Jinx and I sat apart from the others. The firelight flickered across his shifting features, his shadow misbehaving again — stretching, folding, alert in ways he was not.
"You can't outrun HelixCorp," he said eventually. "And you definitely can't outrun Ulgrath'Ma."
"Then we don't," I replied.
The Echo hummed under my skin — not violently, but with dreadful clarity.
"We redirect."
Jinx looked at me for a long moment. Then his grin surfaced — sharp, humorless.
"You're thinking of letting a god-eating nightmare loose inside a corporate fortress."
"Yes."
Silence settled between us, thick and stunned.
Mara joined us without sound. She listened, then exhaled slowly. "If Ulgrath'Ma reaches their base…"
"It won't distinguish between steel and flesh," Jinx finished. "Or human and monster."
"That thing hates everything," Zara said from the edge of the firelight.
"Exactly," I replied.
The Echo shifted — memories aligning, patterns revealing themselves like constellations snapping into place.
"HelixCorp doesn't understand Eden," I said. "They think it's energy. Power. Material to harvest."
"And Ulgrath'Ma?" Mara asked.
I swallowed.
"It understands light," I said. "And it hates it."
Understanding dawned slowly, terribly.
HelixCorp facilities radiated Eden-energy like lighthouses — generators, nullifiers, containment chambers. To Ulgrath'Ma, they would shine like an open wound.
A feast.
"And while it tears them apart," Jinx murmured, "we go in."
"Take the children," I said. "And disappear."
Zara stared at me. "That plan gets us killed."
"Staying gets everyone killed," I replied.
No one argued.
Because they all knew it was true.
Before we parted for the night, Orion knelt at the edge of the clearing. He closed his eyes and breathed.
Slow.
Deep.
Intentional.
The Echo around him softened.
Carefully — reverently — he reached out.
A single spirit animal formed.
Not a beast of war.
A horse.
Tall. Broad. Made of soft, steady light. Its mane flowed like mist caught in moonlight. It lowered its head to Orion without fear.
"I won't use them to kill," Orion said quietly. "Only to see. To move. To guide."
The horse stamped once in agreement.
Jinx let out a low whistle. "That's… new."
Orion opened his eyes. "They listen better when I listen first."
More shapes stirred at the edges of the clearing — lean spirit-horses, winged scouts, low many-legged forms slipping through shadow.
Not weapons.
Tools.
The difference mattered.
That night, as the fires burned low and Eden whispered around us, the decision settled into our bones.
We would go back.
Not because we believed we would win.
But because leaving the children behind would have ended something in us that we couldn't get back, our humanity!
And so the story bent, not toward hope, but toward necessity.
And necessity, I learned, is where the most dangerous magic is born.