Tessa didn’t look back again. She left Jorran’s house with her hands buried in her coat pockets and her thoughts turning sluggish and sharp by turns. The streets were quiet; the sky beginning to bleed into early evening amber, and the shadows felt a little too long for the time of day.

  She moved on instinct, feet carrying her through the alleys that led to the town’s outer edge, past shuttered windows and hanging signs that swayed in the breeze. The sounds of commerce faded behind her. No laughter from inns, no evening chatter. Just the scrape of her boots on packed dirt and the hollow echo inside her chest. She’d expected… not comfort, but something more than what she got.

  He trusted you, she thought, the memory of Rellen’s voice resurfacing. Told you to find Jorran. And what had that led to? A man who treated Rellen’s disappearance like a shipping delay.

  Her fingers closed tightly around one of the satchel straps. She didn’t know where to go next, or who she was supposed to trust. She’d delivered the message. That should’ve been the end of it. But instead, everything felt heavier.

  The edge of the forest came into view—cooler here, the wind carrying pine and mist and a faint copper tang. She stepped off the path and into the trees, ducking beneath low-hanging branches. The air smelled damp, alive. The way forests always did when the sun started dropping.

  “Larry?” she called softly. No answer.

  Her stomach twisted. What if something had—

  A rustle to her left. Then a thump. And then—

  A shape barreled toward her from the underbrush like a pillow with legs.

  “Larry—!”

  He skidded to a halt just short of bowling her over, feathers puffed in every direction, his chest streaked with blood, twigs caught in the plumage around his tail feathers, and what looked suspiciously like a tuft of fur stuck between his beak. Tessa stared.

  Larry blinked at her, chest heaving, proud as anything. She looked him up and down, then slowly pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “You were supposed to be hiding,” she muttered. “Hiding means not… not whatever this is.”

  Larry fluffed again and gave a low, triumphant coo. Then promptly sneezed, dislodging a feather that had been stuck to his own face. He warbled and headbutted her shoulder in what might’ve been affection. Or a demand for snacks.

  She ruffled the feathers on his neck, biting down what could turn too easily into something close to a sob. For a moment, just a moment, the hollow feeling eased. And then it returned. Because they still had to decide what came next.

  She leaned against his warm side, fingers buried in the soft down beneath his saddle straps. He made a low, crooning sound and nestled closer, letting her rest.

  The adrenaline had faded. The tension too. All that was left was an aching sort of quiet—the kind that made her shoulders slump and her breath slow down in ways that felt too heavy to be called relief.

  She let her eyes drift upward, past the shifting canopy of leaves overhead. The sun had tilted low, bleeding gold through green. The sky above was open and wide and strange.

  And for the first time since she’d left the capital, since she’d taken her first job, she felt it. Deep and low, the ache that came from being far away from what she knew.

  No stable smells. No chatter from the stable master at his desk. Not even the familiar clatter of cheap street food carts being pushed down the alley behind her house. Her fingers clenched loosely into Larry’s feathers.

  “I miss my home,” she said aloud, barely a whisper.

  Not the building. Not the bed or the colourful walls. But the knowing. The rhythm. The dull, predictable certainty of it all. She sat with that truth for a while.

  Going back the way she came wasn’t an option. The bridge was gone, and she would not risk circling through that town.

  The south and west stretched were unfamiliar to her. She did not know which routes were safe or where the trade routes lead. A deep sigh escaped her.

  “Maybe,” she muttered to Larry, “we just pick a road and follow it. Find a town that isn’t on fire. Ask for directions to the capital from there.”

  Larry chirped, feathers fluffing. It wasn’t a plan. Not really. But it was enough to move again.

  They took the road. It led her east through a valley trail where the trees leaned toward the path like they were trying to listen. For two days, the road remained empty save for birdsong and the occasional distant howl she pretended not to hear.

  On the third day, she reached a village nestled at the edge of a slow, winding river. The people there looked at Larry with wide eyes and wary amusement, but didn’t question her presence. One of the old mill workers pointed her to a trade road that cut northeast, arcing around the worst of the lowlands. It would eventually rejoin the main imperial highway. The capital lay days away—but reachable. That was enough. She thanked them, bought what she could afford, and moved on.

  The trade route was broader. Busier. Not crowded, but active—wagon tracks dug into the dry ruts, footprints pressed into the dust. She passed merchant caravans and traveling families, a hunter with a cart full of pelts, and a duo of wandering bards who offered to play her a song in exchange for water. She declined politely.

  She answered few questions and asked fewer. Her badge got her shelter when she needed it, and Larry—large, silent, and always watching—discouraged anyone who thought to press further. He didn’t like being left alone anymore. Neither did she. Nights were the hardest.

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  She didn’t always make a fire. Some nights she just curled into Larry’s side, breathing in the warmth of feathers and forest, watching the stars blink through the canopy above. More than once, she took out the cubes.

  She never tried to activate them. Never even twisted them. But she stared at them for long stretches of time, wondering if she’d imagined the way they pulsed against her skin. Wondering if she should bury them. Or break them. Or run. But always, she put them back.

  By the time the capital gates came into view, the weeks had blurred into routine. The roar of the city struck her like a bell rung too close to the ear—familiar, overwhelming, and strange all at once.

  Tessa dismounted on the final stretch and walked beside Larry. His claws clicked against the cobbles. The guards let her in without issue. Just another courier returning from too far afield. The walls swallowed her up again. And suddenly, she was home.

  The stables sat unchanged in layout, scent, and sound. The low rumble of creatures shifting in their pens, the clatter of tack being adjusted, and the clipped voices of stablehands calling out feed amounts—it all wrapped around Tessa like an old, half-forgotten coat.

  But as she led Larry through the gates, something felt… off. It took her a second to realize what it was. The stables looked smaller.

  Not literally—but somehow, they’d been left behind by her absence. The pens hadn’t changed. The roof still leaked near the back corner. But Larry—he barely fit between the divider rails anymore. His feathers brushed the sides. His bulk made the aisle feel too narrow. When he gave a curious chirp and turned his head, one of his oversized talons clipped a water bucket and sent it clanging.

  A stablehand looked up from brushing a velvet-coated lizard and blinked. “Is that Larry?”

  “Yeah,” Tessa said softly. “He’s… grown.”

  The woman blinked again, then gave a faint whistle. “No kidding.”

  Larry sniffed the straw like he didn’t quite remember it. Tessa rubbed his side. “You’ll be fine,” she murmured. “You just make sure not to break anything.”

  He blinked at her, tail feathers twitching innocently. She left him in one of the reinforced end stalls, where heavier warbeasts were usually kept. A water trough was already half-full. She checked it. Checked it again. Then just stood there for a moment, her hand resting lightly against Larry’s feathered chest.

  She didn’t want to go. But she couldn't stay either. So she turned.

  The walk home was short. Familiar cobblestones. Familiar window shutters rattling in the breeze. The city hadn’t changed. The capital never did. When she reached her house, her hand hovered for just a second over the doorknob. Then she turned it. The door creaked open.

  Same old scent of sun-warmed stone, faint must of dust. The small table by the door sat untouched. Her boots still leaned against the wall where she’d left them. The coat rack had her backup satchel slung carelessly over it. A cup—still half-full of long-cold tea—rested beside a forgotten note from a client. It was all exactly how she left it. Like no time had passed at all.

  She stepped inside, shut the door behind her, and leaned back against it for a long, still moment. She wasn’t sure if the unchanged silence was comforting or oppressive. But either way… She was home.

  She stood in the doorway for a long time. She didn’t take off her boots. Didn’t shrug off her coat. Just let the silence settle over her like a second skin. Only the distant hum of city life leaked through the windowpanes—voices, the clatter of carts, the rhythmic clang of a smithy hammer somewhere blocks away. She finally moved, crossing the narrow room with slow steps.

  Her fingers trailed along the surface of the kitchen counter, then the worn edge of the table. She picked up the old tea cup, sniffed it, made a face, and emptied it into the sink. The tap groaned for a moment before the water came, and the stream sounded louder than she remembered. Her hand stayed under it a little too long. Just watching the flow.

  The rest of the space was exactly as she’d left it. Her bedroll was still half-folded at the foot of the cot. The sewing kit she’d used to patch her cloak was still open on the side table, thread unraveled and stiff. A book sat facedown beside the window, the spine permanently creased where she'd lost interest mid-chapter. Only a few weeks. That was all it had been.

  But the girl who’d lived here before had never been involved in the death of another person. Had never lied to someone’s face and walked away with blood under her nails. Had never carried something dangerous in her bag and wondered what kind of person that made her. She sat down on the edge of her bed.

  The springs groaned familiarly beneath her. She pulled off one boot, then the other. Her socks had holes. She didn’t even remember when that happened. For a moment, she just sat like that—bare feet on cool floorboards, elbows on her knees, staring at nothing.

  Then, without really meaning to, she reached into her satchel and pulled out the cubes. She just held them. And let herself feel how tired she really was.

  Not just in her body—but in the space behind her ribs. The part that had stayed clenched since the Vein. Since the first false smile from Rellen. Since the weight of Rellen’s voice at her back on the bridge. She exhaled.

  Folded forward slowly until her forehead rested on her knees, arms loosely curled around the cubes she still didn’t understand. It was only a few weeks. But it felt like she’d aged out of who she used to be. She stayed there, hunched and unmoving, until the floorboards beneath her began to leech the warmth from her bare feet.

  Eventually, she stood. She left the cubes on her bedside table—and changed into a loose shirt and threadbare shorts. The bed creaked when she climbed into it. The mattress had never been comfortable, but now it felt unfamiliar, too soft in the wrong places, too thin in the right ones. She turned once. Twice. It didn’t help.

  Her fingers fidgeted against the edge of the blanket. After a minute, she sat up and reached into the crate tucked under the bedframe. It was still there.

  A small, frayed plush in the shape of some lizard-like creature—a poor mimicry of a drake, stitched in faded yellows and greys. The proportions were all wrong. The wings lopsided. One glass button eye hung a little loose. Her father had made it.

  Back when she was small enough to need cheering up after a fall. When “the big lizards” at the stables had seemed more like monsters than partners. She hadn’t thought about it in months. Maybe longer. But now, her fingers curled around it like it had weight. She lifted it to her face. Inhaled. No scent of ash and steel. No trace of her sister’s workshop. No hint of her mother’s faded floral perfume. Just dust.

  Tessa stared at it. Her throat ached. She was still angry. Still bitter that her father had walked away—a hollow promise, a family he’d stopped protecting. She hadn’t forgiven him. Maybe never would. But still. She clutched the plush a little tighter.

  The bed didn’t help. She sat up again. Walked barefoot across the room and hesitated outside the second room. The door creaked faintly as she pushed it open.

  Dust coated the floor in fine streaks, stirred only by the breeze that sometimes snuck through the crooked window frame. The bed had been made ages ago and never slept in since. A few old wall hooks still held tools—a pair of cracked goggles, a set of measuring calipers.

  She crossed to the bed and sat down slowly. Then curled into it. The blankets felt stiff. The pillow smelled like stale linen and storage. But beneath that—just beneath that—she caught it. The faint scent of charred leather. Oiled steel. The tang of smoke that always clung to her sister’s clothes.

  Tessa pressed her face into the pillow. Her breath hitched. Then broke. The sob came hard and fast, dragging the rest with it. She didn’t try to muffle them. Didn’t try to hold her breath or bite it back. Her hands clutched at the pillow and her knees pulled in tighter and for the first time since leaving Veilcross, since the cave, since the bridge, since the scroll, she let herself cry.

  Not because of fear. But because she had made it back. And she didn’t know what to do now that she had.