VIIRubi

  He dreams of wings, teeth, and cws.

  They pull him down, shadows thick as tar that cling like cold vines. A heavy, hot weight in his chest and at his side. Above him the shape of wings unfurled. Vast, hungry. Embracing him in descent. The dream takes him further, into a sky reversed, into clouds cwing at him with spines. He tries to speak but his words are tangled, torn as his flesh where the Umbra sank its deep wickedness.

  A forest looms below, dead trees twisted, bark gray, peeling, branches like skeletal arms reaching. He crashes through them, feeling nothing but his agony and heartbeat. He walks through the shadowed canopy, trees whispering secrets on the wind—the susurrus of their voices as old paper, murmuring things he can’t understand.

  Heart of the forest, cloaked in shadow, she waits. She wears the face of everyone he’s ever lost, and for a moment, it is Astra and Letizia staring back at him, pale and blurred, shared eyes wide and watching. He wants to call their names, to tell them to run, to escape, but his voice is gone, his throat raw and empty, his side burning agony. He reaches out, she dissolves into smoke, slips through his fingers like sand. Sound—rustling, low and insistent, leaves across stone. The ground shivers, the sky fractures; a crack through bckened clouds. The Umbra rises from shadows, wings spread wide, body breaking as bones twist and reform into grotesquerie. Its eyes are pits of violent hunger, its teeth a gleam of yellowed stars. He falls again, into the hollow dark of the Umbra’s eyes, spiraling, queasy, compressed. Cold infiltrates. Rubi feels his body unravel, skin and bone dissolving, spirit unmoored.

  Yet, in the throes of being consumed, he hears Astra’s voice. At first soft, distant, calling his name. Louder then, as a sliver of sensation piercing the dream. Gentle hands alight upon his face, his chest, the agony at his side. He is anchored again, to the real.

  He opens his eyes, gasping, as the dream shatters. A sandy-haired woman with a scarred chin looms, behind her a pretty girl with vivid green eyes. Both of them look strange to his eyes; their skin vibrant, marked with blemishes. They are not ugly, just different, and Rubi has never seen green eyes before. Astra is calling for him, crying his name in fact, he cannot see her, and when he tries to sit up the sandy-haired woman holds him down by the shoulders. She speaks in a soothing tone, some of the words familiar, but wrong.

  “Who are you?” Rubi says, voice broken, quiet. He tastes blood in his mouth. The sandy-haired woman withdraws. Astra stops yelling for him, another distant voice soothing her.

  The green-eyed girl speaks, tremulous, “Rubi, I am Tan. You are safe. Your sister brought us to you. Do you understand me?”

  He does, though she talks like an awkward book. A queasy wave washes over him, he swallows it back. “Yes, I understand you,” he begins. He’s lying, naked from the waist, on the stone bench he’d managed before his colpse. His wound has been wrapped up tightly, it doesn’t hurt as badly as it did in his dream. “Sister? Who do you mean?”

  “The little girl. She told us you were here, injured,” Tan says in her awkward book way. Rubi can see her thoughts working on what she wants to say next, or how to say it, he waits patiently as his gorge threatens to rise. “We tended to her injury, and yours—” Tan is interrupted when Rubi has to turn suddenly to expel his guts on the floor; blood, lymph, and bile. Tan gasps as the sandy-haired woman pushes past her. There’s an exchange as the sandy-haired one supports him in his heaving and helps him y back when it passes. Rubi’s eyelids are heavy as Tan transtes; “No more speaking, rest.”

  He doesn’t protest.

  Astra

  Adina—the tall woman with the bde—holds Astra back with ease, though Astra fights her with every ounce of frantic strength left in her. They don’t understand. They think she’ll get in the way, that she’ll interfere with their efforts to save Rubi, but all she wants is to be by his side. Her voice is raw, reaching a pitch close to madness, but what do they know of this? How could they possibly know what this feels like?

  Then Rubi’s voice breaks through, a croak, thick and unsteady. She watches him retch, struggling, but alive. The tension unwinds, giving way to a flood of something too powerful to name, and she crumbles, sobs coming like a breaking dam. She clings to Adina, her hands clutching the stiff fabric of her coat, shaking with relief. Adina’s face remains disciplined, severe, her gaze unwavering as she drags Astra to a bench further down the hall, pressing her firmly to sit, the woman’s grip grounding her in a way that words never could. “Calm,” Adina says softly, kneeling down, callused thumbs brushing away the tear-tracks on Astra’s cheeks, she wraps tighter the bnket Tan had given her. The word settles in the air between them, grounding.

  “Calm,” Astra echoes, her voice small and wavering. Rubi had taught her that word only days ago, though she only barely recognizes the way Adina speaks it. It occurs to her that these people must speak a nguage descended from Rubi’s. She seizes one of Adina’s hands, gripping it tight, her trembling voice spilling out as a promise, “Adina, I will calm.”

  Adina nods, a flicker of surprise crossing her face as she looks down at their entwined hands. She seems mildly unsettled, perhaps, by the hold Astra has on her, but she doesn’t pull away. Instead, she straightens, lowering herself onto the bench beside Astra.

  Forge is the fourth stranger, the one whose hands now rummage through their satchel with an easy confidence that Astra cannot bring herself to trust. Her eyes follow his every move as he pulls out the comb, the frayed scraps, and the bits and pieces she’d stubbornly collected in their wandering. Her little treasures. His hand pauses, lingering over one of them, and then his gaze finds hers—sharp, unwavering. The look settles beneath her skin, an intensity that feels almost like a challenge. Astra doesn’t flinch, doesn’t let herself look away. Out of the four, it’s Forge she watches with caution. Maybe it isn’t fair to hold her distrust for men against him, but it sits there, tense. Someday, Rubi too will be a man; the thought hovers, unsettling.

  It’s Tan who finally breaks the quiet standoff, approaching with soft steps, exchanging murmured words with Adina. Adina releases Astra’s hand then, her hold loosening as she moves to join Bryn, still bent over Rubi, her focus unwavering.

  “Astra,” Tan begins, sliding into the space Adina just left. Her voice is low, a gentle thread in the stillness. “Rubi will be alright.” She takes Astra’s hand, her grip warm, steady. “Bryn wants to know… did you…” The words slip past Astra’s understanding; the question is there, hanging, but she can’t grasp it. Her face must say as much, confusion pin in her eyes. Tan pauses, choosing her words with care. “Did you help Rubi’s hurts?”

  “Yes,” Astra says, nodding as she searches for the right pieces of nguage. “I help hurts. Wrap dress, press inside, hold tight.” Tan listens, nodding with each word, her face thoughtful.

  “How did you know to do that?” she asks.

  Astra’s mind stumbles, the truth too tangled to reveal. I was taught emergency first aid in another life—it sounds ridiculous, impossible, foolish to consider sharing. An eborate lie flutters on her tongue, but she lets it pass, settling instead on an evasive shake of her head. “I don’t know,” she says softly.

  Tan’s gaze sharpens, a trace of doubt lingering in her eyes. Astra can feel the question pressing, as though the woman senses there’s more—something withheld—but Astra meets her look with quiet resolve. Finally, she sighs and asks, “May I see your arm again?”

  So consumed had Astra been with worry for Rubi that her pain had faded to something distant, tucked away. Bryn had cleaned and dressed the wound, swathed her right arm in clean bandages the color of egg-shell. Now, at Tan’s quiet insistence, Astra offers up her arm, she stretches the limb, rotating it carefully, until the elbow can extend no further.

  A smear of dark seeps through the bandage, bck at the center, edges ringed with rust where the blood has dried. Astra stares, momentarily detached, realizing only now the extent of her injury, how it pulses under the lightest touch. Rubi’s suffering had eclipsed her own, the ache buried so deep she had almost forgotten it. Tan prods at the wound’s edge, and Astra’s breath catches. Her eyes squeeze shut, bracing herself against the wave of fresh pain. She feels Tan’s hands moving carefully, a voice slipping in, low and apologetic—“Sorry, Astra, I…” The rest is lost to her, she doesn’t know the words. All Astra can do is grit her teeth, trusting that Tan’s fingers press for good reason, however sharp the hurt.

  Astra is scolding herself for the fresh spill of tears, her breath calming as Tan’s fingers trace the end of the wound near her thumb—a pce Astra cannot feel at all. Tan’s eyes flick to her face, studying, searching for a sign of reaction. Concern pools in her gaze as she presses her fingertips harder against the spot. Astra feels… nothing.

  At st Tan releases her, and Astra draws her arm back, curling it close within the folds of her bnket fortress. Tan’s green eyes fix, soft, a weight of thought behind them. That she can’t feel the pain at the wound’s edge—her mind drifts to the cw that cut her, to the Umbra itself—those monsters woven from shadow, smoky darkness made flesh. Light repels them, she’s certain of that much. Could it be, then, that a wound from such a creature carries dangers beyond what mundane violence leaves behind? The thought sits heavy, too pusible to ignore.

  Astra swallows her fear, asks with quiet timidity, “Tan… no hurt, it’s bad?” Her voice is small, trembling, and Tan’s reaction is immediate, expression tightening with something close to pain. She looks as if she might break, her green eyes glistening, caught between honesty and a kindness Astra doesn’t want. Silence stretches. Astra can see it pin on Tan’s face—the temptation to lie, to offer comfort instead of truth. And she doesn’t bme her; if she were in Tan’s pce, facing a child touched by some supernatural infection or curse, she might think to do the same. But something in Astra’s gaze must reach her, must speak louder than her own trembling words. Tan takes a breath, steadying, then pulls her close, folding Astra against her chest. She feels Tan’s heartbeat against her cheek, before her voice comes, soft but resolute.

  “Yes, Astra,” she murmurs, her tone carrying the weight of what she can’t soften. “It is bad.”

  Adina

  Adina's boots traced a slow path across the ancient stone, the only sound besides the sigild's soft murmurings to the strange child. The hall stretched out before her like a mouth holding its breath, sunlight snting through high windows to cast elongated diamonds across the floor. Outside, birds darted between abandoned buildings.

  She approached Bryn with measured steps, hands csped behind her back, spine rigid. The medic gnced up, her hands still working methodically over the boy's—Rubi's—bandages.

  "The most remarkable thing," Bryn muttered, her voice low enough that only Adina could hear. "That little one saved his life with nothing but scraps and sheer determination." She secured a clean bandage over the wound with practiced efficiency. "Packed it tight. Stopped the bleeding long enough."

  Adina's gaze drifted to the unconscious boy. His white hair spyed beneath him like spilled milk against stone, his face serene now, paraffin-pale lips slightly parted. "And the wound itself?"

  "Clean. Deep, but clean." Bryn shook her head, wonder edging her voice. "No shade-rot. Not a trace."

  "You're certain?"

  Bryn scoffed. "Been around enough shade wounds to know. This one's different." She nodded toward Astra across the hall. "Hers, though..."

  A chill settled in Adina's chest, familiar and unwelcome. "Tell me."

  Bryn's hands stilled over her supplies. She didn't look up when she spoke. "I'd be surprised if she wasn't going numb already. Can't feel a thing past her wrist, most likely." A sigh escaped her, bone-weary. "It'll spread. Days, maybe. Less if we're unlucky."

  "And there's nothing we can—"

  "Nothing." The interruption comes as a sure sign of her certainty. "I've only been putting off saying so to avoid upsetting Tan as long as possible."

  Adina nodded, taking in the information like a physical blow, absorbing it without flinching. Her gaze traveled to where Tan sat with the child, the sigild's face soft with a compassion that would only make this harder. "I'll take care of it when the time comes."

  The words hung, stark and terrible.

  "Right now," she continued, pushing past the weight of what would need to be done, "I need to know if we can breach that chamber before we have to leave."

  Bryn's eyes flicked to Tan and the girl. "Putting that child down will be hard for Tan," she whispered, barely audible. "She'll try to stop us."

  Adina's jaw tightened. "I'll handle it."

  The sound of heavy footfalls interrupted them, and Adina turned to find Forge approaching, his weathered face set in lines of thoughtful confusion. In his hands, he held the patchwork satchel they'd found with the pair.

  "This," he said without preamble, thrusting the bag toward her, "ain't right."

  Adina took it, turning it over in her hands. The fabric was a hodgepodge of colors and textures, bits and pieces salvaged from who knew where. But as her fingers traced the edges, she realized what Forge meant. "No seams," she murmured.

  "Exactly." Forge's voice was gruff with bewilderment. "It's like it was woven whole, already in this shape. Never seen nothin' like it."

  She passed it back to him, mind already churning with implications. "We'll have to get answers from the boy when he wakes."

  "If he wakes," Forge corrected, though he kept his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry to Tan.

  Adina shot him a warning look.

  Forge cleared his throat, reaching into the bag. "Found this," he said, producing a translucent comb, the color of amber. It caught the light, throwing honey-colored reflections across his calloused hand. "Old. Real old. But not a scratch on it."

  He set it aside and pulled out a series of small objects: a smooth pebble, worn round, a shard of colored gss, a strip of fabric tied in a peculiar knot, various bits of detritus collected from the ruins.

  “Children’s treasures.” Adina observes.

  "Look at all this," he muttered. "Just garbage. Scavenged from the dead city itself." His eyes met Adina's, heavy with implication. "Ain't no way they're from anywhere but here."

  Across the hall, Bryn had finished tending to Rubi. She covered him with a field bnket, the mottled gray fabric a stark contrast to his colorless form. With careful hands, she lifted his head, sliding a rolled bundle of bandages beneath as a makeshift pillow.

  Adina's attention drifted to Tan and the child. The girl had id her head in Tan's p, eyes closed, her small chest rising and falling in uneven breaths. Tan stroked her tangled white hair, her own expression distant, unfocused, seeing something far beyond the crumbling walls that contained them.

  It took only a moment for Adina to recognize that look. The thousand-meter stare of someone who had just realized they were sitting with the dying. Tan knew. The evidence was written in the careful way her fingers moved through Astra's hair, in the tightness around her eyes, in the slight tremble of her lower lip.

  Adina turned away, her own throat suddenly tight. She had seen that same look reflected back at her from too many mirrors, on too many nights after bringing back too few of those she'd led out. The war had taken so many—faces fshed through her mind, comrades lost in mud and blood and senseless violence, their names scarred into her memory. The cost of hunting treasures seemed trivial compared to that sughter, yet the weight felt much the same: a burden of decisions made, of lives valued against objectives.

  She closed her eyes, forcing the thought away.

  Focus on what matters. The immediate. The possible.

  "The chamber," she said, her voice cutting through the stillness. "We need to breach it before we have to leave." Her gaze moved to the double doors further down the hall.

  "Should head back to the floor with the openin'," Forge said, repcing the items in the satchel. "Set up camp there. Better light, more space. I'll carry the boy," Forge volunteered, his rough voice matter-of-fact.

  Bryn snorted, a brittle attempt at levity. "Never took you for the nursemaid type, Forge."

  A corner of his mouth twitched. "Got experience. Changed more nappies than you've patched soldiers." His deadpan delivery made the joke nd with surprising warmth, drawing a genuine chuckle from Bryn.

  "That's a sight I'd pay to see," she replied, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.

  The brief moment of lightness faded as Adina's gaze returned to Tan and the child. With a steadying breath, she crossed the hall, each step deliberate, measured. The brightness of the day, pouring through the windows, seemed to mock the darkness of what she knew must be done.

  "Tan," she called softly, watching as the sigild's fingers stilled in the child's hair. "We need to talk about what happens next."

  Tan looked up, her green eyes sharpening with a sudden crity, the distance in them repced by something harder, more resolute. She knew what Adina was going to say. She had already decided her answer.

  The sunlight caught the gold of the sigildrie mark beneath Adina's eye. A reminder of power, of responsibility, of the decisions that fell to her alone. The weight of it settled on her shoulders like an old, familiar cloak—heavy, but hers to bear.