Bernadetta was alone when she awoke.

  Her arms were bare. The bear-pelt had been draped across her shoulders like a priestly robe.

  The cave was quiet save for her breathing.

  The Judge was gone.

  Her breath misted before her mouth. The air was sweet and cold.

  Sitting up slow, the weight of the hide was heavy on her shoulders, the raw leather clinging damp to her skin.

  She wore nothing else.

  Her old clothes were gone. Even her shoes.

  Nothing remained but the pelt and the knife. The blade was crusted in old blood, the edge rusted where it hadn’t been wiped clean. It did not look like it had been used in days.

  Or weeks.

  The cave was empty. The fire long dead. She stepped out barefoot into the morning.

  She heard birdsong. It came soft and strange, layered in chords across the trees like a hymn from another world. The forest greeted her with a brightness that made her squint. Dew glistened on every leaf and stone. Patches of fog clung to the hollows. The sun had not yet cleared the hills, but it crowned the trees with color, haloed by a single, perfect rainbow.

  She descended the slope in silence.

  Each footstep was careful but without hesitation.

  The bear-hide dragged behind her like a regret given material shape. The knife she kept close to her thigh, sacred like a memento.

  Her legs were bare beneath the pelt, her chest unguarded. Her feet black with mud. She moved without thought to cover herself, and it was not bravery that carried her. She realized this only dimly, as if noticing something in another body. The shame was simply… not there.

  Like a sound she could no longer hear.

  Once, the idea of exposure would have paralyzed her. She would have wept to be seen. Now she felt only the breeze, cool against her skin, and wondered absently if something vital had been stripped from her—not torn, not taken, but peeled away soft and clean, like a scab from healed flesh.

  She didn’t feel brave.

  She felt hollow.

  And quiet.

  New.

  She followed the old path—muddy, overgrown—and reached the village by midday.

  The town was nearly empty. A few folk watched her from the porches, their expressions ranging from alarm to awe. No one spoke at first. A woman clutching a pail dropped it with a clang.

  Bernadetta paused before the general store. The clerk stepped outside and stared.

  She asked, in a voice hoarse from disuse,

  “Where’s the Glanton gang?”

  He stared at her, slack-jawed. “You…you mean them riders that passed through months ago?”

  She blinked once.

  “Months?”

  He nodded slowly. “They left west. Toward the Colorado line. Thought you was dead.”

  “Was there a woman with them?”

  “Couldn’t say. I just know there were two that kept with Glanton, til he could ride again.”

  “Did one of them have white hair?”

  He nodded, wide-eyed.

  And Bernadetta said no more. She walked through the village like a ghost who had outlived her haunting.

  They watched her with eyes wide and full of something she couldn’t name. Not fear. Not wonder. Something quieter. Something like mourning.

  She did not shrink from them.

  She did not wrap the pelt tighter.

  Let them see. Let them remember.

  She passed the well where children used to play, but no children were there. Just an old rope swaying softly in the breeze.

  She passed the window with the cracked shutter, where once a woman had handed her bread and told her, you poor thing, you look half-starved.

  No one stood there now. Only the glass, and her reflection—

  flickering, blurred, as though it could not hold still.

  She had once feared a place like this. The stares. The dirt. The rawness of being seen.

  Now it felt so small.

  Too small to hold her. Too small to bury what had grown inside her.

  A piece of her had stayed in the cave.

  She could feel the shape of it still—like a pulled tooth, phantom in its ache.

  But what had taken its place was heavier. Older.

  And it did not bow its head for anything.

  She should have felt the cold.

  She should have felt shame.

  Instead, she felt the wind shift, and it carried no weight.

  She did not look back again.

  There was nothing for her behind those crooked walls, beneath those half-remembered roofs.

  Even their names—town, street, store—felt foreign now. The language of the old world, and she no longer spoke it.

  She turned west.

  And as she walked, the land opened before her like a hymn half-remembered from childhood.

  The sky arched wide and bright, clouds like ghosts drifting toward their end.

  Somewhere, a hawk wheeled above the ridgeline, its cry thin and high, like a song that had no words.

  She had no destination.

  Only direction.

  Only that terrible, holy pull.

  As if the earth itself remembered her.

  As if it had always known she would come this way, bare and blood-bound, cloaked in the skin of something she’d killed.

  The knife hung at her side, slack in her grip. The edge was dull now, but she did not care.

  It had once been a gift.

  You’ll know when to use it, Edelgard had said, her voice low and strange beneath the stars.

  And she had known.

  But now she looked at the blade and could not remember what she had felt. Not certainty. Not fear.

  Only that it had been easy.

  Too easy.

  She wondered if Edelgard had known what that ease would cost her.

  If Edelgard had meant for it to.

  The thought should have made her angry.

  It didn’t.

  It only settled inside her, quiet as a bruise.

  A last tether. A shape left behind in the dark.

  And though her feet bled, she walked. Though her shoulders ached, she walked.

  Though something inside her whispered, you are not what you were, she did not stop to answer.

  She moved through the forest like something left behind by the storm.

  Barefoot. Silent. The trees leaned close, but they did not speak. The ground was soft with rot and pine-needles and the husks of insects gone to dust. The wind threaded low through the hollows. Sunlight spilled in fitful shafts, painting her in bands of gold and shadow. Her breath was steady. Her eyes wide and dry.

  She had not eaten since the cave.

  She had not asked for food in the village, had not thought to. It had not occurred to her. As though hunger were not something that applied to her anymore. As though it were some old concern belonging to some older version of herself. And now her belly ached like a thing gnawing through its own cage.

  The world had been named beautiful once. She had not known why. Now she thought perhaps she understood. Not because it was kind, but because it did not care.

  The trail narrowed. A stream ran cold beneath a tangle of root and stone. She knelt to drink. Mud slicked her knees. The water tasted of iron. Her reflection caught there, warped and dim. A shadow moved behind it.

  She turned her head.

  A rabbit had come down to drink.

  It stood there, pale and unguarded, ears twitching, its breath light as moth-wings. It did not see her. Or it saw her and did not flee.

  She drew the knife. It was dulled and stained, the edge nicked and the hilt worn smooth from use. Still it cut.

  She moved slow.

  One hand reached. One hand raised.

  She struck.

  The rabbit screamed once. The sound was high and sudden and terribly human. She slit its throat and held it until it stopped kicking.

  She sat back.

  Blood soaked into the moss.

  She stared at the body in her hands. She did not weep. She did not speak. There was no prayer, no thought for the soul of the thing, if it had one. The forest watched and said nothing.

  She built a fire from dry pine and shale. Skinned the animal with the ease of one who had never learned to be sickened. She did not gag. She did not avert her eyes. She roasted the meat over flame until it split and dripped, the fat crackling, and ate it with her fingers, hunched over the carcass like a thing born of stone and rain. From the pelt she made a sheath, crude but firm, and bound it with a twist of vine to her thigh. The blade slid in as if it had been made for this body, this wilderness. As if she had always been meant to carry it—naked, silent, unafraid.

  When she was finished she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood.

  She left the bones. She walked on.

  The sun climbed higher. The wind died. And the forest behind her closed like a wound.

  That night, the forest closed around her like a mouth.

  The trees stretched tall and black against a vault of stars, their crowns stitched in shadow. No moon. Only the afterglow of fire. The coals smoldered low, nestled in a ring of stone she had stacked without thought. Above, the wind sifted through the branches with a voice like distant weeping. It was not cold, but she pulled the bear-hide tighter. Not from need. From habit. From memory.

  She sat cross-legged in the dirt. The blood from the rabbit still rimmed her nails.

  The flames hissed softly in their bed of ash. For a moment, she thought she heard a voice in them—not words, exactly. A murmur. A cadence. Like someone speaking from the other side of the blaze, too far to make out, but near enough to be felt.

  She did not turn. She did not rise.

  The fire crackled, and the sound was like laughter that had forgotten how to end.

  She had not washed.

  The knife lay across her lap. She ran her thumb along the blade—not to clean it, not to test it. Just to feel it. The edge caught her skin. A shallow cut. She did not flinch.

  The fire snapped.

  Beyond its reach, eyes watched. Yellow glints between trunks. Deer. Or something else.

  She did not fear them. She had become something else. Something they did not understand. Perhaps they pitied her. Perhaps they knew her.

  She wondered if Edelgard had ever sat like this. Alone. Hungry. Half-wild.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  She wondered what Edelgard would say if she saw her now.

  She lay back in the dirt, the pelt drawn over her like a burial shroud. Her bones ached. Her hair stank of woodsmoke and blood. The stars wheeled above her slow and vast and uncaring.

  She did not dream.

  Or if she did, they were not hers.

  Shapes moved behind her eyes. Fire and ash. A door that never opened. A face she once knew, but now could only name by its absence.

  A voice like thunder in a chapel said:

  "And what is reborn, if not the thing that killed what came before?"

  She did not wake with a start. She opened her eyes slow, as though they had never been shut.

  The forest was unchanged.

  The fire was ash.

  She rose and began to walk again.

  She walked until the sun began to lower in the sky and her feet bled anew.

  Somewhere, she came upon the stream again—a thin trickle winding through the roots like a memory left to ferment in silence. It murmured over stones, ran thin and cold across her ankles. She followed it without knowing why, her eyes half-lidded, her limbs moving not from thought but from some old, buried rhythm.

  It led her to a small pond cradled in a hollow of mossy rock, ringed with wild ferns and trees so tall they seemed like ribs of the world. The surface lay still and dark, touched by amber light. She crouched by the edge and dipped her fingers in. The cold bit her skin, and she welcomed it.

  She stepped in without ceremony.

  The water rose to her hips, then her ribs. The bear-pelt floated away behind her like shed bark. She sank to her shoulders and closed her eyes. The grime and blood of days slid off her in tendrils. Her breath came slow. The pond lapped against her collarbones, cool as glass, clean as forgetting.

  She did not remember how long she stayed that way.

  When she rose again, it was slow. The water came with her in rivulets. Her skin gleamed like something carved from ashwood. She walked to the shore, and there upon a flat stone, she laid the knife. She found a whetstone nearby—grey, smooth-edged—and began to draw the blade across it, back and forth, back and forth, the sound small but sure.

  Across the pond, from the far shore, she saw them.

  Women.

  Washing.

  Three figures hunched at the water’s edge, beating linens against stone. Their dresses were long, loose-woven, their hair braided or bound with ribbons. One laughed softly, though the sound did not carry. They worked together in practiced motion, a rhythm older than speech. The sun caught in their braids like copper wire.

  Bernadetta watched.

  She did not approach.

  She did not speak.

  There was no fear in her, only a strange and quiet remove, as though seeing them through fogged glass or from inside a dream. She could not cross to them. She would not have known what to say if she did.

  She set the whetstone down and lifted the knife again.

  The edge was cleaner now. Sharp.

  And that’s when she felt it.

  A presence.

  Like a pressure just behind her ear. A weight against the base of her skull. The air changed—not colder, but thinner. Every sound fell away. The women across the water became still, as though frozen mid-motion.

  She turned her head slightly, but there was nothing behind her.

  Only trees.

  Only sky.

  But she knew.

  Somewhere—far, impossibly far—he was watching.

  The Judge.

  Not standing in the brush. Not lurking behind a trunk. But elsewhere entirely. And yet she felt his gaze as surely as a knife at her nape. He was the wind beneath the water, the eyes behind the bark, the reflection that would not look away.

  Her shoulders tensed. Her hand gripped the knife.

  She did not rise. She did not run.

  She only sat there, still as the stone beneath her, still as the pond, and waited.

  And then the moment passed.

  The weight lifted.

  The women resumed their work across the pond, as though nothing had occurred. One wrung out a sheet and spread it wide in the light. Another hummed a song too soft to hear.

  Bernadetta stood, water trailing from her body.

  She dried herself without shame. She gathered the pelt from where it had drifted, wrapped it around her shoulders again, and resumed westward.

  She did not look back. The sun dipped lower. Light fractured on the water’s skin.

  She left the pond before the sun could crest. The pelt hung damp on her shoulders, the knife tucked at her side in its fashioned sheath. Her breath came steady. Her bare feet kissed the moss and loam in rhythm with the wind. The world no longer felt vast. It felt close. Intimate. As though she had passed through a door and found the land on the other side smaller, shaped to her limbs. She moved through the trees without sound. The land sloped upward, and she climbed it, bare feet taking root in moss and stone. Birds scattered at her passage. She saw their shapes before she heard them, caught their scent in the air before the wind shifted. The world spoke to her now in small ways. In shifts of light. In the lean of branches.

  By midday, the clouds had thinned, and the sky above was cut clean through with blue. A squirrel bounded past her boot and froze mid-hop, sensing something wrong. It fled without a sound.

  Bernadetta had already scented it too.

  Not a beast. Not prey.

  A person.

  She turned her head and caught the trail—light, faint, but unmistakable. The way leaves were turned, the faint notch of pressure in the mud. The scent of old smoke. Of herbs.

  She followed it with the silence of a shadow.

  She did not breathe. Or if she did, it made no sound.

  There, beyond a rise, the path dipped into a shaded hollow where the ferns grew tall and the light came scattered. And in that quiet gloom she saw her.

  Kneeling at the base of a tree. Alone.

  Her head bowed. A blade in one hand, a woven satchel in the other. Gathering herbs, or maybe preparing a trap. Her braid had come loose at the crown. She wore earth-colored garb stitched with fur, and she hummed softly to herself—some song that had no words, or none Bernadetta could remember.

  A soft murmur between the hums:

  “I look to you, like a red rose… seeking the sun…”

  Bernadetta said nothing.

  Not yet.

  She just watched.

  And waited.

  Bernadetta crouched low, her fingers grazing the hilt of the knife.

  She could take her. She knew it. She’d felt the shift in her own muscles, the way silence obeyed her now. The thought rose in her—not as threat, not even as curiosity. Just… knowledge.

  And that frightened her more than anything.

  She stood and let the branch snap beneath her heel.

  Petra turned.

  Her eyes widened. Not in fear. Not quite. But in recognition.

  “You are…” she said softly, voice hoarse with disbelief. “Bernie?”

  The knife dropped from Bernadetta’s fingers, landing point-first in the dirt.

  The sun broke through the trees behind her, catching in the ragged pelt, the pulled damp hair, the streaks of soot still ghosted on her face. She didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

  Petra stood slowly, cautious but unarmed.

  “You are alive,” she said. “You are… changed.”

  Bernadetta nodded once. Her throat ached. Her voice came low, unfamiliar in her mouth.

  “You knew it was me?”

  Petra’s gaze searched hers. “Yes.”

  There was silence between them—deep and unhurried. The wind moved the boughs above like ribs breathing.

  And then Petra stepped forward and placed one hand gently on Bernadetta’s shoulder.

  She did not flinch.

  “I will take you home.”

  And for a long moment, neither of them moved. The words settled between them like ash after fire—soft, irrevocable.

  Then the wind shifted.

  The village was quiet beneath the trees. Smoke rose soft from the cookfires, thin lines caught in the high branches like forgotten threads. Somewhere, a dog barked once in a spirit of what sounded like play, and was quiet again. The smell of cedar and broth hung thick on the air.

  Bernadetta sat cross-legged on a hide-stretched mat. Her clothes had changed—fringed leather now, colored beads woven into the seams, a carved bone clasp at her throat. Her hair was short and rough-edged where Petra had cut it. “Best is to let go,” she had said, when her hand on the comb snagged as she tried initially to tend to its former shape. A faint red dye streaked the outer strands, the mark of the bear-rites. Her cheeks bore faint scars beneath the paint.

  The cloak she wore was a testament to her deed. The tribe called her something in their tongue—Omakari. A name with no clean translation. It meant: the one who came back different. The one the animals would not kill.

  After sundown Petra watched her from across the fire, arms folded over her knees.

  They had not spoken yet. Not of Edelgard. Not of that day.

  But now, in the hush of evening, Petra rose. Crossed the short distance. And sat beside her.

  For a while, they didn’t speak.

  Then Petra said, gently:

  “You have not told me how it happened.”

  Bernadetta stared into the flames. “It was Glanton. He—he drew on Hubert. Shot him. I think he was trying to kill him. Maybe he succeeded, I don’t know. Everyone was gone when I…woke up.” She hesitated, her voice already hitching. “But then the bear came. Just like that. Like the world had swallowed its breath and decided to spit out something worse.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I had the shot. I could’ve taken it. But I didn’t—I was too scared. I thought I’d miss. I didn’t trust myself to aim right. So I shot the bear instead. Like maybe it could be a distraction.”

  She was shaking now, though her voice never rose.

  “It didn’t stop. It turned on her. Edelgard.”

  She swallowed.

  “And I... I jumped in. I wasn’t thinking. The bullets wasn’t working so I just stabbed it. I kept stabbing. I couldn’t stop. It wouldn’t die and I just—I couldn’t stop.”

  Her voice cracked there. And Petra, silent all this time, reached for her.

  “Do not blame yourself. You were brave. And sometimes, that is all you can be.”

  She drew her into an embrace, steady and sure.

  Bernadetta’s arms remained at her sides for a breathless moment.

  Then they rose. And she clung.

  She wept into Petra’s shoulder like a girl who had not known she was still capable of grief.

  Petra whispered something in her own tongue. Then, in English:

  “We will find her. You and I. We will find Ferdinand, and he will help us. Edelgard always was fearing that the Eagles would be broken without her, but we are not.”

  Bernadetta said nothing. But she nodded, once, sharp as a vow.

  And outside the firelight, the trees kept their silence, as though the land itself were listening.

  They stayed in the village a while longer.

  The morning after, Petra found her crouched beside the stream, rubbing her blood-cracked heels with a damp cloth torn from the hem of her tunic. Her expression was blank, focused. The water ran red.

  “You should not walk,” Petra said softly, crouching beside her. “Not yet.”

  Bernadetta didn’t answer. Her hands were shaking.

  Petra touched her wrist. “The world is big,” she said. “We are small. We must tend to ourselves first if we are to stand any chance of facing it.”

  Bernadetta did not nod. But she did not argue either.

  So they waited. For days, they waited.

  And in that waiting, there was peace.

  They sat cross-legged beneath a bent tree where the sun filtered soft through new leaves. Petra combed burrs from Bernadetta’s shortened hair, fingers careful and sure. She wove a thin braid behind the left ear, adorned with two red beads and a sliver of feather.

  “This is for protection,” she said.

  “From what?”

  Petra only smiled.

  They hunted together at dusk. Petra loosed an arrow and it vanished into the brush. Bernadetta followed after, quiet as breath, and returned with a rabbit limp in her hands.

  “Good,” Petra murmured. “You do not waste.”

  They cooked over a shared fire. Bernadetta ate with her fingers. Petra passed her a polished bone pick to clean the meat from between her teeth. They laughed.

  They bathed in the stream beneath the rocks, where the water was cold and ran fast over flat stone. Petra waded ahead. Bernadetta lingered, watching the minnows dart through her ankles.

  “You are shy again,” Petra teased.

  Bernadetta shook her head. “No. I’m…watching how they move. They don’t fear the current.”

  Later that night, Petra would paint those same motions across her shoulder—silver arcs like the shapes of fish in motion, dancing toward something unseen.

  Sometimes Petra spoke to the children in their tongue and they listened. Sometimes she would call Bernadetta over to help lift water from the pot, or grind herbs with a worn pestle. Bernadetta never asked what they were for. But she liked the feel of the work. The quiet strength of it.

  The nights came soft in that place, folding over the village like the closing of a book well-worn and long-beloved. Smoke rose from the final fires, children were gathered in with laughter and scolding alike, and the dogs bedded down beneath the cedar stilts of the homes. The stars arrived one by one, shy and glinting, the kind that only reveal themselves when there is no one left to sing to them.

  Bernadetta lay on her side near the fire, a blanket drawn over her shoulders, her legs curled toward the glow. Petra sat nearby, weaving cord between her fingers with the sort of easy, practiced grace that seemed older than she was. They did not speak for a time. The only sound was the crackling of the coals and the soft creak of hide stretched tight over Petra’s frame.

  But Bernadetta stirred. And she said, quietly:

  “You once told us… back at the meeting. You said we had all known each other. In another life.”

  Petra glanced up, her fingers pausing on the braid. She did not nod, nor deny.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Bernie said. “Ever since. I didn’t believe you then. I thought… maybe you were crazy. Or lying. Or just trying to give us something to hold onto.”

  Petra waited.

  “To be honest, I was really jealous of you back then. Edelgard was someone I looked up to, then you joined us. It felt like I was losing her. But now…” Bernadetta’s voice was softer than the night air. “I want to know. I want you to tell me what you remember. That other world. What I was like. What we were like.”

  There was a long pause. Petra set the braid down gently, like it was a sacred thing. Her face was turned toward the fire, but her eyes shone in its light.

  “It would be a great gift,” she said at last, “to speak of these things to someone who believes.”

  Bernadetta looked over at her, expression raw and open. “I do believe you,” she said. “I don’t know why, or how, but I do.”

  Petra smiled—not wide, not flashy, but slow and deep, like the kind of smile built over years.

  “I remember a school made from stone,” she began. “It was perched on a cliff, high above the sea. The walls were old. Cold. But inside, there was warmth. People. Laughter. We trained with weapons. We studied languages. I wore a uniform.”

  Bernadetta listened, motionless.

  “I was a foreigner there. Like here. But not so different. You were there too. You were… shy.” Petra chuckled once, low. “You hid behind doors. Behind curtains. Sometimes even behind me.”

  Bernadetta flushed a little. “Sounds about right.”

  “But you were also kind,” Petra said. “Kind in ways that many never noticed. You would leave me small notes. Warnings before exams. Tips for using a bow. But you didn’t want thanks. Just… to help.”

  Bernadetta stared into the fire, eyes glassy. “Was Edelgard there too?”

  “Yes,” Petra said, her voice softening further. “She was our leader. Not a princess—not yet—but strong. Strong in ways that frightened even her. And she loved us. In her own way. In ways she didn’t always know how to say.”

  “She loved you,” Bernadetta said, without looking over.

  Petra was silent for a moment. Then:

  “She loved all of us. But she saw in me a mirror. And in you… something precious. Something she feared might break.”

  Bernadetta blinked, slowly. Her throat bobbed. “Did we… talk? You and I?”

  “Not much,” Petra said honestly. “But there were moments. Quiet ones. You once brought me tea when I had a fever. You tried to stay quiet, but you kept spilling it. And I remember you apologizing eight times.”

  Bernadetta huffed out a watery laugh.

  “You told me once,” Petra added, “that I made you feel brave. I didn’t know what to say. But it was the finest thing anyone had said to me.”

  Bernadetta turned her head at that. And found Petra watching her—not in pity, not in sadness, but with something tender and reverent in her gaze.

  “I don’t feel very brave anymore,” Bernie whispered.

  “You are,” Petra said. “Even now.”

  Bernadetta reached over without fully realizing it, fingers brushing Petra’s arm. The touch lingered, unsure. Then steadied. Then stayed.

  The firelight pulsed.

  Petra leaned in, their foreheads near to touching.

  And for a while, no more was said. Just two hearts, in quiet communion, beneath a sky older than memory.