“Basin, wake up!” I screamed as I shook his shoulders. It was late at night, and poor Basin had fallen asleep on top of his schoolbooks at the kitchen table. I felt bad waking him, but I wouldn’t if it wasn’t an emergency. On my way home from a late night at the shop, I had felt the heat from the raging fire. When I turned to look and saw that it was Yann?k’s house that was burning, I screamed right out. That must have been what he was talking about last night. I ran home like I was a trained sprinter. Barging in the door to the kitchen and shaking Basin awake. He must have seen the tears streaking down my face because he was awake in an instant. That never happened; usually, I was the one dragging him out of bed to make it to school on time.

  “What’s wrong, Bluebird?” He asked as he stood up. A worried look etched onto his tired features. I sobbed and sobbed. My words come out small and bruised.

  Yann?k… fire… find him… “ I retched, not letting myself fully believe he could still be alive after the inferno I saw.

  Basin saw the seriousness in the situation and ran towards the door of our small house, swinging it open. I stared at the flames reflecting in his eyes as he stared in horror at the pyre. We stood there like two headless chickens, completely stumped, while Yann?k might be burning to death. I could hear the rapid clip-clop of a horse approaching. I guessed they were heading towards the fire, hopefully to help. Just like we should be doing. I felt horrible, just standing there, and the thought snapped me from my paralysis. Finally letting me move.

  I ran through the room, up to Basin, and pushed him forward, out the door, and into the front yard. Wiping the tears from my face, I rushed to unbind the horse Basin, and I, own, Aster, from her hitch. I screamed at Basin.

  “We have to go!” I swung my leg over Aster’s back.

  Thankfully, he reacted and hurried to jump up behind me, and we were off, storming down the street while I prayed that Yann?k was safe.

  The wind burned cold against my cheeks, frost nipping at my fluid skin as I heard the crackling from across the city, and my heart broke with every snapping beam. The streets blurred past us, too quiet for what was happening. There was only the sound of the fire, a low, steady roar carried on the wind. Swallowing everything else.

  “Hold on!” Basin shouted, his voice barely cutting through the rush of air.

  Aster’s hooves struck sparks against the cobblestones, the city slipping away behind us in streaks of shadow and gold. I could taste the smoke before we saw it. Heavy and sharp, stinging my throat. As we left the last of the houses behind, the night opened up around us. The sky was bruised, the stars swallowed by the rising smoke. From this far, it didn’t look real, more like sunrise breaking too soon.

  “Azure~” Basin started, but the word died in his throat when the roof of Morn?ngstar Manor gave way.

  The sound hit us like a wave. A guttural crack followed by a deep, hungry roar as the fire rose. My chest tightened until I could barely breathe. He can’t be gone. He can’t. Aster slowed as the air thickened, smoke rolling down the hill like fog. The smell of charred wood, oil, and something human clung to everything. My vision blurred, tears burning as they mixed with soot.

  “Yann?k!” I screamed, my voice torn to pieces in the wind.

  Nothing. Only the sound of the flames. Basin dismounted first, stumbling as his boots hit the ash-slick grass. I followed, landing hard, the heat slamming into me like a solid wall. It shimmered in waves, making the air look liquid. We couldn’t get closer without choking.

  “We can’t go in,” Basin said, coughing into his sleeve. “There’s nothing left.”

  “There has to be!” I shoved past him, taking a step toward the ruin, my skin prickling under the heat. “He wouldn’t~.”

  “Azure!” Basin grabbed my arm, holding me still. His voice broke on the next word. “You’ll boil, he’s not worth it.”

  I kicked and screamed. I don’t care if I boil. I’m not gonna let him die. He would be boiling inside right now if he hadn’t escaped. I pulled my arm away from Basin, and I ran towards the burning house, absolutely ignoring his pleas for me to stop. My skin was evaporating as I got closer to the flames, but I didn’t care. I was getting inside. I had to slow down when I reached the collapsing house. I was just about to step through the wall of flame keeping me from inside the building. Too slow, I struggled against the thick smoke and heat to get inside, but it wasn’t enough.

  Basin came up behind me, having followed me from where he left Aster. I didn’t hear him coming over the sound of the fire, so it was a complete surprise when he grabbed me. He wrapped his arms around my waist and picked me off the ground while I screamed in despair. I kicked, I hit him, clawed at him, begging him to let me go. He didn’t.

  I turned my head back towards the house, screaming and crying to be let back in, but Basin didn’t budge. He threw me over his shoulder and kept walking down the hill towards the gathering crowd. No one was doing anything.

  “WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING ANYTHING?!” I screamed to the gawking crowd.

  “HE’S STILL IN THERE!”

  People gave me strange looks, but didn’t move. Like I’m the one who’s out of my mind. As we reached the bottom of the grassy hill, I couldn’t see the house anymore through the haze of tears. It was all just an orange blur of flames. I hated Basin in that moment. How dare he keep me from saving Yann?k?! My voice broke long before he stopped walking. My throat burned. My body went slack. I was still sobbing, but the fight had left me. It felt pointless now, like the air itself had given up. The fire roared behind us. I couldn’t even tell if I was still screaming his name or just thinking it. Everything blurred together: the heat, the smoke, the people staring at us.

  He put me down, but didn’t release me. Still keeping that vice grip around my stomach. With my arms pinned down the sides of my body, I couldn’t wipe the snot from my face when I heard Saoirse’s voice coming up from behind us.

  “Breathe, sweetheart, he’s gone.” She cooed. She wiped my face with a handkerchief like I was a child again. I hated her calm. I hated Basin’s silence. I couldn’t find words. My chest felt wrong, like something essential had been displaced. Like grief had taken all the air in the world and swallowed it.

  “Let me go,” I begged Basin, even though his grip on me was everything that kept me upright.

  When they finally let me go, I stood there shaking. I couldn’t see the house anymore, only the glow behind the smoke. I kept waiting for the flames to move, for some shape to walk out.

  But there was nothing.

  What if I could have stopped it?

  The thought rooted itself deep and wouldn’t let go.

  “Bluebird, please.” Basin pleaded. “He’s gone if he’s in there, but let’s get back on our horses. If he got out, he couldn't have gotten far. “We’ll look,” Basin said.

  I looked up at him. Finally, I noticed the sadness in his eyes too. He wasn’t screaming and kicking like me, but he’s sad too. I can see that. We all are. He must have taken my silence as agreement since he let me run back towards Aster. We rode up into the hills behind the house, hurrying to find him alive. Basin left Aster to me, letting me hurry ahead while he rode with Saoirse.

  He can’t have gotten far.

  Basin’s voice repeated in my head. My brain was scrambled, I couldn’t think; I couldn’t see through the thick layer of smoke that settled over the hills. Aster struggled against my commands for her to move forward, clearly not wanting to move into the smoke that stung both of our eyes. I didn’t want to force her where she clearly refused to go, but there was no choice. If he’s out here, we have to find him. Getting through this haze on foot would get us nowhere. I whispered a prayer to the wind, begging, pleading for him to still be here. Nothing would ever be the same if he were gone. Our friend group, this city, my life. Everything suddenly felt so gray and hopeless. I’m not going to give up until I’ve at least found his body. He deserves a proper burial if he couldn’t get a proper death.

  We rode through the hills long after the city disappeared behind us, the smoke still clawing at the sky like it couldn’t let go. My eyes burned from more than the wind. Every shadow, every twisted branch looked like it could be him. But it never was. The ground was soft beneath Aster’s hooves, scarred by ash and prints from frightened animals fleeing the fire. Basin rode just behind me, silent. I could feel his grief without needing to look at him. It hung between us like fog, thick and choking.

  “He can’t have gotten far,” he’d said. But the words didn’t comfort me anymore. They only echoed in my head, over and over, until they stopped sounding like words at all. The farther we rode, the more hopeless it felt. The night stretched on endlessly, cold and cruel. My hands ached from gripping the reins; my throat was raw from crying his name into the dark. The only answer was the crackling of dying embers somewhere far behind us. When we stopped to rest, I slipped down from Aster and nearly fell to my knees. The grass here was wet with dew, untouched by fire, but I could still smell the smoke clinging to my skin, my hair, my soul. Basin said something, maybe my name, but it sounded distant. I barely heard him.

  “He wouldn’t leave us,” I whispered, not sure if I meant it as a prayer or an accusation. “He wouldn’t just~” My voice cracked, swallowed by the night.

  Basin didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. We both knew we were chasing ghosts. I stared out over the black hills until the horizon blurred. My body was numb, but my mind kept running. If I’d been faster… if I’d seen the smoke sooner… if I’d stayed instead of taking that last job… what if. The thought gnawed at me, slow and cruel, until I felt hollow. The wind shifted. I thought I heard something, a voice, a cry, maybe a memory. My heart jumped, and I turned, scanning the ridge. But there was only the faint glow of the burning manor reflected in Basin’s glasses. He was looking at me the way you look at someone about to break.

  “We’ll find him,” he said softly.

  I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe a lot of things. But the hills gave no answers, and the stars had all gone dark. I don’t know how long we searched after that. The night lost all meaning. I could have been walking for minutes or days. It didn’t matter. The hills were endless, the same gray slopes repeating over and over. Basin’s voice came and went, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, calling my name like it could anchor me to something real. We’d left the horses tied to a tree where we rested, continuing on foot. The sky was starting to pale by the time I realized how far we’d come. My legs ached, my throat burned, and my voice was gone from shouting his name. The night had turned to that strange gray before dawn when everything looked ghostly and hollow, as if the world was holding its breath. Basin was a few paces ahead, his silhouette flickering between the trees. Saoirse followed close behind me, her face tight and unreadable. None of us really spoke. There was nothing left to say. Not until we found him.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “He can’t have gotten far,” Basin kept muttering under his breath, but I couldn’t tell if he was saying it for me or for himself.

  Then, just as the first line of gold broke the horizon, I saw him.

  At first, I thought it was just another shadow, something my brain invented from exhaustion. But then the light hit his face. Pale violet, streaked with soot. His head slumped forward against his chest.

  “Yann?k,” I breathed.

  Basin turned so sharply that he almost ran into me, startled. Saoirse’s hand shot out to steady me, but I was already stumbling down the hill, nearly falling as the earth gave way beneath my boots. He was sitting at the base of a tree, the same one that overlooked the manor grounds. Behind him, the last of the smoke curled lazily toward the sky, glowing orange in the sunrise. For a terrible moment, I thought he wasn’t breathing. Then I saw the shallow rise and fall of his chest. His body was so battered I barely recognized him. His sweet, warm features were misshapen and swollen. His nose was bloody and broken.

  “He’s alive,” I said, though my voice came out broken.

  Basin slid down beside him, his hand hovering near Yann?k’s shoulder but not quite touching. “How… how is he~”

  Saoirse approached quietly, her boots crunching over the dead grass. She looked at him for a long moment before sinking beside me. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her face smeared with ash.

  “We need to get him away from here before anyone sees,” she said softly. “Before sunrise fully breaks.”

  I nodded, still staring at him. His skin was pale, too pale, and his veins shimmered faintly beneath the surface, like threads of gold under glass. I reached out, brushing the back of my hand against his cheek. He was warm. Too warm.

  “Yann?k?” I whispered. His eyelids fluttered, and I caught the faintest flash of gold beneath them.

  Saoirse exhaled, barely audible. “Gods help us… what did they do to you?”

  No one answered. The only sound was the wind moving through the grass, carrying the scent of smoke and salt from the sea, and the first birds of morning, singing over the ruin of everything we’d known. The sun rose fully then, spilling light across the hill. For the first time, I saw the ashes of the manor clearly below us; black, lifeless, silent. And yet, beside me, Yann?k breathed. The light crept higher, spilling gold across the hillside. The smoke that had once smothered the sky now rose thin and gray, carrying the last of the manor’s scent with it. Burnt cedar, oil, and blood. Yann?k stirred when the sun touched his face. Just a faint twitch of his fingers, then his head tilted back against the tree. His lips moved, but no sound came. I leaned closer, straining to hear him.

  “Don’t~” he rasped.

  Saoirse knelt quickly, her hand hovering over his arm. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t go back,” he whispered, barely audible, before his eyes rolled upward and closed again.

  Basin swore under his breath. “We can’t stay out here. The city guard will come looking once they see the smoke.”

  I looked down the hill, where the morning mist was curling around the trees. The distant glow of the fire was fading, leaving only the black skeleton of the house, a tomb in the daylight.

  The thought of leaving him here made my chest ache.

  “We’ll take him to the cliffs by Vrezna,” I said finally. “There’s an old chapel up there. No one goes that far anymore.”

  Basin hesitated, glancing at Saoirse, but she nodded. “It’s hidden enough. We can tend to him there.”

  We worked in silence, lifting Yann?k carefully between us. His weight surprised me, heavier than I remembered, like something had settled inside him overnight. When my fingers brushed his wrist, his pulse jumped, faint but wild. The moment we laid him across Aster’s back, his head turned toward the light. The sun caught in his hair and horns, the faint gold threading along the ridges like molten metal. It was beautiful, and wrong.

  “He’s burning,” I said.

  “No,” Basin said, his voice tight. “That’s not fire.”

  We didn’t speak again after that. Saoirse led the way up the ridge, her coat whipping behind her in the wind. Basin held the reins, guiding the horse carefully through the uneven ground. I walked beside Yann?k, one hand on his arm, afraid that if I let go, he’d vanish like smoke.

  The morning light grew stronger as we climbed, flooding the valley below with colour, crimson, gold, and ash. From up there, Morn?ngstar Manor looked like nothing more than a scar on the landscape. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. The tears had burned out of me long ago. When we reached the chapel ruins, the sun was fully risen. Saoirse stopped at the gate, her hand resting on the weathered stone arch.

  “We’ll keep him here until he wakes,” she said quietly.

  Basin exhaled, his breath trembling in the cold air. “And when he does?”

  None of us answered. I looked down at Yann?k, at the faint gold light pulsing beneath his skin, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him. The sun caught on his skin, gilding him in light, beautiful and wrong all at once. For a moment, he looked almost divine, as if the fire had blessed him instead of burned him. But the longer I watched, the more I understood. The light beneath his skin moved like something alive. He wasn’t the same. None of us were.

  The days came and went, and I lost track of how long it had been. A week must have passed, but it felt longer. Yann?k hadn’t woken. We’d laid him on the altar when we first brought him here, wrapped in what was left of his cloak. At first, he looked dead, still, and pale. Like an unlit candle. He had regained some warmth since then. Most importantly, he’s still breathing. The gold under his skin glowed at night, like fire trying to breathe beneath thick glass.

  The chapel had been silent almost the entire time since we arrived. No one wanted to disturb his sleep. It smelled like rotten earth and mold, awful. The air was thick and heavy with waiting. Even the birds had left us alone. We took turns watching him. None of us dared to bring him back into the city; the guards would take him from us the second they saw him.

  Basin came every day, forcing me to sleep. He told me that they had found bodies in the rubble of Morn?ngstar house. A lot of them have been identified as missing people from the last fifty years. I didn’t know what to make of that. It scared me. He brought me soup and blankets from home, making sure I stayed warm at night, saying it was the least he could do since I refused to leave Yann?k alone. Basin took notes every time he came, writing and whispering to himself like he could make sense of Yann?k’s condition. He’d stand over him for hours, poking and prodding like he was going to figure it out any second.

  Saoirse didn’t come as often. I didn’t blame her; it was difficult for all of us, seeing our friend like that. She never spoke when she was there; she just stood there, looking at him the way you’d look at something that’s both fragile and dangerous at the same time. I couldn’t stop watching the light move under his skin. Sometimes it pulsed with his heart. Other times, it didn’t. I tried not to think about what it could mean.

  One morning, when we were all gathered around him, Basin spoke.

  “He’s healing.” He said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “His body is getting stronger every day.”

  “Bodies heal,” Saoirse said, “Souls don’t.”

  Those words, the first she had spoken in front of me in days, didn’t leave with her.

  I sat beside him as the sun rose through the broken roof, painting the murals of saints in red and orange. I caught myself wanting to believe that waking up would mean something had been fixed.

  That something resembling normal might still be possible. He'd smile and tell me everything is fine. We’d laugh about the whole thing like nothing happened. But I knew that wasn’t true. There was no laughter, only the quiet evening and the sound of Basin flipping the pages of his schoolbook in the pew behind me.

  I reached out and grabbed Yann?k’s hand, and to my surprise, it wasn’t cold. It was warm; warmer than mine. His pulse jumped under my fingers, sharp and strong. I froze with shock. Then his eyelids fluttered.

  “Basin!” I hissed.

  The gold light under Yann?k’s skin flickered once, brighter than before. Then it faded again, and his breathing hitched. I leaned closer, barely daring to breathe.

  “Yann?k?” I asked quietly

  His eyes opened. Still, that solid gold, not the violet shade they were before all this, but he looked at me. He saw me. Not like when he spoke to us under that tree a week ago. I couldn’t move. The world narrowed at the sound of his breath. Uneven, caught halfway between a gasp and a sob.

  “Basin!” I called again, louder now. My voice cracking.

  His eyes were fully open now, staring at the ceiling where the morning sun fell through the stained glass, playing with its colours on his skin. He’s beautiful, alive. He didn’t leave us.

  “It’s alright,” I whispered, “You’re safe, You’re~.”

  He inhaled sharply, like someone coming up from drowning. His hand shot out and forcefully grabbed my wrist. His skin is burning hot.

  I tried not to flinch. “Yann?k, it’s me. It’s Azure.”

  His lips parted like he wanted to say something, but the sound that came out was wrong. A shuddering, deep, and hollow noise. Not his voice. I thought I could hear two voices trying to speak at once. His own is buried somewhere deep in there.

  “Where~” he began, then stopped, choking on his words. His eyes darted around the chapel, unfocused. “The fire… Leo~”

  “Don’t,” I said, making my words as gentle as I could. “Don’t try to remember yet. You’re safe.”

  Basin rushed towards us then. His book was clutched in one hand. He froze in front of Yann?k, staring at the golden light pulsing faintly along the veins in his neck.

  “Gods,” he muttered under his breath.

  Yann?k turned his face to Basin, the strange glow in his eyes fading, letting exhaustion show. There was something else in his eyes, too, recognition maybe, or something completely different that I couldn’t decipher.

  “I thought I was still there,” he said quietly, voice raw. “In the dark.”

  Basin knelt beside him, setting the journal down carefully. “You’ve been unconscious for days,” he said softly. “You’re safe now.”

  Yann?k’s brow furrowed, his gaze drifting toward the cracks in the chapel ceiling, where thin light slipped through the dust.

  “Days?” His voice sounded distant, like he was still waking inside his own head. “It doesn’t feel like… it stopped.”

  “What doesn’t?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

  He blinked slowly, as if struggling to hold onto a thought that kept sliding away. “The sound,” he said. “It was everywhere. It’s quiet now, but… it feels wrong.”

  Basin and I exchanged a look, not fear exactly, but a shared unease. Yann?k’s eyes had always been bright, alive. Now they looked older, dulled by something I couldn’t name.

  “You need rest,” I said gently, brushing a strand of hair from his face. His skin was cold, clammy with sweat, but not fevered. Just… empty. “We’ll stay here until you’re strong enough to move.”

  He nodded faintly, his eyelids already fluttering closed again. “Don’t leave,” he murmured. “We won’t,” I promised.

  The chapel fell into silence again. Only the wind moved, threading through the cracks in the walls, carrying the faint scent of salt from the cliffs. Yann?k had slipped back into a shallow sleep, his breathing steady now, his features calmer. Almost peaceful. Basin was still kneeling beside him, eyes scanning every detail, as if the rhythm of Yann?k’s breath might tell him what the gods wouldn’t. He looked tired, older than he had been a week ago. The door creaked open. Saoirse’s boots echoed softly against the stone as she stepped inside. She didn’t say anything at first, just took in the sight of him lying there beneath the stained glass and the morning light.

  “He woke?” she asked quietly.

  I nodded. “For a moment. He knew who we were. He’s just… weak.”

  Saoirse approached slowly, her coat brushing the pews as she passed. She stopped at the altar, studying his face like one might study an omen. Then she crouched beside him, close enough for her shadow to fall across his chest.

  “He’s colder than he should be,” she murmured, brushing her fingertips lightly over his hand. “No tremors, no fever. Just… still.”

  “He’s alive,” I said, more defensive than I meant to sound.

  “Alive,” she echoed, tasting the word. “Do you know what it means to come back from something like that?”

  I frowned. “He didn’t come back. He survived.”

  Saoirse’s eyes lifted to mine, bright, steady. “People don’t survive what I saw in that house.” She straightened, folding her arms. “You saw it too. Whatever happened there didn’t just take from him. It changed him.”

  “We don’t know what happened there,” I argued. Crossing my arms defensively.

  Basin rose, wiping his hands on a cloth that was already stained with soot. “Azure’s right. And speculation doesn’t help,” he said quietly. “He needs rest, not superstition.”

  “It isn’t superstition,” Saoirse replied. “It’s caution.” She turned back toward Yann?k, her expression softening, not pitying, exactly, but wary. “You can’t treat this like a fever or a wound. We don’t know what he brought with him out of that place.”

  I wanted to argue, but my throat closed around the words. She wasn’t wrong. Something about him did feel different, not in the way of monsters, but in the way of miracles: too still, too quiet, too much. The light shifted again through the broken window, spilling gold across his face. For a moment, it caught in his eyelashes, and he looked almost holy. Saoirse turned away first. “Keep watch tonight,” she said. “If he dreams, wake him.”

  “You think he’s dangerous?” Basin asked.

  She paused at the door. “No,” she said finally. “I think he’s lost.”

  Then she was gone, the echo of her boots fading into the wind that swept through the chapel, tugging at the candles until they trembled. I stayed beside him long after she left, my hand resting lightly on his arm, afraid that if I looked away for too long, he might vanish.