Chapter 45. Ash Between Us

She moved like something drugged, stumbling, slow. The hallucination had faded, but it hadn’t let her go. Every sound felt twice as loud now, every shadow three times darker. Her limbs obeyed her, but only barely. A cold sweat clung to her skin, slick and heavy.

She needed water.

Her mouth was thick with salt and taste of metal—leftover adrenaline or blood, she couldn’t tell. Her tongue felt foreign, as though it didn’t belong to a human mouth anymore.

She moved downslope, into a narrow gully where the ground held less snow, more shadow. It was there she heard it: the distant hush of water beneath ice. A whispering pulse under the earth. She followed the sound like instinct—like it knew her name.

The stream was shallow, half-frozen, the ice gone cloudy with silt and rotted leaves. In the middle, a channel of water still ran, sluggish and dark. The banks were slick with frozen moss. Her boots skidded, but she caught herself, kneeling.

She reached out a h