EPILOGUE — KENDRA

EPILOGUE — KENDRAPart 1:A sharp crack of flint slices through the pitch-black vault. For a terrifying second, the spark just sits on the dark, dense bark of the Gloom-Oak log. Then, with a sudden hiss, the wood ignites into a brilliant, shifting blue firelight.The effect is immediate. Brilliant blue light surges outward, slicing through the dark, stagnant air and creating a warm, safe pocket around our camp. Under the dancing flames, the oppressive atmosphere dissolves. Shifting shadows that once crawled from the corners snap back, pinned harmlessly to the masonry. Deeper in the chambers, the dripping water stops taunting me with that familiar metallic sob, turning back into simple echoes of water hitting stone.You gesture for me to sit with you by the heat. My knees give out. I can’t stop staring at the blue embers. Everything feels distant. I can barely feel your hands as you kneel beside me and begin wrapping bandages around my raw, frostbitten fingers.You look up at my face, your eyes scanning my expression in the shifting blue light. But I manage to keep whatever you are searching for buried beneath the adrenaline still pumping through my veins. You can see only the blank, unreadable mask of a girl who just watched her entire world end.Then you break the heavy silence of the underbelly.“Loosing that arrow was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I did it for you.”I stay silent but I don’t pull my hands away from your grip. The only sound is the hiss of the fire. I can’t look at you. But you don’t give up. Your voice carries an undeniable weight that forces me to listen as you lay the brutal truth bare between us.“I have no idea what is happening, Kendra, but I think you know as well as I do that, no matter how much it hurts, Ansel—your father—is dead. He was dead before I ever fired a shot. Whatever took hold of him took over, and what was left was not him. I am truly sorry, but he is gone. You are still here, and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure it stays that way.”The cold wall of anger—so much like the air beyond the fire you made—completely shatters under the weight of your words.My chest heaves a jagged, feral sob. I pull my hands from you, burying my face in them as warm tears cut clean tracks through the grey soot caked on my cheeks.“I know...” I whisper, my voice cracking, barely audible over the fire. “I know what his eyes looked like, Vespar. I know it wasn’t him. But my hands... I can still feel the frost on that iron. We locked the gate. I threw my weight onto the bracket. I helped you lock him out in the dark... how do we live with that? How does anyone live with that?”I curl tighter toward the blue flames, weeping openly now, the crushing weight of my survival instinct turning into pure, exhausting grief. As I finally cry myself to exhaustion and drift off within moments, I hope I will wake to find this has all been a nightmare.