The world went black.
When Kaelen's eyes finally snapped open, the world was a blur of grey and gold. Her throat felt as if she had swallowed broken glass, every breath a jagged reminder of the vacuum she had stepped into. The ceiling above her, once the beautiful hue of a blue and gold palace sky, was gone. In its place was the raw, uncaring expanse of dull cloth, framed by the tattered remains of a tent that had been mantled in a hurry near the port.
"Easy," a voice grounded her.
It wasn't the polished, clinical tone of a palace healer, nor the haughty command of the Queen's aide. It was the steady, resonant voice of Petra. The earth-bender sat on a low stool by the bedside, her hands stained with the red dust of the clearing and her boots caked in dried mud. She looked exhausted, her eyes rimmed with the fatigue of someone who had stood a lone vigil against the dark.
"You've been out for two days," Petra said softly. "I wasn't sure the earth would let you go. You were vibrating."
"Vibrating?" Kaelen struggled to ask.
"Yeahhh, vibrating… Like a tuning fork," Petra responded with a touch of her usual dry sarcasm, "struck by god."
Kaelen tried to speak, but only a wet rattle emerged. She looked down at her hands. They were wrapped in rough, utilitarian bandages that were Petra's handiwork, clearly, not a surgeon's or a physician's. Through the thin fabric, she could see the black veins pulsing with a rhythmic, sickly light. It wasn't just blood in there anymore; it was a map of the void, a lingering residue of the breach that refused to dissipate.
"How... long?" she managed to gasp.
"Two days," Petra replied, leaning forward to offer a wooden cup of water. Her movements were stiff. "The Queen and the Physician left yesterday morning. They didn't wait to see if your heart would stop or start again. They took the guard, the healers, and every scrap of comfort back to the capital. Aeryn didn't even look back at your tent. She told the Commander you were a 'necessary casualty' of the breach. A tool that had fulfilled its purpose and broken in the process."
Kaelen took a shallow breath, the lukewarm water cooling her scorched throat but doing nothing to dull the fire in her chest. "The man?"
"The man?" Petra asked, surprised. "Ahhhh… your brother!"
"He is no brother of mine!" Kaelen managed to snap, her voice cracking with sudden venom.
But Petra didn't seem to hear the denial; her expression had turned dark, her jaw tightening. "He wasn't a man, Kaelen. I stayed to bury him, thinking he deserved that much. But the moment you struck, the illusion failed. He didn't bleed. He didn't even scream. He simply collapsed into a heap of cold ash and jagged, black glass. A facade made of old shadows and bad intentions. There was nothing left to bury. I watched the wind take the last of his dust this morning."
Kaelen lay back against the pillows, her mind racing. The "twin" had been a masterstroke of cruelty. But she remembered a face from the final vision, the mocking face of a courtier who had been there the day the Queen buried her parents. The betrayal was no longer a suspicion; it was a physical weight.
"They left us here to die in the dirt," Petra murmured.
Kaelen felt a strange sensation then a low-frequency hum vibrating through the frame of the cot, rising from the bedrock itself. It felt like a string being plucked in her marrow, synchronized with the pulsing black veins in her arms.
Slowly, painfully, Kaelen tilted her head. She looked at Petra, and despite the agony, a slow, terrifying smile spread across her face, cracking the dried blood on her lips.
"They wanted the truth buried with a ghost," Kaelen said, her voice a ghostly rasp. "They think they can close the door because they walked away from it."
Kaelen swung her legs off the bed. The world tilted violently; the room spun in a sickening kaleidoscope of grey and gold. Her feet hit the sun-baked earth, and for a moment, the hum intensified.
"Sahirra," she whispered. "It seems Sahirra is calling its inhabitants back."
"What?" Petra asked, looking at Kaelen as if she'd lost her mind.
"And I have always been a dutiful daughter."
"There is seriously something wrong with your head! I will look for a physician!" Petra turned to run out, panicked by Kaelen's predatory intensity.
Kaelen reached for her discarded cloak, throwing it over her shoulders to hide the black rot on her skin. "We don't need healers, Petra. And we don't need any mercy." She stood up, her shadow stretching long and dark across the floor. "We leave today."