Hajin drifted through cedar warmth toward a light he couldn't name, and neither his ruined arm nor the bed answered. Rain still fell inside his memory, running across Vella's face while he held her against the wall his fist cracked.
'Where the hell am I, and why does it smell like a carpenter's closet?'
He reached for the bond and found its two brightest paths running farther inside, away from the rain.
A sphere hung ahead, and inside it the Goddess slept, her chest rising faintly against light that hid every edge. He knew her before he found any reason for knowing, and that certainty dragged him closer despite the open wounds.
Seven wounds crossed the sleeping form, leaving dark traces where nothing in that warm place could reach them.
One split her shoulder and another crossed her brow, while the remaining five bled ash along the slowly turning torso. The ash drifted loose and gathered back again, and he remembered his own fist striking Vella before it tried helping.
