The spark still continues to fail him. He feels it. Well, he doesn’t so much feel it as notice that with each pulse it moves closer to being dim again. Aarav slumps against the oak, pretending the bark biting through his shirt gives him something solid to hold on to. It doesn’t. His eyes stay hooked on Seren’s silhouette flickering in the campfire’s glow, as if watching her might coax the fire awake again.

  Cold presses in from every angle. The kind that normally sharpens him. Not tonight. The real weight sits lower, a hollow feeling space in his chest where heat should be rolling and snarling like a living thing. That wild burst. That reckless eruption the moment she’d crashed headfirst into his world, fading away. A single shout of power? It isn’t nearly enough. He needs more, but it hasn’t flared again for a while now.

  Not in Marrow’s twisting alleys. Not when soldiers thundered so close he could’ve counted their breaths. Nothing. Just the faint memory of heat, thinning each time he tries to grab hold of it. No room to stop. No room to breathe in a way that isn’t frantic. Just running and hoping each shadow hides them well enough. As though whatever ember remains is cannibalising itself to keep the illusion alive. He’s almost certain he expected this. Or feared it. There’s always a cost.

  Nothing good ever comes for free.

  A growl breaks the silence. Sharp enough to carve through the night. Aarav’s up in a blink, ready and dagger in hand, only to realise the threat is… Seren. Or rather, Seren’s stomach. She folds over herself, palm clamped to her middle, her face blooming with embarrassment.

  “It wasn’t that loud,” she insists, though her voice betrays her.

  He gives her a look, eyebrow up, mouth twitching because he can’t help it. A laugh bursts from his lips as he lowers the blade “Loud enough I thought we were under attack by some beast!”

  Her glare is flimsy at best, falling apart before it even reaches him. He slips a hand into his satchel, fishing through the meagre collection inside. “Let’s feed you before your belly declares our location to any searching soldiers.”

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  He pulls out the stolen bundle. Flatbread. Two apples bruised enough to look apologetic. Salted meat wrapped in waxed cloth. He sets everything on a flat stone between them, the salt sharp in the air. Not exactly a feast, but food is food.

  His mind drifts back to where he snagged it. A narrow lane swallowed by weeds, leading to a house leaning so heavily to one side it seemed to sigh with the effort of staying upright. The garden, if the wild patch could still be called that, was more thorn than green. Nettles hid most of the path. A cloak hung by the door, worn thin but mended with care. Beside it, a pair of shoes placed neatly on the step. All small, quiet signs that someone lived there. A family, maybe, just trying to get by.

  And he took from them anyway.

  He hadn’t lingered. He moved through that doorway the way smoke squeezes through cracks, fast and quiet, his eyes skimming everything and valuing it all at once. The place smelled of simmering stew and old hearth ash. A loaf still warm from the oven waited on a crooked shelf. Apples gathered in a chipped bowl. Thin salted meat hung near the fire’s dying glow. Folded clothes lay on a chair, patiently expecting morning.

  He took what he could carry without slowing himself down. Bread tucked under his arm. Apples pocketed. Strips of meat bundled. The folded clothes added to the haul. His hand paused over a child’s wooden horse, one leg missing, the paint chipped away to ghostly patches. He let it be. Stepped back. Left the door half open because shutting it felt like more effort than it was worth.

  No guilt pricks him. Not then. Not now. Solmaris had taught him early: steal or starve. Those alleys hadn’t left room for softer lessons. He lived. And because he lives, she gets to live too. Seren needed a change of clothes and he had done what was necessary to get them.

  They eat the way fugitives do, with quick hands and quiet mouths. Bread torn in uneven pieces. Apples eaten until not even seeds remain. The meat is hard as old leather but it settles the emptiness clawing their bellies. Above them stretches a star-scattered sky that feels too enormous, too ancient, to care about their little scramble of survival.

  Aarav leans back, chewing slow, letting the sky swallow his thoughts. Against that infinity, his troubles feel more like pebbles than mountains.