Amiya's POV
They made camp near the bridge, the mist curling low as dusk settled into night. The world didn't sleep—and neither did Amiya.
She lay curled beneath her cloak, her back against the mossy rise near the fire Sylas had built. It crackled quietly now, the flames muted under the damp air. The earlier shimmer—the magic, whatever it had been—was gone. But her skin still prickled, and her heart hadn't slowed since.
The hum had stopped, but the echo of it lingered inside her. Like it had left something behind. Like it had seen her, and for the first time in her life, something had looked back.
Across from her, Sylas sat with his back to a crooked stump, sharpening his knife again. Always sharpening. Like if he stopped, the silence would devour them both.
She shifted, drawing her knees up, her gaze flicking to the bridge. It looked so normal now. Just old stone and moss, nothing like the strange shimmer they'd seen. Nothing like the ripple she had felt in her blood.
That was the part she couldn't shake.
She should have been scared. Maybe she was. But deeper than that was a gnawing unease—the sense that this wasn't the first time something had tried to wake up inside her. Just the first time she couldn't ignore it.
"Sylas," she said softly, breaking the quiet.
His head lifted slightly.
"If something's changing in me… if I have magic—real magic—what happens then?"
He paused. Then slowly, "That depends on what kind."
Her stomach twisted. She pulled her cloak tighter around herself. "I never… I wasn't supposed to have anything. My mother—she used to say I was lucky not to. Said the bloodline skipped me."
Sylas frowned. "Your mother lied."
She looked at him sharply.
"Or she was wrong," he added. "But I don't think that glow was a coincidence. Magic like that doesn't just show up for no reason."
She swallowed hard. "It felt… like it knew me."
That quieted him for a long moment.
Then he said, "It probably did."
Amiya didn't sleep. Not really. But sometime near dawn, she must've dozed off—because the next thing she knew, Sylas was crouched near the coals, banked low, and the sky was the color of bruised lilac.
They broke camp without speaking much. The mist was thicker now, and the world felt changed. Like they'd crossed into some place that didn't quite belong to the rest of Nytherra.
And as they walked, Amiya couldn't help but glance back toward the bridge.
Just once.
As if something might still be watching them from beneath it.
Sylas's POV
Sylas didn't sleep that night.
He stayed by the fire, eyes half-lidded but alert, blade always in reach. Not because of the forest. Not because of Ronan.
Because of her.
He didn't like mysteries. And Amiya—gods damn her—was a walking one. Princess, fugitive, something half-asleep inside her that the world hadn't touched yet.
But that shimmer on the bridge hadn't been nothing.
He'd seen magic before—wild magic, broken magic, the kind that ruined villages and lured fools to their deaths. But this? This had been different.
It hadn't tried to consume her. It had responded. Recognized something. And Sylas had felt that shift. The moment it rippled under her skin, it had brushed his instincts like a whisper on steel.
She'd looked ready to fall into it. Like it was calling her home.
He didn't like the thought. Didn't like anything he couldn't fight off with a blade.
She watched him across the fire once. Their eyes met, briefly.
He hadn't said anything. But neither had she.
He noticed the way her fingers twitched in her sleep—or what passed for sleep. She was restless, coiled like a spring, as if even her dreams didn't let her rest. When she stirred and blinked toward the dying embers, his voice cut through the hush.
"You felt it, didn't you?"
She nodded slowly. "Yes. Like it… knew me."
He didn't call her crazy. He didn't tell her she was imagining things. Because he'd seen it too. And because deep down, part of him already suspected the truth:
That this wasn't just magic. It was something older. Rooted in her blood. And maybe… in that pendant he still hadn't told her he carried.
His hand brushed the inside of his coat where the pendant lay tucked in a hidden pocket. Cold. Silent. Ordinary—until now.
He didn't know what it did. Didn't know if it had triggered what they'd seen. But if that shimmer on the bridge was a sign of something stirring in her, it was a sign he couldn't ignore.
By morning, he'd made his choice.
They wouldn't be continuing west.
They'd turn south—toward the Singing Hollow. Toward the old places that whispered of long-dead power.
She wouldn't like it. She might even fight him on it.
But whatever was waking up in Amiya… it was older than either of them.
And it sure as hell wasn't going to let them outrun it.