I couldn't sleep.
Our fire had dwindled to embers, casting the single room in a dull orange glow that barely pushed back the darkness. Outside, the wind moaned through the marshlands, carrying the distant sounds of things best left unnamed.
Joran slept near the door, his body curled toward the exit—even in sleep, he remained the sentinel. His breathing came slow and even, the rhythm of a man who'd learned to rest deeply whenever the opportunity presented itself. Lucky bastard.
Across from me, Laina sat with her back against the wall, knees drawn to her chest. She'd stripped down to her underclothes like the rest of us, our outer garments hanging near the hearth to dry. The firelight caught on something at her throat—a small pendant that glinted gold against her skin.
"You should sleep," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Long day tomorrow."
"Every day is long in this place," I replied, flexing my damaged hands. Another scar to add to the collection—if I lived long enough for it to heal.
Laina's eyes tracked the movement. "How are they?"
"Functional." I extended my fingers, then curled them back. "I've had worse."
She shook her head, a strand of black hair falling across her face. "No normal person should be able to use their hands after what you've been through. The cold alone would have..."
"Maybe I'm not normal," I said with a half-smile.
"Clearly." She brushed the hair back behind her ear. "Most people would have died ten times over by now."
I shrugged, unwilling to explain what I couldn't understand myself. The truth was, I didn't know why my body kept going when it should have failed. Was it the trial? Something about this S-rank trial that kept me functioning past normal human limits? Or was it something else entirely?
"What's that?" I asked instead, nodding toward the pendant at her throat.
Her hand rose to touch it, fingers tracing its outline. "My mother's. One of the few things I have left of her."
She hesitated, then leaned forward slightly, allowing me to see it better. It was a small, intricate thing—a golden flame encircling what looked like a teardrop of blue crystal.
"It's beautiful."
"It was a wedding gift from my father. He had it made by the finest jeweler in Hearthhome, back when the city still had artisans instead of just survivors." Her voice softened with the memory. "She never took it off. Not once in all the years I knew her."
"And now you wear it."
"Now I wear it," she agreed, letting it fall back against her skin. "To remember."
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
"What about you?" she asked. "Any keepsakes from home?"
"No."
"Nothing at all?"
I thought about it. "Just memories. And not many worth keeping."
She studied me, her violet eyes reflecting the dying embers. "You're a strange one, Isaiah. You fight like someone with nothing to lose, but you protect us like we matter."
"Maybe you do matter."
"To you? Why would we?"
I had no good answer for that. By all logic, these people shouldn't matter to me at all. They were constructs of the trial—not real people, just illusions created to test me. Yet sitting here, watching the firelight play across Laina's face, listening to Joran's steady breathing, it didn't feel that way.
They felt real. Too real.
"I don't know," I admitted finally. "Maybe I'm just tired of watching people die."
She nodded slowly, as though this made perfect sense. "There's been enough of that to last several lifetimes."
We fell silent, the only sounds the crackling fire and Joran's soft breathing.
"What will you do?" I asked eventually. "If we make it through this. If we end the winter."
Laina looked startled, as though the question had never occurred to her. "I don't know. I've spent so long fighting, I'm not sure I remember how to do anything else."
"There must be something you want. Besides survival."
She was quiet for so long I thought she might not answer. When she finally spoke, her voice had lost its edge, becoming something softer, almost wistful.
"I want to go home," she said. "Not home as it is now, but home as it was. Before everything. When my mother would sing while she worked and my father would come home with some small treasure he'd found in the markets. When the biggest worry was whether it would rain on festival day."
Her fingers played with the pendant again, turning it over and over.
"I want to be that little girl again. The one who took it all for granted—the warmth, the safety, the love. Just... happiness without looking over my shoulder."
We were silent for a moment before she asked another question. "What about you?"
"Me?"
"If we end this. What then?"
"I don't know," I said honestly. "I never expected to get this far."
She shifted, uncurling her legs and leaning forward slightly. The movement brought her closer, close enough that I could see the individual strands of her hair falling around her face, the slight chapping of her lips from the cold.
"You must want something," she insisted. "Everyone wants something."
What did I want? To survive, obviously. To complete the trial and return to my own world. But beyond that?
"I want..." I started, then stopped, unsure how to continue.
"Yes?"
"I want to stop being cold," I said finally.
"That's a start, I suppose."
She moved again, edging closer until our shoulders nearly touched.
"Body heat," she explained, her voice steady but her eyes carefully avoiding mine. "Best way to stay warm."
"Right," I agreed.
She settled beside me, her arm pressed against mine. Even through the thin fabric of our underclothes, I could feel the warmth of her skin.
"Your hands," she said after a moment. "Let me see them."
I hesitated, then extended my damaged hands toward her. She took them gently, turning them over to examine the raw, reddened skin.
"These need proper treatment," she murmured. "Herbs, bandages. Not just magic daggers and sheer stubbornness."
"Daggers and stubbornness have gotten me this far."
"And how much further do you think they'll get you?" Her thumbs traced the edges of the worst wounds. "Even you have limits, Isaiah."
"Haven't found them yet."
She looked up then, her violet eyes meeting mine directly. "That's what worries me."
The intensity in her gaze caught me off guard.
"I'm fine," I said, the words automatic.
"No. You're not." Her hands still held mine, warm and steady. "You're just better at hiding it than most."
I should have pulled away. Should have made some dismissive remark and moved back to safer ground.
"Neither are you," I said quietly.
Her breath caught slightly.
"Isaiah..."
"We should sleep," I said, breaking the moment before it could fully form. "Like you said. Long day tomorrow."
She released my hands slowly, her fingers trailing across my palms. "Right. Sleep."
But neither of us moved away.
"Tell me something true," she said suddenly.
"What do you mean?"
"About you. Something I wouldn't know. Something that matters."
I considered deflecting, giving her some trivial detail that would satisfy the letter of her request without revealing anything meaningful. It would have been safer, smarter.
"I'm afraid."
Her eyebrows rose slightly. "Of what?"
"That none of this is real. That when it's over—if it's over—I'll wake up and find it was just... a dream. A test. That none of it mattered."
"This feels pretty real to me," she said, gesturing to our surroundings. "The cold. The pain. The fear. If it's a dream, it's the most vivid one I've ever had."
"Maybe that's the point," I said, voicing the thought that had been nagging at me since the beginning. "Maybe the trials are different. More immersive. More..."
"More what?"
"More cruel," I finished. "To make you care about things that aren't real. People who don't exist."
Her expression hardened. "I exist, Isaiah. I've existed for twenty years in this frozen hell. I've lost everyone I've ever loved to it. I've fought and bled and nearly died more times than I can count. If that's not real, then what is?"
I had no answer for her. How could I explain that in my world, the one I came from, none of this existed? That Frostfall, the Winter King, the Temple of Echoes—all of it was just a construct designed to test me? That she herself might be nothing more than an elaborate illusion?
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."
"No," she cut me off, her voice softening. "I understand. Sometimes I wonder too. If any of this makes sense. If we're all just tools in some game we don't understand."
She looked down at her hands, now resting in her lap. "But then I feel this—" she touched her pendant again "—and I remember my mother's face when she gave it to me. The way she smiled. The warmth of her hands. And I know that was real. Whatever else happens, that was real."
The fire had dimmed further, leaving most of the hut in shadow.
"Your turn," I said.
"My turn?"
"Tell me something true. Something that matters."
She thought for a moment, her fingers still playing with the pendant. Then she looked up, meeting my eyes directly.
"I'm afraid too," she admitted. "Not of dying. I made peace with that a long time ago. I'm afraid of surviving. Of reaching the end of all this and not knowing what comes next."
"Is that why you want to go back? To before?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I just want to remember what it felt like. To be happy without questioning it. To love without counting the cost."
The last word hung in the air between us, charged with meaning neither of us was ready to acknowledge.
"We should sleep," she said again, but made no move to pull away.
"We should," I agreed, equally stationary.
Her eyes dropped to my mouth, then back up. A small crease appeared between her brows, as though she was working through a difficult problem.
"Isaiah," she said, my name barely audible.
"Yes?"
"If this isn't real—if none of this matters in the end—then what's the harm in..."
She didn't finish the thought, but I understood it anyway. What's the harm in allowing ourselves this moment? What's the harm in pretending, just for tonight, that we're not who we are, that the world isn't what it is?
I reached up slowly, giving her time to pull away, and brushed a strand of hair back from her face. Her skin was warm beneath my damaged fingers.
"And if it is real?" I asked quietly.
"Then we'll deal with that tomorrow."
She leaned forward, closing the small space between us, and pressed her lips to mine. The contact was gentle at first, almost tentative—a question more than a statement. When I didn't pull away, her hand came up to rest against my chest, fingers splaying over my heart.
I kissed her back, my damaged hands finding her waist, careful despite the urgency building in my chest. Her lips were chapped from the cold but soft underneath, moving against mine.
The pendant pressed between us, cold metal against warm skin. I could feel her heartbeat, quick and strong, matching the rhythm of my own.
When we finally broke apart, her breath came quick and shallow, her violet eyes wide in the dim light.
She rested her forehead against mine, her fingers still splayed across my chest. "Tomorrow is going to be complicated, isn't it?"
"Tomorrow is always complicated."
She laughed softly. "True enough."
We stayed like that for a long moment, foreheads touching, breathing each other's air. The wind continued to moan outside, and the fire crackled low in the hearth, but these sounds seemed distant, unimportant.
"We really should sleep," she said eventually, though she made no move to pull away.
"You keep saying that."
"And you keep not listening."
"I never claimed to be good at following orders."
She pulled back slightly, just enough to look me in the eyes. "No. You're really not."
Slowly, she moved away, settling herself beside me rather than across from me. Her shoulder still pressed against mine, her warmth a welcome barrier against the chill seeping through the hut's walls.
"Sleep," she said, more firmly this time. "I'll take first watch."
"I thought Joran was on watch."
"Joran needs rest. So do you." She nudged me gently. "I'll wake you if anything happens."
I wanted to argue, to insist that I was fine, that I could keep watch while she slept. But the truth was, exhaustion had settled deep in my bones, and even my stubborn determination couldn't keep it at bay forever.
"Two hours," I conceded. "Then we switch."
She nodded, though something in her expression told me she had no intention of waking me that soon. "Two hours."
I let my head fall back against the wall, closing my eyes. The darkness behind my lids was immediate and encompassing. I could feel Laina beside me, solid and warm, her breathing a steady counterpoint to my own.
Just before sleep claimed me, I felt her hand find mine, her fingers intertwining with my damaged ones.
"Isaiah," she whispered, so softly I nearly missed it.
"Mm?"
"Whatever happens tomorrow... I'm glad you're here."