The canopy bloom kept pouring colour.

  The ecosystem kept making noise.

  Somewhere in the layers above, something clicked wrong, and the hoverers went quiet for a beat anyway.

  Zoya’s fingers touched the bracer once, not fond, not scared, like she was checking the collar on her own neck.

  Isaac didn’t tell her it would be okay.

  He didn’t say promises he couldn’t back.

  He asked the one thing that made sense.

  “Did your mom steal it for you,” he said, “or for herself?”

  Zoya’s throat worked.

  For a second she looked sixteen again, in a way that had nothing to do with size.

  “I can say both,” she said. “She needed me. She wanted me breathing. So she stole it and put it on me like it would keep me from getting taken.”

  Her jaw jumped once.

  “But she did it for me,” she said, and the words scraped on the way out. “That’s the part that makes me sick.”

  Isaac nodded once.

  He didn’t fix it.

  He just kept walking beside her.

  After the bracer’s silence, Isaac started counting without meaning to.

  Footfalls.

  Breaths.

  The space between canopy noises.

  Every scrape overhead made his shoulders tighten before his brain caught up.

  Every time Zoya’s wrist gave even the smallest hum, her fingers twitched toward it like she could stop it by force.

  Zoya talked anyway.

  She talked about her mother, but not like a hero story.

  Like a person.

  She talked about how Brimwick didn’t punish thieves.

  It punished symbols.

  It punished whatever the town would remember.

  “They don’t punish the thief,” she said. “They punish the person everyone will remember.”

  Isaac didn’t pretend not to understand. “You.”

  “Yeah,” Zoya said. “Me.”

  The word came out flat.

  Her jaw set after it, like she’d bitten down on something and refused to spit.

  They killed again.

  A breathling burst from a patch of fern, fast enough that Isaac’s wing didn’t make it in time.

  For the first time in a while, Zoya didn’t dodge.

  She turned her wrist.

  Not a big motion.

  A deliberate placement.

  The bracer caught the strike inside an invisible window, roughly the space of Zoya’s forearm and a little beyond.

  The hit didn’t slam metal.

  It slammed air.

  Hard.

  Pollen glitter split clean at the edge of it, like the air had a wall.

  The creature’s body jerked sideways as if it had hit a boundary made of bad luck.

  Zoya stared at her own wrist as if it had betrayed her by working.

  Then she laughed.

  Small.

  Shocked.

  “Oh,” she said. “It really is a shield.”

  Isaac’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. A stolen one.”

  “Borrowed, stolen,” Zoya said. “I don’t care. It worked.”

  The bracer warmed.

  The hum hinted at returning.

  The nearest glow-fungi leaned away from her wrist, dimming by a fraction like they didn’t want to be counted.

  Zoya’s face went hard.

  “Cool,” she said, voice bitter, and then she clamped down on it, pulling her wrist in like she was hiding contraband. “Now I have to pretend it didn’t.”

  She didn’t use it again immediately.

  That mattered.

  She didn’t get drunk on power.

  She got disciplined.

  Isaac watched her do it and felt something in his chest shift, not warmth exactly, more like respect seating into place.

  They walked.

  They killed.

  Isaac crushed another heart.

  This time the stamp lived in the edges.

  No powder described.

  No flare lingered.

  Just his plates seating clean, the click quieter, smoother, like his body was learning to fit itself.

  Zoya took a bite of the chocolate bar and chewed like it was medicine.

  Her face tightened.

  “I hate this,” she said.

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  Isaac glanced over.

  The bar wrapper was crumpled and damp in her fist, smeared with pollen and grit.

  Her jaw kept working anyway, stubborn and slow, like she’d decided the chocolate didn’t get to win.

  “I’m getting sick of chocolate.”

  She said chocolate like it was an insult.

  “I didn’t know that was possible.”

  Isaac almost smiled.

  This time he let it happen for half a second.

  Zoya saw it and looked away like she’d done something embarrassing.

  Then it slipped out, the other thing, the one she didn’t have a joke ready for.

  “I miss,” she started, and her voice caught like it surprised her. “I miss not listening for bells.”

  She swallowed.

  Her face pinched with disgust at herself. “Gross. Don’t write that down.”

  Isaac didn’t tease her.

  He didn’t even smile.

  He just nodded like he’d been handed something fragile and decided to carry it properly.

  They passed a shallow bowl in the ground where canopy bloom had pooled, not water, just mist-light collecting in a depression like liquid colour. Beside it sat a tin cup, half buried in mineral loam, scratched with shallow tally marks.

  Zoya saw it and went still for a fraction.

  Isaac noticed because he noticed everything now.

  “That yours?” he asked.

  Zoya made a face like he’d insulted her. “No.”

  Then she exhaled. “I had one like that.”

  “How many scratches,” Isaac asked, because he couldn’t help it, because his brain was blunt.

  Zoya’s eyes narrowed. “Enough.”

  Isaac waited.

  Zoya’s fingers twitched like they wanted to pick the cup up, then didn’t.

  “My cup had scratches like tally marks,” she said. “Everyone’s did. Like we were counting days without admitting it.”

  Isaac swallowed.

  He wanted to ask what the scratches meant.

  He didn’t.

  He asked something else instead.

  “Did you ever have a friend you trusted?” he said.

  Zoya’s laugh came fast, defensive. “Look at you,” she said. “Getting emotional. Disgusting.”

  Isaac didn’t back off.

  Zoya’s mouth opened, closed.

  Then the truth slipped out anyway.

  “I had people I survived near,” she said.

  Then she tried to stab it with humour. “Same thing.”

  Isaac shook his head. “Not the same.”

  Zoya’s eyes sharpened like she wanted to fight him for saying it.

  Then she didn’t.

  “Whatever,” she muttered, and started walking again before the conversation could turn into something she didn’t know how to carry.

  A smaller breathling lunged later, stupid enough to try again after seeing its cousin get deflected.

  Zoya didn’t flinch.

  She turned her wrist.

  Not the full window this time.

  Smaller.

  Controlled.

  The bracer snapped the strike away, but Zoya ended it immediately, like she’d refused to let the shield breathe too long.

  The warmth built.

  Zoya cut it off.

  “Nope,” she said, more to her own wrist than to Isaac. “Not giving you another inch.”

  Isaac’s eyes flicked to her. “It wants attention,” he said.

  Zoya huffed. “Everything in Brimwick wanted attention,” she replied. “This one just files paperwork after.”

  Isaac snorted before he could stop himself.

  Zoya’s smile flashed and vanished, like a coin flipped in the dark.

  The pyramid came closer.

  Not with wonder.

  With intrusion.

  It pushed itself between trunks more often now. Its angles sharpened. Its cleanliness started to feel deliberate, like it was choosing to be untouched.

  And the world around it stayed bright, stayed alive, but kept a respectful distance, colour rinsing thinner the closer they got.

  Lightning forked somewhere deep, and for one blink the pyramid’s surface wasn’t smooth.

  Carvings flashed into existence.

  Not etched like decoration.

  Cut like language.

  Then the light shifted and they vanished again, swallowed by the same clean skin.

  Violet and pink moved under the surface, slow and cyclical, like a bruise that had learned to breathe.

  “That’s not decoration,” she said.

  Isaac’s jaw buzzed. “Message.”

  Zoya nodded once. “Yeah. For anyone stupid enough to get close.”

  Isaac’s mouth twisted. “So… us.”

  “Exactly,” Zoya said.

  Lightning flashed again.

  For one blink the pyramid wasn’t clean. Cuts surfaced, shallow and precise, running in bands like someone had scored the crystal on purpose. Then the light shifted and the face went blank again.

  Zoya stared too long.

  “How,” she said, and it came out like an argument. “How do you build an upside down pyramid.”

  Isaac kept walking, eyes on it. “Not with rope.”

  Zoya shot him a look, then looked back. “No, I mean it.” Her hand lifted like she was about to point, then stopped. “It’s crystal. All of it. Down here. Hanging like it forgot gravity exists.”

  Lightning flickered again, and the lines flashed, then vanished.

  Zoya’s throat worked. “Do you think people did this.” She said people like it tasted wrong. “Like… actual humans. Thousands of years before anything we know.”

  Isaac didn’t answer fast. His jaw buzzed harder, like the word wanted to be a sound.

  Zoya filled the gap anyway, because she couldn’t help it. “Because if it’s us, it’s insane.” Her eyes tracked the clean angle where it met the air. “And if it’s not us…”

  She didn’t finish.

  She just exhaled once, sharp, and looked away like she’d caught herself staring too hard at a grave.

  “Keep moving,” she said, brisk again, like she could shove the thought back into her mouth. “Before it decides it’s noticed.”

  “Anyway,” she said, brisk, “Brimwick would sell prayers like soup if they saw it first.”

  Isaac huffed softly. “Sell prayers.”

  “They sold everything,” Zoya said. “Even the idea that you were safe if you behaved.”

  Isaac didn’t like how both his wings and her bracer felt like proof of ownership, just dressed different.

  After another heart, Isaac’s wings shifted.

  Not dramatically.

  Subtly.

  A fraction more breadth when he unfolded them.

  A fraction more weight when he reseated plates.

  Zoya noticed because Zoya noticed everything and hated that she did.

  She stared at his back while they walked, eyes narrowed, like she was annoyed at his body for changing.

  “You’re bigger,” she said finally.

  Isaac glanced over his shoulder. “Am I.”

  Zoya rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

  He flexed without thinking. The plates clicked. The sound was cleaner now, less grind.

  Zoya watched the click like it was a language.

  Then her eyes dropped to her bracer.

  To the space around it.

  “Do you think I could grow it,” she asked, and her voice was casual in the way liars make it casual. “The radius. Like your wings.”

  Isaac didn’t answer with comfort.

  He answered with truth.

  “If you can,” he said, “don’t tell anyone.”

  Zoya’s smile came sharp, a little sad. “Trust me,” she said. “I’ve learned when to lie.”

  They walked on.

  The den announced itself without announcing itself.

  At first it was not bodies.

  At first it was absence.

  Hoverers thinned until their lanes broke.

  Fungi stopped at a line and did not cross.

  Bloom-light refused to pool ahead, as if the mist itself had been told there was no reason to glow there.

  Then the bodies showed.

  Carcasses, half stripped, placed not randomly.

  Arranged.

  A curve of ribs here.

  A line of bones there.

  Like someone had written in meat.

  Zoya’s chatter thinned as they entered the space between two root ribs that leaned toward each other like a throat.

  Isaac felt it too.

  Not fear.

  Something worse.

  Something familiar.

  Not a thought, more like his body saying it first.

  I know this. I don’t know how, but I know this.

  Zoya’s voice went quiet, not because she wanted to be stealthy.

  Because the sight punched old memories in her ribs.

  “This is how they write warnings,” she said softly. “With bodies.”

  Isaac’s jaw buzzed harder.

  “Brimwick,” he said.

  Zoya swallowed. “Everywhere.”

  The corridor behind them seemed narrower than it had been a moment ago, like the place had shifted its shoulders.

  The air tasted different.

  Not just mineral.

  Something sweet under it, like rot and crystal had made a deal.

  A sound rolled through the den.

  Not the roar from earlier.

  This was heavier.

  Wrong-timed.

  Echo arrived before the source, like the den had decided to speak first.

  Zoya’s eyes lifted.

  Her fingers tightened on her linehook handle, not because she was preparing tactics, but because that handle was proof she existed.

  Isaac’s gaze dropped to her wrist.

  To the cord knot.

  Thumb on it.

  Two taps.

  Commit.

  He’d seen it all day without naming it.

  Now he did.

  And without thinking, like the body wanted a rule it could hold, Isaac pressed his thumb into the base of his own palm and tapped twice.

  Not a prayer.

  Not a saying.

  Just a small, stupid anchor.

  Zoya’s eyes flicked to his hand.

  For a second her face went blank with surprise.

  Then she looked away like she hadn’t seen anything.

  “That’s not a pack,” she whispered.

  Isaac’s wings unfolded a fraction.

  His plates seated.

  His body went still.

  Breath went shallow.

  His weight shifted onto the front of his feet without him deciding to do it.

  “No,” he said.

  The thing stepped out of the shadowed ribs.

  Bigger than a Glassjaw.

  Bigger than any of the small breathlings that had been punctuation so far.

  Its silhouette was wrong, too clean in some places, too jagged in others, like it had been built by a mind that understood symmetry and hated mercy.

  Its mouth opened.

  Glass glinted.

  Core light moved under its skin like violet-pink tides.

  The carcasses made sense all at once.

  This wasn’t a kill zone.

  It was a pantry.

  Zoya’s voice came thin, and somehow she still found humour like a knife in her boot.

  “That’s a Bellwarden,” she said.

  Then, quieter, stubborn as a nail, like she was saying it to the den itself.

  “I’m not leaving you with this thing.”

  Isaac’s attention flicked to her.

  Just one beat.

  Her shoulders set.

  Her fingers locked on the handle like it was the only true thing in the room.

  Then his gaze slid back to the creature, cold and clean.

  He didn’t smile.

  He didn’t flinch.

  He looked at the thing the way he’d looked at the hearts in his hands all chapter, and the thought that formed in him was simple and predatory.

  “That’s a lot of heart,” he said.

  The pressure in his jaw sharpened.

  His plates clicked once, tight, like his back was bracing for impact that hadn’t arrived yet.

  And deep under that, something in him answered, not speech, not comfort.

  A clean, hard surge through the nine rings, like a latch letting go.