“I’ve never seen it,” he says finally. His voice is rough. “Seen someone be what I could’ve been. I didn’t know what it looked like from the outside.”
My chest tightens.
“I never thought I’d see what it looks like. What Thorne did, forcing magic, wrong magic, on someone else.” He swallows hard. “Why didn’t that happen to me?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
I don’t have an answer. I wish I did.
“I don’t know, Darian.” I keep my voice soft. Honest. “But I’m glad it didn’t.”
He doesn’t cry. But something in his expression cracks — just a little — and he nods without looking at me.
We walk in silence after that. But it’s not the heavy, suffocating silence from before.
It’s just… quiet.
The forest thickens as we move deeper into the trees.
The shadows drift closer, curious rather than crowding. The small ones that have been following us since the village edge nearer, tentative and watchful.
I notice Finn watching them.
He’s walking a few paces behind the main group, hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders hunched. He looks tired. Worn. Like the weight of everything is pressing down on him and he doesn’t know how to carry it anymore.
There’s something hollow in his expression, something frayed, and I hate that I don’t know how to reach him.
But his eyes are tracking the shadows with something like fascination. Like his brain is clinging to the one thing he can understand right now.
One of the new shadows hovers near his boot, flickering uncertainly.
Finn crouches a little, squinting at it.
“…You’re definitely an Ed.”
I freeze mid-step. “What?”
He gestures at the shadow like it’s obvious. “That one? Ed. Very clear Ed energy.”
The shadow flicks its shape — a shy, uncertain movement that almost looks like a shrug.
Finn taps his boot lightly near it. “Come on, Ed. Don’t be shy.”
The shadow warbles — a soft, pleased little sound — and drifts closer.
Finn surveys the others drifting around me, his expression deadly serious.
“Actually… all of you. Eds. Every last one of you.”
“You arenotnaming my shadows Ed.”
“Why not?” He looks genuinely confused. “They look like Eds.”
“None of them look like Ed!”
“Have you ever met an Ed?”
“No!”
