CHAPTER 14
DARUN
The shrine is a ghost, but it breathes.
Vines choke the stone columns in lazy spirals, curling around faded engravings of Ataxian glyphs that whisper old prayers to old gods no one remembers. The roof’s half-collapsed, but the inner sanctum still stands—hollow and still and glowing faintly with the soft pulse of bioluminescent crystals embedded in the walls. Blue, violet, green. Like the inside of some giant’s throat.
It’s the first time in days I can hear my heartbeat without it being drowned by gunfire.
Amy stands near the fountain, her fingers trailing through the thin trickle of water that still bubbles from the cracked mouth of an old stone head. She leans in, splashes her face. Her hair drips, plastered in dark strands across her cheeks and neck, and the water beads there like tiny glass teeth.
I don’t look away. Can’t.
The shrine smells of wet stone and dying moss. It’s cool here. Quiet. Even the wind outside feels different—less like it wants to strip the skin off your bones, more like it’s just… wind.
I shift my weight against the wall, shoulder aching where the wound still throbs under fresh bandages. The pain is distant,more annoyance than threat now. My rifle’s still nearby, within reach, but I don’t feel the tension pulling at my spine the way it usually does.
She turns to me, dripping. “There’s enough trickle left to fill your canteen, if you’re not too proud to use holy water.”
“Holy water’s just water with delusions,” I grunt, but I step forward anyway.
She grins. “That’s sacrilegious.”
“Only if you believe in things.”
“Do you?”
I stop and look at her.
Then say, “Used to.”
She nods like she gets it. Maybe she does.
I kneel at the edge of the fountain, fill my canteen, then splash water over my face. It’s cold and clean and shocking. It brings me back to the now. When I stand, she’s still watching me.
“I’ve never seen you relax,” she says.
“I’m not.”
“You’re less tense.”
I smirk. “That’s not the same thing.”
She moves to sit on a ledge that might’ve been an altar once. Her legs dangle, boots scuffed, armor straps loose at her sides. Her face looks softer here. In the glow. Less sharp. Less war.
“We’re safe for the night,” she says.
I grunt. “As safe as anywhere can be with ghosts listening.”
She shrugs. “They can listen. I don’t mind.”
She pats the ledge next to her. I hesitate. Then I sit.
There’s a beat of silence. Then another.
Then she says, “You know… I never wanted this. The war. The press corps. The politics. I wanted to be on a stage.”
I glance at her. “You said that before.”
