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Then she freezes.

Not from fear. Not from recognition.

From command.

Her head snaps sideways like something hooked its fingers into whatever was left of her nervous system and pulled.

The shot cracks the air a breath later. It comes from farther back than I expect. Too far to feel comforting.

Her skull bursts open—center of the forehead, neat and final. Hot spray fans across my face and neck. Thank God my mouth is shut, or I’d be tasting Ms. Cooper for supper.

She goes limp. Heavy as all the dead weight she now is. I shove her off, scrambling backwards, palms slipping in blood-mud. My stomach lurches. Bile scalds the back of my throat.

Under the tree, Shadow wags his tail, tongue lolling. Oblivious bastard.

Before I can gather a breath, Cass is there—face close enough I see the ghosts living behind her eyes. Jaw tight. Breath sharp. For a moment, she looks through me like she’s already counting the ways I almost died.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Selah?” she spits, grabbing the front of my shirt and yanking me up so fast my head whips.

I lift a weak hand toward Shadow. “He⁠—”

Cass grabs my shirt, yanking me forward until the fabric sticks to my ribs. “Don’t you dare blame that damn dog. I saw you. You hesitated.”

My throat works. “So did she.”

Cass goes still. For one second, fear cuts through the anger on her face.

“That’s what scares me,” she says.

Her voice is steady, but beneath it lives fear—the kind I’ve only ever heard when she thinks she’s about to lose someone.

“Shadow was trembling like hell when I walked up,” Cass mutters. “That dog doesn’t tremble for nothing.”

“Well, it’s his fault I ended up this far from the fence,” I mutter back.

Cass exhales, the sound half-growl, half-surrender. She holsters the pistol with a sharp click and lets go of my shirt. Blood-sticky fabric slaps against my ribs.

“You keep thinking there’s something human left once they turn,” she says, quieter now but cutting deeper. “There isn’t.”

Her eyes pin me. Behind her, the horizon glows like spoiled fruit. Somewhere, far off, a Hollowborn hymn drags across the wind. Hope is a blade I grip wrong every damn time—but I keep gripping it.

I don’t know what I was hoping for. A flicker of recognition, a scrap of the woman who once wiped jam off my face. Maybe I wasn’t trying to save her at all—maybe I was trying to save the part of me that still believed people came back.

“I know why you keep looking for something worth saving,” she whispers. “But nothing you could’ve done would’ve saved him—same as hesitating didn’t save her. You cling to mercy, and one day you’ll be the one in the dirt.”

His name sits heavy behind my teeth, but I don’t let it out. Speaking it would make him real again—and I can’t lose him twice.

We don’t say anything else.

Cass keeps walking. Shadow darts ahead. I stare at the blood drying on my hands and pretend it means something. But out here, safety’s a joke, and mercy’s been dead a long damn time. That’s what Cass believes.

The woods don’t chase me.

They don’t have to.

I feel them anyway—pressing at my back as I steer Shadow toward the fence, that slow, deliberate attention like something counting my steps, not hunting—remembering. Like the land itself has decided to remember me. I keep my eyes forward. I don’t give it the satisfaction of a flinch.

The fence groans when I slip through, metal scraping metal, too loud in the quiet. For half a heartbeat, I expect teeth. Hands. That dragging hymn I can’t ever unhear.