Chapter 16b: Feverdreams and Fractures

The air was damp, thick with the stench of iron and decay. The leaves whispered in hushed tones, carrying stories of a battle not long past.

Ash stumbled into the cave, dragging Vanta behind her. His body was dead weight. His boots scraped rock, leaving streaks of blood across the ground. She didn't look at the streaks. Didn't need to. She could smell it.

The cave walls pulsed faintly with the last orange threads of dusk. As if the land itself were mourning.

She dropped to her knees beside the crude bedding they'd made the night before, her arms trembling as she laid him down. His body convulsed once, a dry cough tearing from his cracked lips. Then stillness.

Wounds. Too many. Too deep.

One particularly cruel slash curled beneath his ribs—a gaping, bloodied arc she dubbed the crimson crescent. Another, running down his shoulder to elbow, pulsed and oozed, refusing to clot. She tore a strip of her own cloak, binding it tightly. His back was an abstract painting of bruises—a spiderweb of black and violet, like veins etched by a sadistic artist. She named it the echo burn, a mark left by a blow that should have shattered bone.

His breathing was shallow. Stuttering.

Ash pressed her hand against his forehead and recoiled. "Burning up..."

She fumbled for water, tilting his head, forcing sips through clenched teeth. His lips moved, muttering nonsense. Fever-speak. Fractured words lost between dream and nightmare.

She wasn't good at this.

She hated this.

But she didn't stop.

---

The fire crackled in the far end of the cave, barely more than embers now. Shadows danced along the bloodstained walls. Ash stared into them, hugging her knees to her chest.

It had been hours.

Vanta hadn't stirred.

She watched his face twitch. Every so often, a flicker passed over it—eyebrows pinching, jaw tensing, the ghost of a scream caught in his throat. He was trapped.

"Don't die, idiot," she muttered. Not softly. Not kindly. But it was the first time her voice cracked.

---

Vanta's Dream

Sound. It wrapped around him, squealing, warping, weeping. A great drumbeat in the distance, and then silence so loud it made his bones rattle.

He stood in a field where the world bled ink. Colorless flames devoured paintings nailed to trees.

A veil of sound shimmered before him.

And beyond it—his father. A silhouette. Not moving. Not alive. Not dead.

Then the Clone appeared, standing beside him.

"You are one of Nine. One of None. The Cycle begins."

The veil ripped open. A black wind howled through. Vanta screamed—but it came out as music. A shriek that rang like broken violins and shattered bells.

He turned—and Ash was there. Not Ash.

Wearing his mother's pendant.

Her lips moved: "It always hurts, doesn't it?"

He fell.

---

Back in the Cave

Ash jolted awake.

The guidebook floated over Vanta's body, trembling with radiant heat. Its runes pulsed violently, bathing the cave in blood-red light.

Then it snapped open.

Words scratched across its surface like claws on glass:

---

System Override: Anomaly Awakening in Progress

Warning: Bloodline Interference Detected

Candidate: #Black_014

Recovery Halted. Injecting Counter-Curse...

Time Remaining: 00:09:59...

Ash stumbled back. "What the hell is happening?"

Vanta screamed.

Blood dripped from his ears. His limbs spasmed. His back arched off the bed in an unnatural, seizing motion. The vines they'd woven to hold their doorway fluttered violently in an unseen wind.

His skin—marked by bruises and fever—now pulsed faintly. Like something underneath was trying to crawl out.

She ran to him. Held his shoulders down.

"Vanta! Hey! Wake the hell up!"

But he didn't. His mouth opened in a silent howl as something dark and miasmic curled out from the corners of his eyes.

The cave shook.

A crack split the back wall.

Ash turned toward it just as a flickering silhouette stepped through the fissure.

Tall. Featureless. Eyes glowing violet.

It was Vanta's Clone.

Back again.

Unsmiling.

Unstoppable.

And this time, Vanta was still unconscious.

Ash drew her blade.

"Round two, then," she whispered.

" It's sad it's only you, I came to announce he awakening" then it disappeared just as it came.