CHAPTER 36: WARMTH OF DARKNESS

No...

The word ripped through me mid-air, sharper than the wind screaming in my ears.

I wasn’t going to make it.

The other side of the cliff loomed before me, a wall of shadow and stone, so close I could almost believe I would land. But my paws weren’t long enough, my body too small yet too heavy.

The arc of my leap was wrong.

Too short.

By a few meters.

I stretched my claws anyway, desperate to catch the edge, to scrape against anything that might hold me. My chest hammered, each heartbeat louder than the river below.

But there was nothing. No rock. No rope. Nothing but air.

Panic flared white-hot, flooding every vein, every nerve.

Behind me, from the cliff I came from, a roar burned my ears.

The sound rattled my bones, a howl so furious it made the night itself shudder.

I didn’t need to look to know his rage burned gold behind me.

I could feel Finn’s fire chasing me down, a streak of red flame stretching toward me, hungry to burn me even here, mid-fall.

"I guess we’re taking a bath down the river," Leika muttered in my head, her voice dry, almost amused, even in the face of death.

The ground was gone.

We plummeted.

Wind roared through my fur, flattening it against my skin.

My stomach flipped, weightless one second, sinking the next.

My body spun once, twice. The cliffs blurred. The stars wheeled.

Below, the river surged. Black and white, foam frothing like teeth.

It was no calm stream but a beast, thrashing, waiting for me to land in its maw. The roar of it drowned everything, even Finn’s fury.

I tried to twist my body, to angle myself the way wolves were meant to when crossing streams or leaping prey.

I tucked my paws, stretched them again, tried to make the fall less deadly.

But I was clumsy.

My limbs flailed too wide, uncoordinated, unpracticed. My wolf was too small, too weak from three years of silence, too raw from being forced out again. I couldn’t fix the fall.

There was no fixing it.

The river rose up and hit me like a fist.

The water slammed the breath from my chest. Pain burst through me, white and blinding.

Cold swallowed me whole, so sharp it was like knives tearing into every inch of skin and bone. My body convulsed, mouth open in a silent scream that filled with water.

The current seized me instantly.

It dragged me under, flipping me over, tumbling me in its claws. I slammed against a hidden rock, my shoulder exploding in pain. My arms spun uselessly. My legs kicked but found no ground.

The river owned me.

And then my wolf slipped away.

My fur melted, my paws shrank, claws dissolving.

My human body returned, fragile, vulnerable, the thin white dress clinging and dragging me down heavier than chains.

"Leika!" My thought screamed into the darkness. "Where are you? Why did you—"

"Sorry, Vien." Her voice was faint now, strained. "My energy isn’t stable enough. I can’t hold the form. Not after years under the wolfbind. It’s too much."

Her words broke like glass on stone.

Terror stabbed through me sharper than the river’s cold. "You can’t leave me! Not now!"

"I won’t. But I can’t keep us as wolf."

Her voice flickered like a candle in a storm.

"I figured," I thought weakly, water rushing into my throat. I gagged, choked, coughed, but swallowed more. "I figured it must be... the suppression... all those years..."

But I couldn’t finish. My chest convulsed again. Water poured into me, heavy, suffocating.

I tried to swim.

I tried.

I kicked my legs, moved my arms. But my limbs were dead weights, numb from cold. I didn’t know how to swim properly. My body twisted sideways, spinning with the current. Every attempt to fight made me weaker.

"Swim, Vien! Swim!" Leika’s voice rose in panic, sharp and urgent.

"I can’t!" My thought was jagged, desperate. "I can’t!"

The river roared louder, a predator’s growl. It dragged me down, spun me again, shoved me into stone.

My ribs screamed as my side struck rock. The pain was brief, swallowed by numbness.

Air. I needed air.

My chest felt like fire. My lungs clawed for breath. My throat ached from choking. I opened my mouth again and more water rushed in. My vision blurred, my head pounded, and the pressure inside me grew unbearable.

I was drowning.

This was how it ended.

Not in fire. Not in chains. In a river.

Finn would laugh when he found my body. Or worse, he’d never find it at all. I’d be just another nameless piece of prey swallowed by the current.

My mother’s face flashed before me.

Her shawl, her last breath, her body crumpling to the stone.

I couldn’t even honor her by surviving.

The thought shattered me.

My body slowed. My arms stopped flailing. My legs drifted uselessly. I couldn’t tell which way was up or down. Darkness pressed closer.

Leika’s voice trembled, softer now, desperate. "Vien, please. Don’t give up."

"I can’t... breathe..." My mind’s voice broke apart.

The last bubbles of air escaped my mouth, drifting upward into blackness.

And then—

Something found me.

It was sudden. A presence wrapped around me, coiling over my skin, sliding beneath me. It wasn’t the river, wasn’t water. It was thicker, heavier... so black that I thought I’d gone blind.

The current no longer beat me. The cold no longer bit me.

Instead, warmth seeped into my body.

Strange warmth. Not Finn’s fire, not natural heat, but something other. Dark and gentle, curling through my chest and limbs, pushing the ache from my lungs.

I gasped, not water this time, but air. Somehow, impossibly, air.

The river still roared, but it no longer touched me. I floated, suspended in this shroud of shadow.

My eyes fluttered open, but I saw nothing. Only black.

"What—what is this?" My thought was barely a whisper.

Leika was silent. For the first time since she’d returned, she said nothing at all.

And I realized, whatever this was, it wasn’t her.

The shadows tightened around me, carrying me, lifting me.

I was moving.

Upward. Away.

The cold vanished fully, replaced by warmth that sank deep, until my bones no longer shook, until my body eased despite itself.

My lashes grew too heavy. My vision dimmed.

"Who... who are you?" I whispered into the dark, though no one could hear.

No answer came.

Only the steady warmth, carrying me as the river raged on without me.

And then, at last, the darkness claimed me whole.