CHAPTER 26: ASH IN THE BLOOD

By morning, the world was glass. Frost rimed every grass blade, every brittle stalk, and the river below the ruined footing of the old bridge hissed under a new sheet of ice, as if intent on erasing the memory of the night before.

Apollo walked with the others in silence, all of them scraped raw by what counted for survival. He could taste the silt of blood in the air, sweet and mineral-rich, and every third breath caught in his throat like a held-back scream.

Behind them, the temple was just a stain, the white haze melted into the predawn fog.

Lyra led, her boots crunching frost, but Apollo could see how she hunched now, not the cautious readiness he’d learned to read, but something looser, more defensive, as if she expected the ground to tilt from under her at any moment.

Nik said nothing. The lines on his face had deepened overnight, and once, when their eyes met, Nik looked away first. The dog alternated between sprinting ahead and lagging behind, caught up in a logic all its own.

Thorin walked without complaint, but the new set to his jaw said he’d decided pain was irrelevant so long as there was still work to be done.

Apollo caught his own reflection in a mirroring pool at a bend in the trail, and for a moment didn’t recognize the person staring back: face narrow and colorless, eyes hollowed to the gold.

The veins along his wrists looked like cracks in old bone. He pulled his coat tighter, though the cold didn’t feel like anything anymore.

They moved through a dead place that had once been called a city. The land dipped and rose, the scars of collapsed walls and lost fire showing through the thin snow.

No signs of present life, only the curious geometry of ruins, archways that led to nowhere, gods toppled and half-swallowed by earth, stones set with obsidian eyes that glared from their own graves.

Apollo found himself cataloguing the decay, as if one day someone might want a record.

When the sun broke through, orange and thinning at the edges, Lyra slowed and pointed ahead, her hand a pale knot above her quiver.

"No shelter out here," she said. "We cut through the old market, then east to the trees." Her voice was different; Apollo couldn’t name what had changed, but it was there. He answered with a nod and a grunt, too tired to speak.

The market was worse up close: stalls strangled with morning glories, frost-wilted pumpkins burst open and left to rot, a pile of shoes in the center, each one nailed through the toe.

Apollo stepped around them, careful not to touch, and wondered whether this was meant as a lesson or a warning. He tried not to think of Torgo.

It was impossible, though. The air still held the fizz and snap of Torgo’s last trick, and every time Apollo reached for the pocket that held the amber shard, his hand came away tingling, as if the memory of fire lived under his skin.

They made camp in the lee of a sunken building, three walls and half a roof sheltering them from the wind. Lyra set her back against the stone and sharpened her knife.

Nik went looking for dry wood, returning only with a handful of bracken and an apologetic scowl.

Thorin crumbled next to the firepit, his good arm wrapped around his knees, and stared at the smoke with unseeing eyes.

Apollo built the fire. He worked at it slowly, deliberately breaking each stick to fit, stacking the pieces like a puzzle.

It was the kind of thing he used to take comfort in—proof that the world could be made to fit together if you just forced the right angles.

Now it felt childish, but he did it anyway, watching the flare and gutter of the flames.

He lay down last, rolling up in his own coat at the edge of the ring. Sleep wouldn’t come.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the followers on the ice, the white light rising from their mouths, the way the sky had bent around the sound of his own voice.

He wondered, once, if this was a dream designed by the gods, some cautionary story for their private amusement, but there was no logic to it, only the raw scrape of what passed for living.

He drifted for a while, lost to the rhythm of Lyra’s knife on stone and the hiss of wind through empty windows, until a hand shook his shoulder. Nik’s face, bare inches from his own, the eyes wild and urgent.

"There’s someone out there," Nik whispered. "Moving through the market. I heard them twice."

Apollo sat up, feeling the amber shard pulse in his pocket, hot and insistent. He listened, but heard nothing.

He looked over at Lyra. She was already awake, her eyes fixed on the gap at the far end of the ruined wall.

They waited. The dog whined, then crept to Apollo’s side, panting hard enough to fog the air. After a while, the tension faded, but no one slept.

Thorin snored, then choked, then snored again, each cycle louder and more desperate. Nik paced the edge of the fire, knife loose but ready.

An hour passed, maybe more, when the sound came again: a scrape, then a long, slow dragging. Apollo tensed, the whole of his body coiling in preparation for hurt.

The memory of Cassian’s face, blood-smeared and grinning, flickered through his mind, and he realized he was clenching both fists so hard his nails dug channels into his palms.

The figure appeared just after dawn, shuffling between the toppled stalls, face hidden by a hood and a mass of blackened cloth.

Not a threat, at first glance; not a cultist, either. The thing that passed for a man moved like it wasn’t sure of its own body, pausing every few steps to tap the ground with a stick.

When it drew closer, Apollo saw the hands, gloved, ruined, the fingers wrapped in old strips of parchment. It walked with the confidence of someone who expected not to be noticed, and when it saw their camp, it froze.

Nik called out first. "You lost? Or looking for company?" His voice was loud and false-brave, but the echo of it carried authority.

The figure didn’t answer at first, just tipped its head as if considering the question. Then it moved forward, careful, slow, like an animal coming to water.

Under the rags, the face was mostly shadow, but Apollo caught a glimpse of eyes: pale, luminous, the color of bare frost. The stick, he saw, was tipped in copper, the end worn to a smooth, round knob.

The figure stopped outside the fire’s light, looked from each of them to the dog, and then at Apollo. "I could smell that shard from the other side of the river," it said, voice dry as parchment. "You mind if I warm my bones?"

Lyra tensed, but nodded, motioning the stranger into the circle.

Apollo watched the newcomer, paying attention to the way it moved, the way it weighed every word before speaking. "Who are you?" he asked.

The stranger grinned, lips splitting to show teeth filed nearly to points. "Name’s Tigran," he said.

"Used to work for the Watch. Used to matter, once." He sat, folding himself up like a marionette with half its strings cut. "Now I’m just a man looking for stories before the world runs out of listeners."

The amber shard in Apollo’s pocket pulsed hotter. "You said you could smell this?" he asked, refusing to reach for it, refusing to give the newcomer the satisfaction of seeing his hand shake.

Tigran nodded. "Heard a story, too, about a magician who drank the sun and spit out an empire." He leaned closer, eyes locked to Apollo’s. "I hope you’re not him. That story ends bad."

Apollo shrugged, more tired than afraid. "That’s only a story," he said, and glanced away.

Tigran smiled. It was the smile of someone who knew better than to argue with the dead. "Suit yourself," he said, and tucked his hands into his coat.

They sat in silence. The newcomer made no move to attack, steal, or even eat. He just watched the fire, gaze flickering from Lyra’s face to Thorin’s bandage to the dog’s ragged coat.

It occurred to Apollo that everyone left in this part of the world had the look of an exile: half-starved, obsessed with the next dawn or the next mouthful, never quite alive but always one step away from dying.

In the night, Tigran told them stories. Most were old ones, tales of the marsh city and the river lords, of the salt towers and the men who took ships into the mirage at the edge of the world.

But even the lies felt more useful than the truth, so they listened. At one point, Lyra asked, "What’s east of here? Is there anything left?"

Tigran shrugged, the movement more a twitch than a gesture. "You’ll hit the old fort before sundown tomorrow. After that, just the basin and the glass fields. If you’re lucky, nobody will even know you passed."

Nik nodded at that, as if the plan had always been escape. Apollo kept his own counsel, feeling the weight of the shard in his pocket and the ache of something new gnawing at the base of his skull.

He dreamed that night, not of temples or rivers, not even of Torgo, but of fire. In the dream, he walked through a city made of glass, every street lined with mirrors that showed only his own face, aged and splitting, the gold in his veins gleaming through papery skin.

He saw himself smiling, then screaming, the sound shattering the mirrors one by one. When he woke, the dog was curled tight to his side, shivering.

Lyra was already up, watching the horizon. Tigran was gone, not a trace left but a circle in the frost where he’d slept. Nik stoked the fire, his thin hands shaking only a little.

They left the ruins at dawn, walking east as if there was nothing else to do. The market was quieter now, the shoes in the square grayed over with a new layer of frost.

As they crested the last hill before the horizon, Apollo felt the sun break over his back, and the gold in his veins warmed to it, a gentle reminder of something he didn’t care to remember.

When Lyra asked if he was all right, he nodded. But he kept one hand in his pocket, fingers wrapped around the amber, holding it tight enough to leave fresh imprints in his palm.

He didn’t know where the trail would end. But the next step was always east, into the morning that waited, hungry as ever.