Hedi walked with Selina at her side, her steps flickering like a candle in a draft. As they moved, she spoke of the Dark Realm: Evelyn’s death, Olivia, a core split in two like a broken seed, and the bond between monsters and that shadowed country.

“Stratford’s death isn’t worth mourning—yet a faint pity clings to it, like frost on a withered leaf.”

“Your words are a fog over the trail.”

“On one hand, she earned it; on the other, her death shut a gate on the truth.” Hedi chose each word like setting stones across a stream. “And life itself, once snuffed, drags sympathy after it like rain soaking cold earth.”

“So the dead Investigator and my sister don’t get sympathy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What were you going to say?”

Hedi weighed her reply, the gap between their feelings a clear ravine, two rivers parted cleanly over Stratford’s end.

“Not much.” Hedi shook her head, gentle as a leaf falling. “Turning your sister into an insect—of course that tears you up.”

“I... I didn’t mean to be harsh...”

“Chasing Olivia for so long, only to turn into a monster—no one could swallow that.” Her voice moved like a night tide pushing ashore.

“When we entered the Dark Realm, I had already swallowed it.” Selina’s mouth tilted, complex as a crooked moon. “You said the Dark Realm and monsters cooperate; I call it enslavement. The Realm forces service through pain and warped flesh, while my sister, on sheer will, clings to reason. That... chews me up, like iron between teeth.”

“To turn into a bloodthirsty beast—”

“Maybe that’s easier.” Her words cut like ripping off a bandage.

“Because then body and mind both vanish into a stranger.” Hedi thought of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, a book like a cold mirror. “A body transformed while the mind stays clear—society and family can’t hold it, like hands failing to cup water.”

“Enough of this—what next?”

“We wait for the morning train. Tonight we sleep at the watch post, like birds under eaves.”

“I remember you burned the bedboard!”

“No choice. The back half of the night bit like frost.” Hedi leaned into Selina and they headed for the post. Passing the clearing, she looked back at the buried guard, her voice lowered, like smoke drifting from damp embers. “I still don’t know your name.”

“Who?”

“The guard who helped us leave the city.”

Selina let out a soft ah, like a startled sparrow. “I don’t know either. In the city, when we asked, he said... he couldn’t remember.”

“People like me don’t matter,” Hedi added, flat as winter grass under snow. “He said the same to me.”

“Let’s not dwell on it. You look like it’s raining behind your eyes.”

“He was rough with me. Not worth it.”

Hedi brushed dust from the back of her hand, a gray cloud lifting from her coat. The coat was filthy as a road after rain, yet what she lost in neatness she gained in calm, a quiet sheen like stone by a stream.

Her gray-white curls, once tied into a ponytail, hung soft as cloud behind her head, adding a plain grace. The playful hint of a smile she used to keep, ready for fun, had vanished after two crossings into the Dark Realm. In its place settled a melancholy fit to console, like a hand laid on a shivering shoulder.

“Either way, it’s good you made it out.”

“Or you’d have gone in.”

“I was going to!” Selina didn’t hide it; her words leapt like a spark. “If you’d been one second late, I’d have gone in!”

“Worst case, I come out while you go in.” Hedi’s voice weighed doors swinging in opposite winds.

“That could’ve happened.”

Hedi traced Selina’s jawline with her fingers, light as a moth testing a lamp. “So you have to trust me.”

“If I go in, and you stay out, would you be anxious?”

“Of course.” The answer fell firm, like a stake in soil.

“Would you want to go in?”

“Mm.” A heartbeat, like a drum under fog.

“Then why not choose trust?”

“Because real trust grows from deep dread of you in danger, like roots clutching earth under a storm.”

“Contradictory words!”

“Wise ones.” Hedi’s smile bent like a thin reed.

Selina, unhappy, toyed with Hedi’s gray-white curls—sometimes rough as kneading dough, sometimes gentle as combing silk. Then her fingers slipped from hair to cheek, slow as moonlight sliding across a window. She handled with enough pressure to feel warmth and texture, not enough to hurt.

“Quit it.” Hedi shook her head, shaking Selina’s hand loose like dew off a leaf. “We should turn in early.”

“I could never say stuff like that!” Selina huffed, a cat refusing a bath.

“The good of books is this: they let you flex quietly, like a blade kept under a sleeve.”

“Which book taught you that?”

“I just made it up.” Her grin flickered, a firefly under dusk.

Hedi pushed open the watch post door. Inside, things sat where they had been, not wrecked, only a black scorch mark pressed into the wall like a thunderprint. She stepped in, inch by inch, and with Selina’s support sat down on a chair. Before she’d settled, Selina was already tugging off her dust-caked shoes, eager as a child at a fair.

“Hss... easy...”

Selina saw the swelling on Hedi’s right ankle. She leaned in, puzzlingly, like a hound trying to scent the bruise’s depth.

“What are you doing—hey—what?!” Hedi flushed and drew her foot back, swift as a bird. “What are you trying to do?!”

“I wanted to know if there’s a smell... If I keep my feet trapped in boots, there’s a slight sour tang. I wanted to see if you had it.”

“Pervert!”

“I’m serious, I swear!” Her hands rose, palms open, like pleading with rain.

Hedi’s lip curled with cool contempt, a blade lifted but held back. She folded her arms, building a wall like stacked bricks. She tucked both hands under her armpits, bounced a little, then stared straight at Selina—dead-on, unblinking, like a hawk fixing a field. After a beat, she asked, tone keener than frost, “You hear yourself and still believe it?”

“I do... I do...” The words frayed, like a thin string.

“Pervert. Don’t come near me.” Hedi shifted her chair a little, dragging it away like a boat pushed off the bank.

“You haven’t let me check your injury.”

“I saw it in the Dark Realm. This kind of sprain needs hospital-grade healing magic, like a seal you can’t copy at home.”

Selina lunged in one step, rebellious and clinging all at once, and wrapped Hedi’s small, fragile body. She pressed her face to Hedi’s neck, breathing a warm mist against fine skin.

Hedi struggled in small motions, each twitch a fence post marking her last boundary, like a hurt deer holding its patch of woods. But Selina’s soft breath dropped like a pebble breaking the lake’s skin, and rings moved out through Hedi’s chest.

One inhale. One exhale.

Between resistance and care, their bond tangled into something hard to name, like two threads knotting in the dark.

“Professor...”

“Sleep.”

“Mm... don’t want to...” The protest limped, like a late lantern.

Hedi stroked Selina’s head, voice lifting bright as a circus clown’s patter. “Is your throat stuck? Why’re you speaking in hiccups?”

“You know.”

“I don’t.”

Night birds wandering the Shattered City sang in long, liquid trills, close as rafters, far as the clouds. At the same time, the little wooden chair in the post creaked and rocked, the sound like someone passing through the room. Hedi’s thoughts drifted with the moving sound like a kite slipping its string, then snapped back fast, again and again, tide after tide.