Lysara forced herself to lift her head.

  The glow hadn’t faded. She could feel it — heat behind her eyes, the dark tracery still tight under her skin. The fog was gone, pulled back where it belonged, but the aftermath clung to her like smoke in her lungs.

  Kayden stood a few paces away, blade lowered but not sheathed.

  Tessa hadn’t moved at all.

  Lysara swallowed. Her throat burned where the draught still sat, sharp and bitter.

  “I need to explain,” she said.

  Her voice held. That was something.

  “I have Shae blood.”

  Tessa’s eyes widened.

  “That’s why I’m still rational,” Lysara continued. “It doesn’t stop corruption. It absorbs strain. Slows escalation.”

  Tessa’s jaw tightened. “How long?”

  “Five years, since my first symptoms.”

  Kayden didn’t look at her. “When did you start changing?”

  “Immediately. Just not all at once.”

  “And your mind?” Tessa asked.

  “Unchanged.”

  Kayden finally turned his head. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “What does loss look like. If it happens?”

  Lysara breathed in through her nose. Thought carefully.

  “Heat spikes first. Sound narrows.” She met Tessa’s eyes briefly. “If I stop answering you, that’s your line.”

  Kayden nodded once, filing it away.

  “Violence,” Tessa said. Not a question. “Any urge? Ever?”

  “No!”

  “Not today?”

  “No.”

  “Not before?”

  “Never.” The answer rose out of her before she could stop it, clipped and absolute.

  “I have runes carved in my flesh. We’ve been trying different potions.”

  Silence stretched.

  Kayden shifted his stance, fractionally. “Potions?”

  “They slow it. They haven’t fixed it.”

  “And if you miss one?”

  “I degrade. I don’t spike.”

  “Unconscious?”

  Lysara’s fingers curled around the satchel strap. “Never.”

  That was when Tessa finally exhaled.

  “How did it happen?”

  Lysara looked past them, toward the blackened ground where the wolf still lay sealed—wrong even in stillness.

  “I was born in the Fog Forest,” she said. “Not Black Hollow.”

  A pause. She drew a slow breath. “I might have been affected from birth. I didn’t show symptoms until I was thirteen. I don’t know exactly when or how it started.”

  “We lived in the forest for several years. My mother never showed signs of corruption, but the poison from the fog killed her before I turned sixteen.”

  “And you?” Tessa asked quietly. “Are you affected by the poison?”

  “No.”

  Another pause. “I show no signs. But this fog is new. It was instinctual.”

  “It might be a poison. I don’t know. “

  Kayden’s gaze sharpened. “Your mana?”

  She met his eyes.

  “Is it twisted?” he asked. “Changing?”

  She shook her head once.

  “No.”

  Then, after a beat, her mouth tilted—not quite a smile. “I never had much to twist.”

  That drew their full attention.

  “I’ve always run thin,” she continued. “Barely enough to register. That’s why I learned circles. Runes. Why I use tools.” Her fingers brushed the edge of her satchel. “If I want anything complex, I have to build it. Channel it. Borrow structure.”

  Tessa watched her closely. “And it’s stayed that way?”

  “Yes.”

  Kayden nodded slowly.

  Silence held for a moment.

  “I need time to understand it.”

  “And us?” Tessa asked.

  Lysara didn’t soften it.

  “I will not harm you. If that changes, you’ll know before it’s too late.”

  Kayden slid his blade back into its sheath.

  Tessa didn’t move—but she didn’t turn away, either.

  That was enough.

  Lysara lowered her gaze. The clearing remained scarred, the forest slow to reclaim what had been pressed into it.

  Nothing had been forgiven.

  But nothing had ended.

  For now, that meant waiting on their decision.