They stand at the final line of trees, where shadows thin and the world beyond the forest glows gold and gray under the early sun. The hush behind them sleeps now, gutted of its voice, its teeth turned to dust and root-blood burned clean. Yet Rafi tastes it still — a ghost of soot at the back of his throat, the memory of how close he came to vanishing inside a whisper.
Beside him, the braid girl chews the corner of her lip. She kneels at the edge of the path and digs her fingers into the black soil, lifting it to her face like a rite. She breathes in the scorched scent: a forest reborn by their pain. A graveyard of every lie that told her she was just a mouth for the hush to use.
They share no words. Words feel too small for what remains between them: a bond soldered with sleepless nights, choked sobs, firelight, and blood. He watches her smear a stripe of ash across her forehead — a crown, a warning, maybe both. He dips his fingers in the same dirt and presses it to his tongue. Bitter. Real. Proof that he is alive and himself.
It is freedom, but not the kind that tastes sweet. This freedom is sharp, dry, and leaves splinters in the mouth. It promises no soft road back to normal. He knows this even as he grips her wrist and feels the thin hammer of her pulse — they are wild now, children no longer. Whatever world waits beyond this treeline must make room for what the hush could not break.
They stand a moment longer, the ash heavy on their tongues, the silence thick in their chests. A breeze slides through the trees, ruffling her braid, catching in the ragged hem of his shirt. It tries to tug them backward — a last playful tug from a forest that has nothing left to claim.
Rafi wipes the soot from his lips, his eyes lifting to where the sun climbs through thinning clouds. A single bird darts overhead, a flick of white feathers in all that green and gray. He almost laughs at how sharp and bright it feels.
Together they step beyond the hush's reach. The forest does not protest. It only sighs, a shiver in the canopy. Its hunger is spent.
They walk until they can no longer taste the ash — until the shadows of trees shrink behind them, replaced by open sky.