My breath stopped before my body did.
One second, I was standing—my hand on the stone, the voices of the Breaths slamming through me like thunder made of names—and the next, the floor just wasn't where it was supposed to be anymore. The pain was deep and burning, not just mine. Grief too ancient to belong to one girl. Sorrow that screamed in a hundred voices.
I heard Antic shout my name—but not my name, of course.
"No Eyes—hey, hey, don't do that—don't do that—"
I collapsed into his arms like a broken marionette.
And then, everything turned gold.
Not warm gold. Not like sunlight. This was a raw, searing gold. It invaded me. Poured into the space behind my ribs. The Breaths were in me. Singing through me. Not in language—but sensation. Visions. Emotion. Pressure and memory and pain too big for words.
I couldn't move. Couldn't scream. My fingers were cold and distant, as if they belonged to someone else. But I could feel the others—scrambling around me. I could feel them like stars winking around a collapsing sun.
Antic's hands were shaking against my shoulders. He was mumbling something, too fast, too scared.
"Don't do this. Don't go stupid-quiet. Come on, curse girl—breathe, damn you. I'll say something romantic, just please don't die."
A quiet click of porcelain against stone. Dolly's voice followed, sharp and tight, her usual sneer wrapped in something brittle. "It's starting. She's the vessel. They're pushing something through her."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Antic snapped.
Grin's slow drawl cut through them like a blade through fog. "...The Breaths... are trying to finish the ritual... through her. A vessel... a bridge."
His scythe hissed as he drove it into the cavern floor, and I felt it. It sang into the ground, a tone that matched the shivering hum inside my bones.
Dolly added, voice low, "If she's the bridge… then we hold the rope. All of us."
Antic cursed. Then he did something strange.
He reached for his flute.
I couldn't see it—but I felt it. The moment his fingers closed over that old, wood-slick instrument, I felt something shift inside the song. The energy turned hungry. It recognized him. It knew what he carried.
The moment he blew the first note, the entire cavern changed.
The gold thickened. It moved. It spoke.
I saw—no, became—a child rocking alone in a barn, sobbing into burlap. A soldier holding the hand of his twin brother, dead under a crushed stone wall. A seamstress pulling out her own teeth for money because her daughter needed medicine. Memory after memory. A chorus of tragedies.
Dolly joined next. Not with music, but with her voice—a whispery chime, too high to be real. Not words. Just presence. Like a lullaby half-remembered from a mother who never existed. It wrapped around the edges of my pain, slowing it, smoothing it.
And then Grin.
Gods, Grin.
His hum was deep. Impossible. It sounded like bones sinking into earth. Like time deciding to let go. The tone pulled at the grief like a tide, drawing it out of me in heavy waves. I felt the weight of the Breaths begin to lift—just slightly. Like they were shifting their burden onto something shared.
Through my paralyzed limbs, the ritual unfolded.
Crystals around us cracked open, spilling light like sap. Shadows peeled away from the corners of the cave, replaced by blurred silhouettes—men, women, children—standing. Watching. Remembering. Forgiving. Letting go.
A voice curled into my ear. Not Antic's. Not Grin's.
A woman. Soft. Familiar. "We never wanted to stay," she whispered. "We just wanted to be seen."
The ache behind my eyes burned hotter than ever. I gasped.
Antic dropped his flute. "She's breathing—!"
Grin murmured, "...It's ending..."
And just like that, I broke open.
Every muscle in my body seized—and then let go. A violent tremor passed through me. My back arched. My chest heaved. And I screamed.
Light poured from my mouth.
It wasn't pain anymore—it was release. Like a hundred locked doors had all swung open at once. The Breaths spilled out in a wash of gold and white and sorrow and peace, surging past the others like a wind made of grace.
Antic shielded his face. Dolly screamed and clutched Grin's neck. Grin stood still, watching it pass through him like rain.
And then, it was done.
I collapsed again.
No sound.
No pain.
Only breath.
Mine.
Theirs.
And peace
------
I woke up with the weight of a hundred stories still draped across my skin.
Not memories. Feelings. Leftover grief. Regret that hadn't decomposed properly. It clung to my lungs like fog.
The cavern was quiet now.
The Breaths were gone.
The air was warm and strange, sweet and metallic, like blood and honey had made a pact. I could feel stone beneath me—cool, humming faintly. Not dead, but... rested.
I didn't try to sit up yet. My body wasn't mine. My hands were tremoring slightly—my fingertips still remembered how the Breaths had screamed. Not in sound, but in pressure. In the places between ribs.
Then, a shift.
Something warm coiled around me.
Arms.
Skin, coarse and hot.
A hand against the back of my neck, a thumb trailing cautiously along my temple, as if I might vanish if touched too hard.
Antic.
I didn't move. I couldn't. I just let my head sink into the space between his collar and shoulder. His skin smelled like moss, sweat, and the sharp tang of magic burned too hot.
His chest moved—sharp, panicked. Then slower.
I realized his heart was thudding so hard it made my teeth buzz.
"You keep," he whispered, "almost dying on me."
His accent thickened when he got scared. Every vowel came curled like smoke. And for once, he wasn't joking. There was no laugh in his breath. Just that shaky hush people get when they don't know how to survive something that didn't technically kill them.
"Sorry," I rasped. My voice barely made it out of my throat. "Habit."
A pause.
Then—
"Ah, there it is," he muttered, almost fondly.
"What?"
I felt him shift. Something warm tickled my forehead.
"You're leaking again," I said.
He sighed. "I swear to every pantheon—if emotional nosebleeds were fatal, I'd be dead six times over by now."
I felt the smear of his wrist across his upper lip.
"You good?" Dolly's voice came sharp from somewhere above. "Or do I need to kick your hormones back into hell?"
"Don't make me move," Antic groaned. "She's... she's actually breathing. Let me pretend I didn't almost pass out from terror and feelings."
"Big baby," she snapped—but softer than usual.
I could sense her near. The tinkle of her shoes against stone. The echo of her dress rustling. She was standing close. Guarding, in her own quiet, dangerous way.
Then Grin knelt beside me.
I didn't need sight to know. The air chilled just slightly. He always brought a stillness with him. Like death sitting on a porch swing.
"...You did it," he said slowly. Like he wasn't quite sure how.
My mouth twitched. "No. We did."
I turned my head slightly, cheek against Antic's shoulder.
"...They're gone."
Grin didn't reply for a while. Just let the quiet settle.
And then, the softest thing from him:
"...Yeah."
Antic tilted his head to look down at me. His hair brushed my cheek.
"So... you're gonna do that thing where you nearly ascend to ghosthood every five hours?" he asked, trying for lightness.
I didn't smile.
But I did breathe.
And that was enough.
The cavern held us, its echoes now faint and echoing peace.
The stillness wasn't silence. Not really. It was the kind of thick quiet that curled around your ankles and tugged when you breathed too loud.
I leaned against Antic's chest—his pulse strong and steady under me, grounding me in this dizzying calm. My ribs ached. The song still echoed in places I didn't know had echoes.
The cavern had changed. The light in the crystals pulsed gentler now, like they were breathing easy. Like they were glad. I wasn't sure I knew what glad felt like.
Grin crouched a little ways off, hunched over like the weight of the room had found him too. His bones didn't creak, but something older than him did.
Dolly hadn't floated away. She just sat. Perched on a stone like a statue that got tired halfway through haunting someone. Her dress—ripped lace and soft tulle—had quieted. Even her bells barely whispered.
I closed my hands on the stone beneath me, feeling the thrum of the place. It wasn't dead. Not even close.
Antic muttered something behind me—his voice low, too close. "Feels like we crashed somebody's wedding and funeral at the same time."
I didn't answer. My whole body was listening.
And then—there it was.
Not a song. Not a scream. A pull.
Like something underneath the floor had opened its eyes and looked straight up at me.
I tensed. My nails dug into the dirt. "There's more."
Grin stirred. "More what?"
"I don't know." I stood, knees shaking. "Something's still here. Buried."
Dolly tilted her head like a broken doll. "The forest's got layers. You pulled one out. But that don't mean the others just vanish."
I stepped toward the wall. The crystal closest to me blinked, dimmed, then glowed. My fingers slid over the smooth curve.
"Whoa whoa whoa—No Eyes?" Antic stood. "You've got that 'gonna summon a god' face again."
I didn't look at him. The wall felt warm.
And then—images. A man. Tall, gaunt. Eyes like cracked mirrors. A child. Firelight. Screaming. Hands that shook too much to be evil. And something… caged.
I sucked in a breath. "It's not a Breath," I whispered. "It's older."
Grin was beside me instantly. "Describe it."
"Glass. Screaming. Someone locked in—no, someone holding something in."
Antic's tone sharpened. "We didn't finish it, did we?"
Dolly muttered, "This place is a honeycomb of ghosts. And you've just knocked on the wrong chamber."
The cavern pulsed again. Not light this time—but something darker. A heartbeat behind the walls.
Antic hissed. "Yeah. Cursed. Definitely cursed."
And then it came.
The whisper.
Not loud. Not violent.
Just… there.
"Mother."
It didn't sound like a word. It sounded like grief wearing a child's voice.
The whisper slipped between our bones and curled somewhere behind the lungs. My breath caught halfway out, chest pinched by a sound too soft to be real. But I'd heard it. I had. It was a name, but it wasn't mine.
Antic was already stepping back, his hand on the flute at his hip. "That's it," he muttered. "Time to go. Pack it up. No Eyes is touching haunted things again."
I reached toward the crystal. "Wait."
He grabbed my wrist. Not rough, not sweet either. Just... tight.
"Seriously," he said, "the last time you passed out, I almost threw myself into a spirit geyser trying to keep your heart going. Let's not do that again."
I tilted my face toward his. "It's calling."
"Oh great. Now it's calling."
Grin hadn't moved. His jaw flexed beneath the shadows. "...I heard it too."
Dolly was still perched nearby, arms folded. "Well? Don't all look at me like I'm gonna stop her. She's the one with the connection. I'm just the backup dancer with knives."
The crystal under my hand began to glow—not brightly. Soft. Like it was trying not to scare me.
"Let go," I told Antic.
"No."
I leaned in, lowering my voice until it was almost gone. "It knows something."
Something shifted in him. His grip loosened, then fell away altogether. The heat of his palm stayed on my skin like a memory.
I placed both hands flat against the crystal.
It opened....
...