They moved at dawn, leaving the dead woman wrapped in a curtain Gray had found in a closet upstairs. He didn't know why it mattered - the dead were beyond caring, and the living had too many other concerns - but the healer had looked at the body with something in her eyes that made him want to cover it. So he had. They'd left without ceremony, without words, stepping over the threshold into a morning that smelled of rain and something burning.
The girl without a name moved with surprising strength.
Gray had expected her to slow them down. She was exhausted, clearly running on reserves she shouldn't have had, and the dark circles under her eyes spoke of nights without rest. But she climbed through the skeleton of the half-collapsed high-rise without complaint, hauling herself through broken windows and over shattered drywall with a determination that bordered on stubbornness.
He noticed other things too. The way her hands, gentle when she'd held the dying woman, could grip a ledge hard enough to leave marks in the concrete. The way she moved through the ruins with an economy of motion that suggested she'd learned to survive the hard way, by doing rather than by being taught. The way she never asked him where they were going, as if trusting him to lead was easier than making decisions herself.
The cold-water sensation in his skull had quieted since they'd started moving together.
He didn't understand it. The constant static of his strange sight - the silver threads he could see in living things, the patterns that moved beneath the surface of the world - had been his constant companion since the sky fell. It pressed against his consciousness like a headache that wouldn't leave, a pressure behind his eyes that made everything sharper and more painful. But when she was near him, the pressure eased. The static dimmed to something almost bearable.
He didn't have words for what was happening. He only knew that walking beside her felt like stepping out of a storm and into the eye.
"Careful here," he said, pausing at a gap in the floor where rebar jutted up like broken bones. "The concrete's unstable."
She nodded and adjusted her path, her foot finding solid ground without hesitation. She was watching him now, he realized. Not with suspicion, but with curiosity. As if she were trying to understand him the same way he was trying to understand her.
"How long have you been alone?" she asked.
The question caught him off guard. He'd been expecting her to ask about his burn, or about the way he sometimes stared at nothing, or about the silver threads she might have seen when she was healing. But this was simpler. More personal.
"Since the beginning," he said. "Eleven days. Twelve, maybe. I've lost count."
"I was with others at first." She climbed over a fallen beam, her movements fluid despite her exhaustion. "A group from my building. We tried to stay together, but..." She trailed off, and something in her voice told him the story didn't have a happy ending.
"But?"
"They're gone now." Simple words, but they carried weight. "Some died. Some ran. Some just... disappeared. I woke up three days ago and I was the only one left."
He didn't ask for details. He knew how those stories went. The world had become a place where people vanished in the night, where shadows moved wrong, where the rules that had governed reality for millennia no longer applied. Grief was a luxury the living couldn't afford.
They climbed higher, picking their way through the ruins of what had once been an office building. Gray could see the bones of it through his strange sight - the patterns of stress in the concrete, the weak points where the structure was ready to give. He guided them around the dangerous spots without explaining how he knew, and she followed without asking.
Once, she slipped on a wet ledge.
His hand shot out before he could think, catching her arm, steadying her before she could fall. Her skin was warm beneath his fingers, warmer than it should have been for someone who'd been climbing through cold concrete. He could feel something else too - a faint hum, like the vibration of a plucked string, running through her. It was the same sensation he got when he looked at the silver threads, but stronger. Closer.
He forgot to let go immediately.
She looked at him, her hazel eyes steady, and for a moment they stood there on the edge of the broken floor, the wind moving between them, the city sprawling below in ruins. He could see the threads in her now, clearer than he'd seen them before. Silver lines running through her body, concentrated around her hands, pulsing with a light that had nothing to do with the sun.
"Thank you," she said again, and her voice was soft.
He released her arm and stepped back, his heart beating faster than the exertion warranted. "The floor's stable from here," he said, because he didn't know what else to say. "We should keep moving."
She nodded, but her eyes stayed on him a moment longer, curious and measuring. She'd felt it too, he realized. Whatever had passed between them when he touched her. She didn't understand it any more than he did, but she'd noticed.
They climbed in silence after that, but the silence was different now. Less empty. As if the space between them had been filled with something that didn't need words.
The tower rose around them, a monument to a world that no longer existed. Gray could see the ghosts of it through his sight - the patterns of the people who had worked here, the echoes of their lives embedded in the concrete like fossils in stone. He wondered if she could see them too, or if his vision was his alone.
He didn't ask. He was learning that some questions were better left unspoken.
At the top, they found a room with a wall that had collapsed entirely, opening onto a view of the ruined city. The sky above was the color of old iron, clouds moving in patterns that didn't match the wind. Gray could see something in those patterns - threads of light that flickered and died, movements that suggested things moving behind the veil of the world.
He looked away. Some sights were better left unseen.
"We can rest here," he said, settling against a wall that still stood. "The structure's sound. We'll be safe for a few hours."
She sat beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. The cold-water sensation in his skull continued to quiet, the static fading to a whisper. He didn't know what it meant. He didn't know what any of it meant.
But for the first time since the world had ended, he wasn't alone.
And that, he thought, might be enough.