Chapter 57: Catalyst Bound, IV
Seventeen days.
That's how long she remained unconscious.
Not in sleep. Not in rest.
Just. Still.
The thread behind my ribs never faded, never slackened—but it never pulsed either. It was like holding onto something buried under snow, hoping it might still be warm underneath.
We didn't stop moving.
For seventeen days and seventeen nights, we ran.
Not because we knew where we were going—but because we didn't have time to stop. Something was chasing us.
Every night it took a different form. Sometimes it was a shadow with no source, pacing the treeline. Other times it was a voice, mimicking our own, whispering from places we hadn't passed.
On the sixth day, we saw smoke on the horizon—our own camp, burning, even though we hadn't made it there yet.
On the ninth, Erich touched a broken wall and collapsed, aged by minutes or hours we couldn't measure.