Chapter 26: Ash In The Blood
By morning, the world was glass. Frost rimed every grass blade, every brittle stalk, and the river below the ruined footing of the old bridge hissed under a new sheet of ice, as if intent on erasing the memory of the night before.
Apollo walked with the others in silence, all of them scraped raw by what counted for survival. He could taste the silt of blood in the air, sweet and mineral-rich, and every third breath caught in his throat like a held-back scream.
Behind them, the temple was just a stain, the white haze melted into the predawn fog.
Lyra led, her boots crunching frost, but Apollo could see how she hunched now, not the cautious readiness he’d learned to read, but something looser, more defensive, as if she expected the ground to tilt from under her at any moment.
Nik said nothing. The lines on his face had deepened overnight, and once, when their eyes met, Nik looked away first. The dog alternated between sprinting ahead and lagging behind, caught up in a logic all its own.
Thorin walked without complaint, but the new set to his jaw said he’d decided pain was irrelevant so long as there was still work to be done.
Apollo caught his own reflection in a mirroring pool at a bend in the trail, and for a moment didn’t recognize the person staring back: face narrow and colorless, eyes hollowed to the gold.
The veins along his wrists looked like cracks in old bone. He pulled his coat tighter, though the cold didn’t feel like anything anymore.
They moved through a dead place that had once been called a city. The land dipped and rose, the scars of collapsed walls and lost fire showing through the thin snow.
No signs of present life, only the curious geometry of ruins, archways that led to nowhere, gods toppled and half-swallowed by earth, stones set with obsidian eyes that glared from their own graves.
Apollo found himself cataloguing the decay, as if one day someone might want a record.
When the sun broke through, orange and thinning at the edges, Lyra slowed and pointed ahead, her hand a pale knot above her quiver.