"After that, I guess it was just a matter of figuring out what to do. Learning how to live." The wild-man shrugged as he walked on. "The beasts were kind and they gave me food and scraps from Settlements. I didn't want to think how they got them, exactly."

"They really saved your life," Yunkef remarked, amazed.

"I know it's weird. We've only ever seen beasts fighting and tearing people apart. Night told me about how beasts would chase after hunting parties and kill the people on them. I don't think it’s their fault though."

"What do you mean?"

"The vehicles are very loud, and the beast's hearing is incredibly sensitive. All of them, not matter what shape they are, have great hearing. So when the vehicles run by, they roar loud enough to wake and scare the beasts. The ground shakes under the vehicles and that travels into their dens."

"What about how the beasts attack people on sight? Even on foot?" Red asked.

"Who deals the first blow?" Anre asked back.

The two went silent. Yunkef listened to the crunching of stone under their feet, in a pensive mood.

The three's legs and lungs burned terribly from the climb and though they put on a brave face and urged each other to continue on, they couldn't ignore the pain building. Yunkef began to wince with every step and slow his pace till he was lagging a fair distance from Red and Anre.

"Yunkef? Are you okay?" Red asked as she turned back and saw him a dozen paces back.

"I'm alright!" Yunkef said.

"You're gritting your teeth, Yunkef. Something's wrong, spit it out."

"My feet hurt. Haven't healed well enough from the camp," he said reluctantly.

"It's alright, it's about time we took a break anyway," Red said and turned back to the front to get Anre's attention for a halt, but the wild-man was standing stock still, a hand thrown out behind him. A signal to wait.

Yunkef looked questioningly at Red, who looked back with concern. She put a finger to her lips.

Ice, ever at Anre's side, dropped to a low stance and began to walk towards an alcove at a steady, cautious pace. Anre stooped down and picked up a sizable rock, carrying it with him as he followed the beast.

Yunkef, brows furrowed, beckoned silently to Red and crept up the path after Anre. Red, frustrated and gesturing wildly for the boy to stop, exhaled in a puff and followed after them. She likewise picked up a rock, their only available weapon.

Ice approached a dark hole on the outcropping with the alcove. It was narrow, suggesting a cave that went further in. The beast sniffed around the entrance of the alcove for a moment before her head disappeared into the darkness as she searched.

A voice yelled in response, echoing slightly in the confined space of the rock, and the beast backed off. Anre and Red readied to throw their rocks immediately.

"Who's there?" Red yelled in warning, pulling her arm back and ready to throw the rock. Her eyes trained on the darkness of the alcove, searching the blackness for a head to aim at.

"Get this beast away from me Anre!" a voice called, and a shock passed through Red. "Red, it's me!"

"Cross?" she said, her voice quavering. "No, he's dead! Come out here where we can see you!"

"Call Ice off first!"

Anre waited a beat and whistled to get Ice's attention. The beast cocked her head and took a few steps away from the alcove, but stayed positioned on the rock shelf, well within pouncing range just in case. Ice bared her many teeth and growled low in her throat. The many eyes dotting her hide swiveled around to watch the alcove and whoever, or whatever, might come out of it.

Yunkef approached cautiously, the only one without a rock. He stopped a respectful distance away, much to Anre and Red's chagrin. "It’s okay, Ice will let you out. Is it really you, Cross?" he asked in a gentle voice.

"Of course, it's me, you idiot!" The person who emerged from the thick dark of the alcove to where the three could see him was Cross. He limped slightly and leaned heavily on a spear.

"Cross!" Red said with tears in her eyes. She hastily wiped them away. "You're covered in cuts."

Cross smiled slightly when he saw Red, but the stern, unamused expression returned quickly. "Of course, I'm covered in cuts! This fool left me behind to the beasts!" he gestured dismissively at Yunkef. "Everything hurts and I think my leg is broken."

"Come over here then, I'll tend to you." Red quickly dropped the rock and moved to a flat, stable part of the outcropping and waving her twin brother over. "You look terrible, must have lost a lot of blood."

Anre held his rock still, listening closely as Cross walked past him. He didn't complain even as Cross purposefully bumped him in the shoulder. "Hey, Cross?"

"What do you want?"

"How are you not dead?" Anre asked slowly, listening. "You got swallowed up by a wave of beasts and darkness from Lady Black's cave, right?"

"And how did you get here, before us?" Yunkef added, watching Cross.

The tension between the three boys was palpable, and Red tried her best to ignore it and instead focus on bandaging as many of Cross's wounds as possible with the scarce supplies they had. She ripped strips of fabric from her own shirt and wrapped them around Cross's cuts. She gingerly touched a gash that ran from Cross's shoulder down his back. It looked fresh but did not weep blood even as she pressed. After wrapping the strip of fabric around the wound, she moved on to Cross's leg and pressed along the length of his leg from thigh to ankle. Cross did not react to the pressure at all, and Red glanced up at her brother’s face.

Cross looked tired and worn, but he still had the same sharp eyes and serious demeanor. But when Cross looked away from Red to glare back at the other two boys, Red saw something off. She shook her head and dismissed the thought, instead returning to adding a split around Cross's leg with strips of fabric torn from his own pants.

"It's a long story, and you're not going to believe me if I told you," Cross said simply, his rage and distaste for Yunkef and Anre dissipating to be replaced with fatigue. "How long have you guys been climbing this thing?"

"We want to hear that story," Anre interjected just as Yunkef was about to open his mouth. "I insist."

Cross glared at Anre, and the wild-man stood silent and still, rock in hand with no intention of dropping it. In response, Cross's grip tightened over the shaft of his spear.

Yunkef jumped in between the two, holding a placating hand out at both of them. "It's alright, you can tell us all about it after we set up camp. This is as good a place as any to rest for a while. And to answer your question Cross, we've been at this way longer than I'd like to admit. I really need to exercise more" he chuckled in a self-deprecating way.

The other three ignored Yunkef's attempts to lighten the mood, but while the tension and anxiety in the air kept them all on edge, fatigue was settling in rapidly now that they were no longer focused on climbing. Anre finally set down his rock and whistled to Ice. The beast walked through their makeshift camp and disappeared down the rock path, while Anre went in the opposite direction to explore the rest of the rock shelf.

"So, what's happened since the camp?" Cross asked. "Found anything else?"

"We thought you were dead," Red said simply, pushing her focus to wrap her twin's wounds. "I didn't even have time to grieve; we had to run to safety."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that." Cross's voice was soft, one of the rare times he ever said anything softly. "If it wasn't for Yunkef calling down a wave of beasts, you wouldn't have had to grieve."

"I don't think it was Yunkef's fault. No one knew Lady Black was in the cave, or that the darkness-touched even had a cave behind their camp." Red took a breath and fought back tears. "I thought I lost you, Cross. I thought you left me all alone in the darkness."

Yunkef silently walked away from the reunited twins to let them have some privacy and catch up. As he explored the outcrop for a defensible, safe, flat space to sleep and rest, he thought back to the time at the camp. As blinded with panic as he was, every encounter with Lady Black stuck in his mind like a horrid parasite that only brought dread and terror every time he spent even a second of thought on it. But still, he tried to recall the events at the camp.

Thick, roiling darkness flowed out of the cave with Lady Black's laugh echoing through the area. A swarm of giant beasts, far bigger than Ice was, came through next. He scrambled to his feet, his hand clasped something, and he ran. He had picked up a knife. Where had it gone?

Yunkef patted himself down, he completely forgot about the knife! It was in his hand at the camp, he remembered that enough, but between getting onto Ice and fleeing the wave of beasts, he drew a blank. He sighed, sure that he lost it somewhere. In retrospect, Yunkef thought with a shrug, it would have come in handy as none of them had a weapon now, except Cross who just arrived.

Yunkef stopped in his tracks, his eyes growing wide.

Cross.

His spear looked identical to the one that Red threw at the first darkness-touched camp; the one he had been carrying with him ever since the twins left their home. Yunkef shook his head, the idea sounded crazy even to him and everything he had been through. The spear was just a beast tooth on a staff; anyone can make a spear like that.

But the thought still nagged at him in the back of his mind.

Cross was behind Yunkef at the zealot camp, going through the weapon piles and gathering blades and spears. As Lady Black confronted him, she laughed and declared, "You know what to do." Who was she talking to?

Yunkef wracked his brain, trying to connect dots that might as well not even be there. He sighed, his body aching terribly and feeling heavier with every step as he continued to explore. Maybe he was just overthinking it.

As Yunkef walked on, lost in his thoughts, he didn't realize he had walked into the darkness of the alcove Cross emerged from until he blinked and it finally sunk in that he couldn't see anything.

It was pitch black all around him, just like the first cave he ran into. Yunkef's heart rate quickened as he descended into a panic, but as he took a step back to try and leave the way he came, something clinked against his boot. Turning around, he saw the edge of the outcropping not too far away. The twins were still talking quietly, now sitting at the edge and looking out at the scenery, and Anre was walking by with an armful of small mushrooms. Yunkef forced himself to take a deep, shaking breath, hold the breath, and then exhale slowly. It was a shallow alcove, but surprisingly dark. There was no danger at all, and he tried not to feel too foolish for jumping into a panic so quickly. Looking by his feet, he searched the ground for what he had stepped on, but it wasn't till he crouched and ran his hands along the ground that he found what it was.

Yunkef bit back a gasp in case the other three could hear.

Grasping the handle and holding it up to his eyes, the object was unmistakable. It was the zealot camp's ritual knife.

The knife was made of beast bone with a blade of black rock that had been chipped and sharped at its edges and secured to the handle with twine and pitch. It felt cold in Yunkef's hand, unnaturally so, as if the blade itself was leeching Yunkef's body of what little warmth he had. His mind screamed at him to drop it, to throw the knife off the outcrop and down onto the hills and rocks below, yet he couldn't seem to get his fingers to uncurl from the handle. The weight of it felt important. It felt right. It felt like Lady Black would be proud.

Yunkef shook his head and slapped himself in the face.

He threw the knife down with a quick, definitive motion, and made sure to hear the clink of the knife as it hit the rock. It was out of his hands, and before the temptation to pick it back up again hit him, he turned away and walked back to his friends.

Cross was looking his way when Yunkef rejoined them. "Where did you go off to?"

Yunkef shrugged in an attempt to play off his nerves. "I just went around the outcrop, it's not too big. But I couldn't find anything useful."

"Really?" Anre said from where he sat, with Ice curled up nearby. "I found some mushrooms growing in a little patch of dirt. I can't believe you missed them."

"Oh! I must have gone the other way, I didn't notice." Yunkef sat with his friends, and Anre handed him a mushroom.

"We don't have the tools for a fire right now, and light's gonna attract some bad attention. We don't want that." Anre brushed the dirt off a small, glowing mushroom by rubbing it on his shirt, then popped it into his mouth. "I think we're far enough from any darkness-touched camps, but I don't know about beast nests."

Cross snorted. "Beast nests, you'd be looking forward to that."

"That." Anre waved a mushroom in Cross's general direction. "I have to admit I did not miss that.

While Red went to placate her brother and Anre yet again, Yunkef couldn't help but smile. It was a familiar scene, and he realized with a pang of sadness that he had missed it. Between his panic to get away from the wave of beasts and the urgency to find what Night wanted them to see, he had hardly spent any time to relax with his friends. How could they, with Red grieving?

He stifled a yawn.

"Tired, Yunkef?" Red asked with a chuckle.

"Yeah, we've come a long way already, and my legs feel like they'll fall off," Yunkef replied, stretching out.

"It's pretty flat here, and as long as no one sleeps near the edge and rolls over, I think we can sleep here. After everything that's happened, we really need it." Red stretched, and several bones crackled and popped as she did. "How about it Cross? Camp out here?"

Cross looked around, surveying the area. "It seems fine here. No nests like Anre said, no zealots either. Some food, and we could use water, but it's fine."

Yunkef breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, because I don’t think I’ll be able to handle moving from this spot.”

"All things considered, I don't think this area is so bad for resting." Cross shrugged nonchalantly. "You guys get some rest, I'll watch out for anyone coming up the path."

"Really?" Yunkef smiled. "Thanks so much, Cross. I'll just sleep a bit, stretch my legs." he hauled himself up with a groan, moving unsteadily on sore legs. Yunkef moved away from the edge, not trusting himself to stay still in his sleep. He moved away from the alcove as well, and as he passed the dark patch against the rock, his eyes were drawn to it and the thought of picking up the void knife crossed his mind. Shaking his head, he moved on till he found a relatively safe spot away from both possible dangers.

As Yunkef laid himself down on the cold, hard ground, he noticed Red was still talking to Cross. But while the twins were preoccupied, Anre approached him alone. Ice had been left near the alcove, using her body to block the way to Yunkef.

"Hey, Yunkef. Do you have a minute?" Anre spoke in a voice so low that Yunkef struggled to hear him.

Yunkef nodded and lightly tapped on the ground beside him, realized his mistake, and said yes.

The wild-man sat beside Yunkef and sighed. "So, I have some concerns."

"Is it about Cross?"

Anre nodded, lying close to Yunkef for the easy excuse that he wanted to share warmth and to stick together in unfamiliar, potentially dangerous territory. "I don't trust him."

"I know how you feel. We saw him get swept up by the wave of monsters, and he shows up ahead of us. It's impossible."

"I think Lady Black moved him here to catch up to us."

Yunkef took a breath. "I think so too. I don't know if it's the real Cross, or something that looks like him. We need to be careful."

Anre was silent for a while, and he lay with the stillness of a creature lying in wait. There was tension in him. "I don't like it, but what do we do about Red?"

"Red? What about her?"

"She's smart, you know that. Responsible and sharp. But that thing, whatever it is, she believes he's her brother. She's going to take his side."

Yunkef paused, brow furrowing in concern. Following Anre's reasoning and fears, while valid, would serve to divide the group. Going alone so far from home would be certain death. "She would, I agree. I don't know what to do, but we have to keep going."

Anre sniffed. "If it were up to me, I'd throw him off the shelf and let him fall onto the rocks."

"I know how you feel, but please hold off on violence, for now, Anre." Yunkef said quietly. "We don't know for sure what his intentions might be. It could be that he's actually back and he won't hurt us because Red wouldn't like it."

"Are you sure Red actually likes us though?"

"Anre." Yunkef started, patiently. "She makes camp, stole food, and tended to our wounds. I'm sure she likes us."

The wild-man chuckled. "Oh, she likes you alright."

"What?"

Anre laughed and turned over onto his other side with his back to Yunkef. "Nothing. Didn't say anything. Get some rest will you?"