Celeste sat by the fire with a blanket around her shoulders and tried to make sense of things that did not want to be made sense of.

The forest around them was dark and wet, the trees bending close as if listening. The Gwennan sat nearby under a thick canopy of branches, its lights dimmed, its engine cooling with soft metallic ticks. Beyond the trees, Clawdiff was only a smear of distant gold and smoke.

The Church wanted her core.

The Church had known about her core before she had known it existed.

Before it had been in her chest, it had been somewhere beneath the cathedral.

People had been moved.

Dissenters.

Priests.

People who asked the wrong questions and disappeared into Godiad with tidy signatures attached.

Celeste understood those facts individually.

Together, they made a shape too large to look at.

But that was not what kept snagging in her mind.

Arcade would not look at her.

That hurt in a quieter way than Silver shouting had.

Every time Celeste shifted too close, Arcade flinched. Not dramatically. Not cruelly. Just enough. Like his body remembered something his mouth refused to say.

And Skye—

Skye sat near Lumina on the other side of the camp, wrapped in a blanket, staring into nothing. His ears drooped. His hands were clasped tightly around one of Lumina’s, but he looked defeated in a way Celeste had never seen on him before.

As if something precious had been taken and he had not yet worked out how to mourn it.

Celeste looked down at the sketchbook balanced on her knees.

Her pencil moved, though she did not remember deciding to draw.

A dragon’s shadow.

She stopped before the dragon’s eye took shape.

“Food?”

Celeste looked up.

Crystal Lockhart stood beside her, wrapped in Diana’s spare cloak. The control collar was gone now, cut loose and locked inside one of Arcade’s storage cases, but a bruised mark remained around her throat where it had sat. In her hands, she carried two small plates of reheated travel rations.

She held one out.

Celeste blinked.

“Oh. Thank you.”

Crystal sat beside her, careful and stiff, as if she were not sure how close was normal.

Celeste accepted the food.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

The fire cracked softly.

Somewhere nearby, Topsy was arguing with C.H.I.P. about backup drives. Ray was speaking quietly with Hughes and Diana near the van. Silver sat alone near the edge of the camp, trying his arcbracer over and over again, each failed call to Umbranox making his posture sharper.

Crystal glanced at the sketchbook.

“That’s nice.”

Celeste looked down quickly, embarrassed.

“Oh. Thank you. It’s not finished.”

“It’s still nice.”

“I always keep art supplies in my bag.” Celeste touched the corner of the page. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

Celeste thought about it.

“Feelings, mostly.”

Crystal gave a small, startled breath.

It was almost a laugh.

“That makes sense.”

Celeste looked at her.

Crystal’s gaze stayed on the fire.

“I find socialising awkward,” Crystal admitted.

Celeste’s ears lifted slightly.

“Oh. Me too.”

“You seem better at it than me.”

“I think I just talk more when I’m nervous, so people mistake it for skill.”

Crystal considered that.

“I go quiet.”

“That is probably smarter.”

“I don’t know. People still notice.”

Celeste nodded.

“Yes. People do that. Very inconvenient.”

This time Crystal did laugh.

Only a little.

But it was real.

The silence after it felt less sharp.

Crystal picked at the edge of her food.

“This has been a strange day.”

Celeste looked at the distant glow of Clawdiff through the trees.

“Yes.”

“I think my whole life ended today.”

Celeste turned back to her.

Crystal’s face had gone still in that careful way people looked when they were trying not to cry.

“I was going to be a paladin forever,” Crystal said quietly. “That was the plan. That was always the plan. I trained for it. Prayed for it. Believed in it.”

Her fingers tightened around the plate.

“And now I don’t know what I am.”

Celeste stared at her own hands.

“Your Crystal and alive thats what matters.”

Crystal glanced at her.

““I miss university,” Celeste said. “Before all this. I studied illustration. I had a room and everything. I wanted to draw books. Maybe children’s books. Or old myths with pretty borders.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“It did.” Celeste smiled faintly. “Then zombies happened. And the egg tree. And military command. And apparently ancient religious theft.”

Crystal looked at her.

Celeste shrugged under the blanket.

“Life takes you in different directions.”

“That is one way of saying it.”

“It’s the polite way.”

Crystal’s mouth twitched.

The fire shifted between them, warm and gold.

“Do you still believe?” Crystal asked.

Celeste looked at her.

“In the Artist?”

Crystal nodded.

Celeste took a while to answer.

“Yes,” she said eventually. “I think so. But not always in the way people tell me to.”

Crystal looked down.

“That is dangerous to say.”

“Yes.” Celeste smiled sadly. “I am learning that.”

Crystal watched the flames.

“I liked faith,” she said. “Not the formal stuff. Just Faith. The quiet part. The music. The candles. The idea that someone sees all the broken pieces and still thinks they can become something beautiful.”

Celeste’s expression softened.

“I like that part too.”

Crystal swallowed.

“I don’t know what to do if that part was a lie.”

Celeste shook her head.

“Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe people lied around it.”

Crystal’s eyes glistened.

“That feels kinder.”

“I hope it is true.”

They sat together, awkward and bruised and strangely comforted by the fact that neither of them knew what to do next.

Then Diana called from near the van.

“Celeste?”

Celeste startled.

Crystal took Celeste’s plate when she shifted to stand.

“I’ll keep this here.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Celeste tucked her pencil into the sketchbook, leaving it beside the log.

She crossed the camp carefully, still unsteady.

Mezzo met her halfway, hovering without quite touching.

“You all right?”

“Yes.”

He gave her a look.

“No.”

“No,” Celeste admitted. “But walking.”

“That’s something.”

Diana spoke to her softly near the van, too quiet for Crystal to hear. Mezzo stayed nearby, hands shoved in his pockets, pretending not to be guarding her from the entire forest.

Silver approached the fire.

He did not sit.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Crystal looked up at him.

“Have you heard from Lady Arcturus?”

Silver’s face tightened.

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

His jaw worked once.

He looked toward the trees, arcbracer still in hand.

“She always answers.”

Crystal did not know what to say to that.

So she said nothing.

Across the camp, Celeste was walking back with Mezzo beside her.

“I keep thinking about Bonbon,” Celeste said softly. “She’ll be frightened if we don’t come back.”

Mezzo’s voice gentled.

“She’s got people with her.”

“But she only likes the blue cup, and if someone moves her blanket she gets upset, and I didn’t tell her goodbye properly.”

“You’ll tell her soon.”

Celeste hugged herself.

“I hope so.”

Silver made a low sound.

A growl, barely held behind his teeth.

Crystal looked at him sharply.

Silver turned away from the fire.

“I need air.”

He walked into the trees without another word.

Celeste watched him go, confused and wounded all over again.

“What did I do?”

Mezzo’s face tightened.

“Nothing.”

But Crystal was no longer looking at Silver.

She was looking at the fire.

A corner of paper had caught between two burning logs.

For one second, she did not understand what she was seeing.

Then the flames curled blue around the edge of Celeste’s drawing.

Crystal lunged.

“No—”

She grabbed for it, but the paper collapsed before her fingers could reach it. The unfinished dragon’s shadow curled inward and became ash.

Celeste froze.

Her face fell.

“Oh.”

Crystal snatched back her hand before the flames could bite her.

“I’m sorry. I tried—”

“It’s okay,” Celeste said quickly.

Too quickly.

“It was an accident.”

Her voice stayed gentle.

But her eyes remained on the fire.

Crystal looked beside the log.

Celeste’s plate was gone.

The food Crystal had saved for her was gone too.

No one nearby was eating.

Slowly, Crystal looked toward the trees where Silver had disappeared.

She said nothing.

But she did not believe in the accident.

Ahead in the forrest, Silver paced until the ground began to remember him.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

At the edge of camp, under the black ribs of the trees, he wore a narrow track into the wet leaves and told himself he was being practical.

Keeping watch.

Checking the perimeter.

Ensuring that no Church patrols, Council scouts, candy-glass horrors, or inquisitorial lunatics had followed them this far into the forest.

Perfectly reasonable.

Perfectly controlled.

Then Celeste laughed.

Not loudly.

Not even properly.

A small, tired sound from beside the fire where Mezzo had said something ridiculous and leaned too close while doing it.

Silver’s whole body tightened.

Heat crawled under his scales.

A growl rose in his throat before he could stop it.

He swallowed it down.

His claws flexed.

Celeste smiled faintly at Mezzo.

The growl came again.

This time it slipped out.

Low.

Rough.

Humiliating.

Silver turned sharply away from camp before anyone could look at him.

“Absurd,” he muttered.

His arm twitched.

His fingers reached, without permission, toward the sleeve Celeste had brushed against earlier when he had shouldered past her in the Gwennan.

He caught himself halfway there.

Stared at his own hand.

Then curled it into a fist.

“No.”

The heat did not listen.

It pressed beneath his skin, beneath his rune, beneath every civilised lesson beaten into him about posture and restraint and never, ever letting the animal show.

His shoulders hunched.

His back ached where wings were not supposed to be.

The places where his horns had been burned with pressure so fierce it made his vision blur.

Another laugh drifted from the fire.

Mezzo’s this time.

Silver’s teeth ground together.

He walked.

Then faster.

Then faster still, until the campfire became a smear of orange behind the trees and the others’ voices blurred into forest hush.

Only when he was far enough away that no one should have seen him did he stop.

His breath came hard.

The rune at his neck felt unbearable.

Too tight.

Too small.

A lock on a door with something massive pushing from the other side.

Silver tore it free.

Pain hit first.

Always pain.

His horns burst out of his skull in a violent sweep of silver-black bone, tearing a strangled sound from his throat. His wings ripped from his back a heartbeat later, huge and shaking, claws gouging into the mud as he doubled over.

For several seconds, he could do nothing but breathe through it.

The forest held still around him.

Then the urge surged up again.

Claim.

Mark.

Drive away.

Keep.

Silver snarled and slammed his forehead into the nearest tree.

The impact shuddered through the trunk.

Bark split beneath his horns.

He did it again.

And again.

Not hard enough to break the horns.

Hard enough to feel.

He dragged them against the bark, grinding deep grooves into the wood, rubbing until the pressure in his skull began to ease. Sap smeared across the ridges. Leaves shook loose overhead and drifted down around him like ash.

“Pathetic,” he hissed.

But he did not stop.

He moved to the next tree.

Then the next.

Horn marks carved a rough crescent through the woods around camp, deep enough to catch moonlight in pale scars.

When that was not enough, he used his claws.

Silver raked both hands down an old trunk, shredding bark in four long cuts. Then another. Then another. He moved faster, breathing harder, wings half-spread, tail lashing through the bracken.

Tree after tree took the violence he could not aim anywhere else.

By the time he finished, the damage formed an ugly, deliberate perimeter around the camp.

A warning written in claws, horns, and dragon temper.

Silver stood in the middle of it, chest heaving.

Still not enough.

His eyes found a large rock jutting from the moss.

He stalked toward it, drew in a breath, and exhaled dragon fire.

Silver flame washed over the stone.

The rock blackened, cracked, and glowed faintly at the centre, heat rippling from its surface in wavering lines.

There.

At last, something inside him settled.

Not vanished.

Settled.

Silver stared at the scorched rock.

Then at the clawed trees.

Then at his own shaking hands.

His face twisted.

“Absolutely pathetic.”

But the words had less venom than he wanted.

Because beneath the shame, beneath the fury, beneath the horror of needing anything this badly—

it had helped.

It had been cathartic.

That made it worse.

He shoved the rune back into place.

His horns and wings vanished with another flash of pain, leaving him staggered and sweating in the dark. He braced one hand against the ruined tree, pulled in a long breath, and forced his posture straight.

When he returned toward camp, he moved quietly.

Not quietly enough.

Hughes had been watching from the shadow of a leaning ash, arms folded, one shoulder bandaged beneath his coat.

A few minutes later, Diana stepped up beside him.

She had followed the damage line quietly, one hand resting near her sword, until she reached the scorched rock and the trees raked deep with claw marks.

Her brows lifted.

“Oh dear.”

Hughes gave a tired grunt.

“Aye. That about covers it.”

Diana crouched near one of the horn-gouged trunks and touched the torn bark.

“This was Silver?”

“Mm.”

“How long?”

“Last few nights,” Hughes said. “Not this bad before.”

Diana looked toward the camp, where Silver sat apart from the others with his back to the fire.

“He removes his rune?”

“Aye. Horns. Wings. Whole lot.” Hughes rubbed a hand down his face. “I understand the horn thing. Pressure build-up, old injury, dragon anatomy being spiteful. The rest is beyond me.”

Diana’s mouth pressed into a line.

“I had dragon recruits. Young ones, mostly. Years ago.”

Hughes looked at her.

“And?”

“When they became interested in someone, this sort of behaviour sometimes started.”

He stared.

Diana gestured to the trees.

“Marking boundaries. Scorching stone. Leaving scent and mana in a perimeter. Making a defended space.”

Hughes’s expression slowly flattened.

“You’re saying this is territory claiming.”

“I’m saying it looks very much like it.”

Hughes closed his eyes.

“Of course it does.”

“It does not mean he understands what he is doing.”

“Do you think he knows?”

Diana looked back toward the camp.

Silver was watching the fire.

Celeste sat on the opposite side, still wrapped in her blanket, unaware of the ruined trees behind her.

“Probably not,” Diana said.

Hughes sighed so deeply it seemed to come from his boots.

“I’m going to have to keep an eye on this before he does something stupid, aren’t I?”

Diana’s expression softened with sympathy.

“I’m afraid so.”

Hughes looked again at the scorched rock.

Then at Silver.

Then at Celeste.

“Brilliant,” he muttered. “Because what this week needed was dragon courtship nonsense.”

Diana almost smiled.

Only almost.

“Best catch it early.”

“Aye.”

Hughes turned back toward camp, shoulders heavy.

“I’ll add it to the list of disasters currently wearing trousers.”