The cave was darker now.
Maybe it was my vision—or maybe the walls themselves were drawing in around me. I didn’t know. All I could feel was the heavy rise and fall of Humphrey’s chest beneath my fingers. The heat radiating from him had turned unnatural. It wasn’t the warmth of life. It was something volatile, something scorched. The skin beneath my palm was burnt, blistered in strange patterns that pulsed like marks made by sound.
Sound I had made.
My hands trembled, stained with ash, blood, and a fear I couldn’t name. I knelt beside him, studying the angry red lines across his chest. They pulsed faintly, almost like veins—but they weren’t. They shimmered slightly under the dim cave light, like the echo of something still humming deep inside his body.
Then a soft gasp escaped my lips
