— The Devil Rode Beside Her

chapter 13

Silence.

Then—

A heartbeat.

Not hers.

Not human.

A slow, heavy thud.

Then another.

Her eyes opened to darkness—no sky, no ground.

Just a vast, endless void swirling with red ash.

The Shepherd was gone.

Rudy was gone.

The Wolves were gone.

She was alone—

No.

She wasn’t.

A small figure stood in the darkness ahead.

A boy.

Barefoot.

Smoke clinging to his skin like a second layer.

Eyes hollow and desperate.

He lifted his hand toward her.

A whisper rippled through the void:

“You left me.”

Her breath caught.

“No,” she whispered. “No, I—”

“You left me.”

The boy stepped closer, flickering like a candle in wind.

The darkness shifted—

His form wavered—

Bending into something taller—

Something twisted—

Something made of smoke and grief and rage—

Her shadow.

A child broken in two.

She stumbled backward, shaking her head. “You’re not him. You’re not—”

The child’s face cracked—literally cracked—splitting down the center as two voices spoke at once:

“HALF OF ME BURNED.”

“HALF OF ME FOLLOWED.”

The void shook.

Fire flickered beneath her feet.

“And the Shepherd?” she whispered.

“What did he do to you?”

The shadow-child raised its hands.

Images slammed through her mind—

Her family screaming.

The preacher laughing.

The fire eating the house alive.

Her own younger self crawling across the dirt.

And beside her:

A boy—

Her twin—

Clawing his way out of the burning floorboards.

Reaching for her.

Begging.

She had run.

He had died.

And something ancient—something buried—had taken what was left of him and twisted it into a spirit made of grief and rage.

Not a demon.

Not a familiar.

Her brother.

Her other half.

Her shadow.

“Oh God,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t—”

The child screamed—a sound like burning bone—

and lunged.

She reached out—

And the world snapped back.

---

She woke in the courtyard, lungs burning, throat raw.

Blood pooled under her palms.

The Shepherd stood over her.

“Now you understand,” he whispered.

Her shadow—flickering, torn, half-mended—crawled across the ground toward her, not out of rage now…

…but out of need.

Out of yearning.

Out of grief.

“Tonight,” the Shepherd breathed,

“I finish what the fire began.”

And somewhere beneath the earth—

Drywater Gorge answered.

With a roar.

With thunder.

With the other half of the shadow waking.