I woke to warmth.

  A steady, quiet heat. A body pressed along my spine, breathing slow and even. Rocher's arm was tucked beneath my head, the other resting lightly at my waist, our legs still tangled beneath the bnkets.

  For one fragile heartbeat, I nearly rexed into it.

  Then the memory of st night surged into me. The argument. The panic. The stupid, desperate words I had begged.

  My whole body went rigid.

  I wasn't ready to face him. Not with shame still sharp at the back of my tongue.

  Rocher shifted behind me. His breath brushed my temple, warm and careful. He pressed a feather-light kiss to my forehead, so soft that it barely registered as touch.

  The way he always woke me.

  I kept still. Not convincingly. Not to someone who knew the cadence of my breathing. But I stayed motionless anyway, clinging to the pretense because I didn't know how to meet his eyes without falling apart.

  He hesitated. I felt it in the space behind me, a catch in his breath, as if he meant to speak.

  Then he seemed to think better of it and withdrew.

  The weight lifted from the bed. The tch clicked. The door closed.

  I y there longer than I should have, listening to my pulse slow, then forced myself upright.

  The bnkets were still warm where he had been. They smelled faintly of smoke, of him, and something softer beneath that I refused to name.

  But there was too much I had left to do. Wallowing was not a luxury I could afford.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and pnted my feet on the floor before my resolve could falter. The cold shocked me fully awake.

  Good.

  I dressed quickly, without ceremony. Robes. Boots. Belt. My fingers shook when I reached for the Bell, but I closed my hand around it anyway and waited for the tremor to pass.

  If I let myself fall apart now, people would die for it.

  The next phase was unavoidable.

  Harassment and ambush had thinned the edges, bled the vanguard, kept them cautious. But the main body would not creep. They would advance in force, straight down the center of the forest, shields locked, banners high, pylons bzing as the cordon pushed forward like a moving wall.

  Once they committed to that charge, everything would change.

  The forest would become a corridor of violence, holy magic flooding every root and stone within reach of the pylons. Anything that did not yield would be crushed.

  I had known this from the beginning. Known it in the abstract, at least.

  Knowing it and feeling the weight of it were not the same thing.

  Before the vanguard had even crossed into the forest, my pn for the charge was simple. Elegant, even.

  The pylons' effective range scaled with the volume of holy magic being fed into them. As they pushed deeper, the cordon would need more and more power to upkeep. Priests sustained the pylons. Padins defended the priests. If either side of that equation faltered, the cordon weakened.

  That was the seam.

  The absence of the Saintess was both a blessing and a curse.

  In the game, this version of the crusade had Lumiere as the lynchpin of the assault; a mid-boss of sorts, if you sided with the witches. Defeat her, and you could convince her to your side—pressuring the rest of them into standing down.

  Without her, there was no center to strike. No moment to force. No tide to turn.

  So I proposed an alternative.

  Attack from the shadows. Make every step forward cost them. Not in lives, but in commitment.

  A py borrowed from the Demon Lord himself.

  Injured padins would need extraction. Priests would have to be pulled off the pylons to tend them. Every stretcher carried back was a drain on forward momentum, a reduction in output. Drain it enough, and the cordon would stutter. Maybe even fail.

  It was cruel, but merciful by the standards of war.

  And it exploited the Saintess's very same absence.

  The line of priests was thinner. The pool of holy magic narrower. More subject to strain.

  Ferric had hated it.

  He had called it wishful thinking, dressed up as strategy. Said the Church did not train its soldiers to be saved. Said I was assuming a kind of humanity that had been systematically burned out of them.

  I had argued. He had pushed back harder.

  In the end, I had compromised.

  The pn would be executed only by those who could stomach it. Rocher. Seraphine. Me. To a lesser extent, Nyxara and Ysel, shaping the battlefield rather than engaging directly.

  Ferric had agreed to support us anyway, which was his way of conceding without admitting he was wrong.

  I had thought that was the difficult part.

  I was wrong.

  They proved it again and again. Crushing the phial between their teeth before we could stop them. Turning themselves into consecrated fme.

  After that, there was no rescue. No hesitation. No bargaining.

  Once they understood that defeat meant capture instead of death, they denied us even that. Better to burn than be carried. Better to become a symbol than a burden.

  The Church had trained them well.

  My pn had assumed fear of death.

  What I was facing was devotion to it.

  I left the hut before I could lose my nerve.

  The forest felt tighter than it had an hour ago, like muscles held in readiness. Roots shifted beneath my boots as I crossed the clearing toward the Great Tree, its vast trunk rising out of the gloom like a spine too rge for the world that carried it.

  Ysel waited for me at its base, palms pressed to the bark, eyes closed, listening in the way only witches ever truly listened. When she opened them at my approach, her expression tightened immediately.

  "You have that look," she said. "The one that means you intend to wake something that would rather not be."

  "I need her help," I said.

  Ysel studied my face for a long moment, then turned and led me around the Tree's roots, down into the sheltered hollow where moonlight thinned and the air grew heavy and cool.

  Velka y there like something spilled.

  Half-curled against the earth, limbs sck, hair tangled with moss and leaves. Her breathing was deep and uneven, the slow rhythm of true hibernation. With each exhale, the ground around her seemed to soften, as if the forest itself were dozing along with her.

  She smelled faintly of sap and sleep and something sweeter underneath. Overripe.

  Guilt stirred, sharp and unwelcome.

  "We should not wake her lightly," Ysel murmured. "When she is like this, she cannot always tell friend from foe."

  But I knelt anyway and pressed my palm to the earth beside Velka's shoulder. The ground pulsed faintly in answer.

  "Velka," I said softly.

  Her fingers twitched.

  Velka surfaced slowly, like a thought rising from deep water.

  Her eyes cracked open, unfocused at first. She inhaled once, long and luxurious, and her lips parted in a small, pleased sound.

  "Mmm..." she murmured. "The forest is… noisy today."

  Her gaze slid toward me, lingering too long. I felt it like a brush along my spine.

  "Ah..." she said dreamily. "You again... the warm one... with sharp thoughts."

  She smiled, zy and crooked.

  "You taste tired..."

  "I am," I said. "And I'd like to gift that very same feeling."

  Velka's brow creased, faintly puzzled. "To whom?"

  "The ones burning their way through the forest," I said. "The ones who choose light over breath."

  Her eyes brightened at that. Interest, keen and unmistakable.

  "Oh..." Velka hummed. "Yes. I felt them pop."

  Ysel cleared her throat, warning threaded through the sound. Velka sagged back slightly, chastened but not apologetic.

  "They make such a mess..." she continued, idly tracing a finger through the dirt. "All that effort... all at once. Very rude."

  I swallowed and forced myself to continue.

  "They are killing themselves to deny us time," I said. "Injury no longer slows them. Fear does not touch them."

  Velka tilted her head, considering. "Mmm... Sacrament."

  The word slid from her mouth like honey.

  I nodded. "Yes."

  Silence stretched. The forest listened.

  "You want me to eat them," Velka said at st.

  "No," I said quickly. "Not like that."

  A flicker of disappointment crossed her face.

  "Just sleep," I said. "A shallow one. Laid gently. Only where the cordon has not yet taken root. Enough that exhaustion can pull them under. Enough that wounded bodies rest instead of reaching for the phial."

  If they were whole, they would fight it off. I expected that.

  But the wounded were already teetering on the edge of colpse. Blood loss. Pain. Shock. Bodies had limits even when faith did not.

  If Velka's sleep caught them in that narrow window, it would steal the moment of choice. Not forever. Just long enough.

  Velka frowned, lips pursed. "Sleep is… sticky," she said slowly. "It clings... slips into cracks."

  "I know."

  "It will not catch everyone."

  "I know."

  "The loudest ones... will fight it," she added.

  "I expect that."

  Velka leaned forward, eyes half-lidded, studying me with unsettling focus. Then she closed her eyes, swaying faintly as if listening to something far away.

  "I can y it... where the forest still dreams," she murmured. "Not deep... just hush. Heavy eyelids... stumble into rest."

  Her shes fluttered.

  I held her gaze. "That is enough."

  Velka sighed, long and content. "So much trouble..." she said. "All this... just for one more breath."

  "It's important, Velka."

  She opened her eyes again, dark and bright and hungry all at once.

  "Very well," Velka said.

  The roots around us shifted, settling.

  Ysel let out a breath I had not realized she was holding.

  Velka's eyelids drooped almost immediately. Her head tipped forward, chin resting against her chest.

  "Wake me... if you need more," she murmured.

  And then she slumped, already sinking back into sleep, the promise of it seeping outward into bark and loam and leaf.