His eyes trail over my head, my shoulders, my arms. “It’s fading.” I look down, and he’s right. The crimson light on my forearm and fist are dimming. The ichor caked on my knuckles breaks apart, cracking and crumbling between my fingers. After a moment, only a few black specks remain. “It… it’s acting like a shield,” Sel begins, his voice more filled with wonder than I’ve ever heard before. “Burning off the hellfox blood.”

He’s right. When the red glow goes, so does the rest of the liquid. I shake my head, disbelieving everything, everything that just happened to me.

Sel is in much the same boat, it seems. He stands up, his expression too confused to be accusatory. “What are you?” We stare at each other until we hear the shouts.

“Bree!”

“Sel!”

“Bree! Sel!”

I recognize the voices. Evan. Tor. “I found them!” Evan shouts.

I turn from my seated position to see the Squire jump over the wall and jog over to where we’re huddled together. A blond-haired figure streaks past him faster than the eye can track, and suddenly Tor is standing beside us.

Sel notices her speed too. “Are you—?”

“Awakened?” Evan finishes. “Yep. Tor went down about an hour ago. We took her back to the Lodge and called everyone in, but you two never showed up.”

“And you’re up and running already?”

“Accelerated metabolism, William thinks.” Tor grins, but then she notices what’s on the ground around us, sees me sitting there. “What the hell happened here?”

Evan notices the fading green piles too. “Is that Shadowborn dust?”

A new voice shouts to us from beyond the wall. “Did you find them?”

At the sound of Nick’s voice, Sel takes a step back, retreating. My eyes follow the movement, and Sel and I lock gazes. I watch his face shutter in real time from wonder and something I can only interpret as concern, to the grim neutrality of a soldier at war. And just like that, the Selwyn Kane from a few moments ago is buried under stone like a secret gone to the grave.

“Hey!” Nick jumps the wall and runs toward us, relief for both me and Sel plain on his face. Sarah follows close behind him. “Are you both okay? We didn’t know where the hell you were. Then Tor was Called, and—” Nick slows when he sees my bloodied arm. “No…” He’s at my side in a heartbeat. He reaches with gentle fingers for my left hand. When he rotates it, he hisses at the sight. The cuts are long and deep, running from elbow to wrist, and dirt and pebbles are sticking where my arm had pressed into the earth. I hadn’t noticed.

Tor curses under her breath, and she and Sarah share a brief look. I move to stand, but my knees aren’t cooperating. My entire body feels slow, heavy.