Their features begin to crystallize and I recognize the limp of Travis.

The path just on the other side of the gate is wide enough for the four of us to stand in a row

—me and Harry, Travis and Cass—our shoulders sometimes touching as we watch the fog lift and understand fully the chaos that's taking place in our village.

The oddest thing about an Unconsecrated invasion is that no dead litter the ground; they all rise and join ranks with the enemy or are devoured. Again and again we see friends and neighbors felled, only to return and fell more friends and neighbors in time.

I stand between Harry and Travis. Cass is on the other side of Harry. Behind us Jacob lies wrapped up tightly like a roly-poly, his arms around his knees. I can hear his body jerk as he struggles to contain his sobs. Occasionally Argos goes to Jacob's side, whimpers and licks his face. But Jacob doesn't notice and Argos returns to place his muzzle in my hand and whine.

Next to me I feel Travis shift and the skin of his knuckles skims my hand. I twitch my fingers in response, and we link our pinkies. He pulls my hand into his and I sway with relief. With this simple gesture that he is safe. That we are still okay. I tamp down the thoughts that had crept through my dreams the night before: that Travis never came for me. That he never cared for me. That he did not want me.

His thumb glides over the pulse in my wrist and then I feel his body stiffen. His fingers trace along the rope still tied to me, frayed and dingy now. It's the rope that bound Harry and me together the night before.

Travis's hand slips away from mine. I feel its absence the way it must feel to lose a limb.

Desperate, the ghost of its presence still taunting me.

I want to turn to him, to talk to him. But I can't force the words from my mouth with Harry standing so close. With our village dying before us.

“Do you think we should go help them?” Harry asks.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see his hand clenching and unclenching from the ax he brought from our cottage. His voice is flooded with the same hopelessness we all feel.

None of us moves. Instead, we simply stand and stare. Unable to fully comprehend what is happening. That the world we have always known is crumbling.

That such a thing would occur must have been inevitable and yet none of us ever believed it would happen. Never really thought it could happen. Of course we have known breaches and have lived always with the threat of the Unconsecrated. But it's been generations since the Return. We were surviving. Our village is a testament to life constantly surrounded by the threat of death.