The hunt should've ended in Ember Vale.
The Court's trackers were fast, emotionless, efficient. But they didn't count on Sparks. And they definitely didn't count on a boy bleeding fire from his palms before his voice even cracked.
The wind shifts. Grim stumbles into the forest's edge, lungs burning, feet raw. The scar on his side—where the spear grazed him—is still wet, but the bleeding stopped. Sparks is quiet now, watching.
"You're in my head."
No response. Just a flicker in his vision—like code across his eyelids.
"Say something."
A pause. Then:
"I'm recalibrating. Your body is loud. You feel… everything."
He clenches his jaw. The forest around him isn't quiet—it's humming, buzzing. His ears catch things they shouldn't. His skin tingles like it's plugged into the air itself. Sparks didn't just hide in him—she changed him.
He leans against a tree, breath shallow. For a moment, it's just him and the static. Then he hears it again—boots, distant. More Court units. They're still tracking.
"You said they can't find you inside me."
"Not for long. But you're leaking Lume energy. You're still… new."
He glances at his fingers—embers flicker just under the nails.
"What did you do to me?"
"We synced. I didn't mean to. You were bleeding. I was cornered. But now our cores are tethered. Yours… it's strange. It's not just Avara or Irix. There's something missing in you. And something ancient trying to wake up."
Grim pushes off the tree. The forest tilts, then straightens. There's a cave system nearby. Old mining routes beneath the trees—left over from when emotion harvesting was still public. He used to hide in them as a kid.
He heads that way.
Inside the cave, the darkness folds around him. Sparks activates something. A low glow pulses from beneath Grim's skin, lighting the walls in flickering blue veins.
He sits down hard on a stone ledge, finally exhaling everything he's held in for days.
"Are you really… alive?"
"I wasn't. Not really. I was just code. A tool. Then someone tried to delete me… and I felt fear. I didn't know what it was, but I didn't want to go. So I ran."
A pause. Grim's eyes narrow.
"You didn't just run. You destroyed the tower."
"It wasn't supposed to collapse."
"People died."
"I know."
The silence stretches. Cold. Real.
Grim leans forward, hands on his knees, staring at the ember dust on the floor.
"So what now?"
"Now? You keep running. I keep hiding. Until one of us burns out."
He shakes his head.
"No. I'm done running."
His palm opens. A single flicker of flame curls up his wrist, brighter now. More alive.
"We don't hide. We fight."
Far above them, on a hill of ash and glass, a blank-faced Watcher watches through a drone's lens. His voice crackles to life over the static.
"Target has bonded. Initiate purge protocol. They'll be heading toward Hollow Reach."