Isaac woke to purple.

  Pressure-purple, the kind that lived under skin.

  The ceiling was crystal, a thousand angled planes like the cave had been bitten open and never finished healing.

  Firelight crawled over those planes and broke apart, too many small flames where there should have been one.

  Smoke tasted clean, light in his lungs.

  It streamed toward a narrow seam where two crystal ribs almost met, then vanished.

  Isaac blinked and his eyes tracked cleanly.

  He waited for the bite’s after-feel, for that late answer in his limbs.

  It came different.

  Pressure behind his teeth, fingerprints under the bone, but his body listened.

  His stomach stayed steady.

  Time felt like time.

  He exhaled and realised he’d been holding his breath as if the world might steal it.

  The crystal plates on his wings clicked as he shifted.

  One click sounded wrong, a sharper tick that did not match the others.

  He froze.

  Something warm pressed against his side.

  Fur.

  A purr ran through the stone under him, low enough it felt like vibration.

  Tetley’s face was close to his wing.

  Too close.

  The ruin-cat’s tongue dragged once along the edge where a plate was missing.

  Isaac flinched, pain wasn’t it, the shock of touch landing properly.

  Tetley blinked slow, like Isaac was the odd one.

  Then Tetley chewed.

  A small jaw movement.

  A swallow.

  Like whatever had been on Isaac’s skin was food.

  No recoil.

  Just eating.

  Isaac’s throat tightened, sickness wasn’t it, the meaning of it.

  He looked at the exposed patch under the missing plate.

  Human skin.

  Tender.

  Red where the mimic’s tooth had found him.

  Angry, but contained.

  He remembered the basin in broken pieces.

  The sideways jaw.

  The stink.

  The moment his legs stopped cooperating.

  He should have woken hollowed out.

  Instead he felt here.

  Tetley purred again, steady as a heartbeat you didn’t have to think about.

  Isaac swallowed.

  No cold line behind the ribs.

  No delayed weakness crawling up through him.

  He could feel his body.

  That alone made him want to sit up fast.

  He didn’t.

  He sat up the way you sat up after the world taught you it punished wrong movement.

  Slow.

  Measured.

  He propped himself on one elbow and let his eyes map the cave.

  A small fire sat banked in a shallow crystal cup, crystal ribs curved around it like a low windbreak.

  Two skewers rested over the heat.

  Small fish, pale and tight-bodied, fins like torn cloth.

  Split and pinned onto sharpened sticks.

  One fish was half-done.

  The other looked like someone had put it there and forgotten to turn it.

  Smoke slid up, then sideways, then vanished into that seam.

  Isaac turned his head.

  And saw Zoya.

  She was sitting upright against a purple crystal rib.

  Head tipped forward.

  A stick held in both hands, not a spear, not a proper weapon, just something to keep her hands from being empty.

  Guard posture, even asleep.

  Shoulders slumped.

  Hands ready anyway.

  Her face was smeared with grit.

  Mud dried in dark streaks along her jaw.

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  Crystal dust clung to her lashes.

  Cuts striped her forearms.

  Not deep.

  Many.

  Bruises marked her collarbone, a crescent along one shoulder.

  Her clothes were caked with crystal grit like she’d been dragged through Verge muck and then used as a mop.

  She looked sixteen again in a way the basin had stolen.

  Small.

  Tired.

  Too young to be sitting guard over a collapsed monster-winged adult like this was normal.

  Isaac’s chest tightened.

  Fear wasn’t it.

  Urgency wasn’t it.

  Something sharp and quiet.

  She got him here alive.

  His memory didn’t give him a history to compare it to.

  It gave him two things.

  His name.

  And the other sentence, stamped in him like it had been burned there.

  I won’t fail her again.

  He didn’t know who her was.

  He didn’t know what he’d done.

  He only knew the sentence flared when he looked at Zoya, like a warning light wired into his bones.

  He stared at her hands.

  Swollen at the knuckles.

  Raw at the palms.

  Red bands at the base of her fingers like she’d been pulling something that fought.

  Dried blood lived in the creases.

  She’d fallen asleep holding a stick because her hands refused to let go of being ready.

  Isaac stayed still.

  He didn’t want the shift of his weight to wake her.

  Not yet.

  His eyes dropped to the cave floor.

  A long smear of disturbed grit cut across the stone, snagging and feathering around shallow sink hollows that had tried to form even in here.

  Beside it, dents and scuffs told the rest, knees that had stopped and started, fingers that had slipped and caught again.

  A decision to keep going.

  Isaac looked back at Zoya.

  Resolve settled in him, clean.

  He scanned the cave again, not for loot, for what mattered.

  His eyes found the satchel.

  It sat a few feet from the fire, placed and closed, looped so it would not slide into her by accident.

  He understood why it had been staged like that.

  If she handled it wrong, it would vanish on her.

  So she had treated it like an animal that bolted when touched by the wrong hand.

  That landed in him like a quiet punch.

  He didn’t think anything soft.

  He thought: she did it anyway.

  He looked at her linehook.

  Within reach of her sleeping hand.

  Handle familiar, wrapped, the same faded thread.

  But the blade was new.

  Jagged and translucent, pinned fast into the mount.

  A shard-edge that looked like it belonged to a dead thing, not a tool.

  She had changed it under pressure.

  Fast.

  Practical.

  Then kept going.

  Tetley had settled into a loaf by Isaac’s wing like this was normal.

  The ruin-cat’s eyes were half-closed.

  Calm.

  Safe.

  Like he’d decided the cave was theirs.

  Isaac watched him and felt something quiet lift in his chest.

  Tetley had stayed.

  Tetley had eaten the bite.

  Tetley had been part of the reason Isaac was awake at all.

  Isaac looked back at Zoya.

  Her stick angled toward the cave mouth.

  Even asleep, she’d put herself between him and outside.

  She needed an adult.

  Not for speeches.

  For weight.

  For presence.

  For not being alone with a roar in the dark.

  Isaac made his first decision awake.

  Zoya gets treated first.

  He leaned toward the satchel.

  Careful.

  He kept his wings from brushing it.

  He lifted the flap like he was opening something that could snap.

  The satchel waited.

  It recognised him, not warmly, but correctly, like a lock acknowledging the right cut of key.

  Isaac didn’t feel hate.

  He felt interest, the strange thrill of it.

  Breath did weird things.

  The Core did weirder.

  He held the flap open and pulled items out, keeping his hand at the threshold.

  Bandages, the tin, then the clear bottle that smelled sharp enough to cut through smoke.

  Gauze.

  A folded strip of cloth too clean to belong down here.

  Isaac paused.

  Because they didn’t look like the supplies they’d used.

  They looked untouched.

  The bandage roll wasn’t half-chewed.

  The gauze packet wasn’t crumpled.

  The bottle was heavier than it should have been.

  He turned it in the firelight and saw the liquid line.

  Full.

  Like “used” was optional inside that bag.

  Isaac set the supplies beside Zoya.

  Staged.

  Ready.

  Then he closed the satchel and set it back where it had been.

  Not fear.

  Discipline.

  He reached for the antiseptic.

  His fingers touched the bottle.

  Zoya moved.

  Stick up.

  A snap, not a swing, a hard line through the air that would have broken a nose if Isaac’s face had been there.

  Her eyes opened.

  Sharp.

  Wild for half a heartbeat.

  Then she saw him.

  Upright.

  Breathing.

  Alive.

  Relief hit her face so fast she couldn’t hide it.

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  Small.

  Like she’d been holding that word in her teeth for hours.

  Then she swallowed and rebuilt her guard.

  Her jaw set.

  Her expression went flat, but it shook at the edges.

  “You’re up,” she said.

  Her voice cracked on the second word.

  Isaac held the antiseptic bottle up.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Zoya’s mouth tightened, automatic.

  “I’m fine.”

  Her hands trembled anyway.

  Isaac didn’t argue.

  He poured antiseptic into the tin.

  Soaked gauze.

  Then he started cleaning and wrapping with fast, practiced motions.

  Functional.

  Quiet.

  Get it done.

  Zoya flinched once.

  Then forced herself still.

  Her eyes stayed on the cave mouth as if staring could keep it shut.

  “Don’t waste,” she said.

  Dry.

  Automatic.

  Isaac nodded toward the supplies without looking up.

  “Not wasting.”

  He tapped the bottle with one claw.

  “The bag refilled them.”

  That got her attention.

  Her eyes snapped to the gauze.

  To the bandage roll.

  To the bottle that looked too clean.

  “What,” she said.

  Not suspicion.

  Disbelief.

  Isaac lifted it slightly.

  “It was half before.”

  He let the liquid line speak for him.

  “Now it’s full.”

  Zoya stared like the satchel had just grown teeth.

  “So it… fixes things,” she said.

  “Or it lies about being empty,” Isaac said, tone light even if his eyes weren’t.

  Zoya exhaled something that was half laugh, half exhaustion.

  Then her eyes widened.

  A thought that snapped bright.

  “The chocolate,” she said.

  Isaac blinked.

  Zoya’s voice rushed out like she was afraid the idea would die if she didn’t say it fast.

  “I left half a bar in there.”

  Isaac’s grip tightened on the antiseptic tin.

  He remembered.

  Not clearly, not as a scene, but as a decision.

  A small thing he had protected because it felt important.

  “For your mom,” he said.

  Zoya nodded once.

  Hard.

  Like admitting it hurt.

  Isaac didn’t reach into the satchel.

  He didn’t open anything.

  He simply turned his attention inward, the way he did when he called the other items.

  The satchel responded to will, not hands.

  A beat of weight-shift.

  Then foil appeared in his grasp like the bag had been holding its breath.

  Zoya leaned forward.

  Eyes wide.

  Isaac unwrapped it enough to show the edge.

  The bar wasn’t half.

  It was whole.

  Clean corners.

  No snap mark.

  No uneven bite.

  Like the missing piece had never been taken.

  Zoya stared.

  Her face lifted so fast it almost looked like sunlight.

  “No way,” she whispered.

  Then the light broke, and the kid in her showed up raw.

  “If it can do that,” she said, voice thinning, “does that mean…”

  She glanced at the skewers.

  At the empty space where their rations should have been.

  “…does that mean if we’d put the food back in, it would’ve refilled too?”

  Isaac held the chocolate steady.

  He didn’t answer right away, because the answer had teeth.

  They both saw the same path.

  Going back.

  The basin.

  The fog.

  The distance that lied.

  For a maybe.

  For a lesson they learned too late.

  Isaac shook his head.

  “No.”

  One word.

  He meant it as protection.

  Zoya’s mouth tightened.

  She blinked hard.

  Then she looked at the bar again.

  And the sadness didn’t vanish, but something else rose over it.

  A grin, shaky and stubborn.

  “Okay,” she said, voice cracking into a laugh she didn’t trust.

  “Okay but, Isaac.”

  She held her hands out like she was receiving a sacred object.

  “Forever chocolate.”

  Isaac’s breath hitched, almost a laugh.

  He let her take it.

  Zoya cradled the bar like it was more than sugar.

  Like it was proof the world still had one stupid mercy left.

  Then her eyes sharpened again.

  Practical.

  “Try something else,” she said.

  “Not medical.”

  Isaac focused.

  Called up the shard they’d stuffed into the satchel after.

  The jagged tooth.

  The strip of hide.

  One by one, he summoned them.

  Each came back exactly as they’d gone in.

  Gritty.

  Chipped.

  Used.

  Nothing regrew.

  Nothing refilled.

  Zoya watched, thinking hard.

  “It’s only the original stuff,” she said.

  Isaac nodded.

  Zoya stared at the whole chocolate bar like it was suddenly ancient.

  “What if,” she said slowly, “the bag’s been refilling those same things for… forever.”

  She swallowed.

  “Thousands of years.”

  Her eyes flicked to the bandages, the antiseptic, the gauze.

  “Maybe that’s why they’re like this.”

  “Not supplies anymore.”

  “Artifacts.”

  She looked back down at the wrapper.

  A soft, disbelieving smile.

  “Artifact chocolate,” she whispered.

  The words came out too reverent.

  Too pleased.

  Her cheeks went hot at the sound of herself.

  She cleared her throat and stared at the fire like it had offended her.

  Isaac huffed a quiet laugh before he could stop it.