Chapter 29 Katharina
Katharina
Iwoke to the smell of green things growing.
For a long moment, I did not open my eyes.
I lay still and breathed—earth and moss and the sweet decay of fallen leaves, the bright, sharp scent of new growth pushing through old death.
No smoke or ash. No burning hair or roasting flesh, those smells that had haunted my dreams for as long as I could remember.
Just the forest, alive and indifferent, going about its ancient business.
Something had grown over me. I felt it before I saw it—soft tendrils curled around my wrists and ankles, woven through my hair.
When I finally opened my eyes, I found myself wrapped in ivy, the vines pale green and tender, leaves unfurling against my skin like small hands reaching for the sun.
They had grown over Heinrich too, binding us together in a cocoon of new life, as though the forest itself had claimed us.
I turned my head and found him beside me, his face slack with sleep, more peaceful than I’d ever seen him. The lines of tension that had always bracketed his mouth were gone. The furrow between his brows had smoothed away.
He looked like himself again.
The vines had woven our fingers together, and I did not pull away. I lay there in the green-gold light filtering through the canopy and watched him breathe, each rise and fall of his chest a blessing. He was alive. We were alive. This was real.
A bird sang somewhere overhead, bright and oblivious.
I sat up slowly, the ivy releasing me with what felt almost like reluctance, the vines sliding away from my skin and retreating into the undergrowth. My body ached, and my dress—what remained of it—was stiff with dried blood and ash. But beneath the grime, my skin was whole.
I rose on unsteady legs and walked to the edge of the ridge where the forest fell away. Below, the valley spread out in the pale light of early morning, mist curling along the slopes.
And beyond the valley, Bamberg burned.
The cathedral was gone. I could see the place where it had stood, now nothing but a blackened wound, smoke still rising in thick columns that smeared the dawn gray and orange.
The Drudenhaus had collapsed in on itself, as if it had been smashed by some giant’s hand.
Entire streets lay in ruins, houses reduced to charred skeletons, the Bishop’s palace a hollow shell still glowing with embers.
I should have felt something. Horror, or maybe grief for the only home I’d known. Maybe even triumph.
But I felt only stillness. A great, quiet calm, like the surface of a lake after a storm has passed.
It was over. It was finally over.
“Katharina.”
I turned. Heinrich stood behind me, ivy still clinging to his shoulders, his eyes clear and bright and entirely his own. He looked at the burning city, then back at me, and something passed between us that needed no words.
He crossed the distance and took my hand. His fingers were warm, human—real.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Smoke rose behind us, carrying with it the ashes of everything we had been—priest and healer, witch and saint, the damned and the devoted. None of those names fit anymore. None of those cages could hold us.
Heinrich lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.
“Whatever we want,” he said. “Together.”
The sun broke over the ridge, flaming gold, illuminating the ruins of the world we were leaving behind. I took one final look.
Then I turned my back on it and let Heinrich lead me deeper into the forest, where the ivy grew thick and the shadows held no malice, and all that mattered was that I held his hand in mine.
We did not look back again.