Chapter 44
The Corner
The air is warmer below, but it does not reach far.
The ceiling sits low enough that movement has to be careful and intentional.
A small fire burns in one corner, its heat barely pushing back the cold that followed us down.
There is another level beneath this one, the women had told me when we first descended, a proper room with a bed, better for what is coming.
I did not make it that far.
The pain came too quickly, too often, and by the time we reached the bottom of the stair my body had already made the decision for me. I am in the corner now, on a pile of blankets the younger woman pulled together without being asked, the wall at my back and the fire close enough to matter.
The pain does not leave. It tears across my abdomen again, low and deep, dragging through my pelvis with a force that pulls me forward over myself, my hands pressing into the blankets beneath me as I try to hold through it.
"Stay with it," one of the women says.
I do not answer.
Another wave follows too quickly, building before the last has fully passed, leaving no space to recover, no room to think beyond what my body is already forcing me to do. My hand moves to my side. The fabric is soaked. There is no room for that now either.
"She is losing blood," the younger one says, her voice tighter than before.
"She will," the older one replies. "That is not what will kill her. Stay with her."
Something slams above us. The sound carries through the floor, dull and heavy, followed by another and then another, the structure taking the force of it in ways that feel too close to breaking.
I try to push myself up, but the pain hits again and forces me back before I make it halfway.
"Do not," the older woman says, pressing me back with one hand. "You will not help him by breaking yourself now."
I breathe through it, or try to. My focus pulls in too many directions at once, the pain, the sound above, the weight of everything pressing in at the same time.
Another impact, closer than the last.
Then something breaks, the sound of it carrying down the stair, and the women freeze for half a second before they move.
"They are through," the younger one says.
"Stay with her," the older woman replies.
"I am not leaving you—"
"You will do as I say."
She turns and moves toward the stair before the argument can continue. I reach for her without thinking. "Don't—"
Another wave tears through me and the word breaks apart before it fully forms.
She disappears up the steps.
The sound comes quickly after. A struggle. A body hitting wood. Then another sound, one that does not belong to the living. The younger woman flinches but does not move.
"She knew," she says, more to herself than to me. "She knew what this would be."
Something hits the stair, then falls heavy, the sound of it carrying through the floor. Silence follows for half a second and then movement again, coming down.
I try to move and the pain locks my body in place, forcing me to stay where I am even as everything in me pushes toward the stair.
"I cannot—" I start.
"You do not need to," she says, though her voice is thinner now.
A figure appears at the top of the stair, and another behind it, their bodies moving wrong, uneven, dragged forward by something that no longer resembles intent.
The first one reaches the bottom step and the woman moves before it does, grabbing a tool from the ground and driving it forward with everything she has, catching it in the throat and forcing it back against the wall hard enough to stop it for a moment.
More come down behind it. Too many.
She steps in front of me and does not look back, meeting the next one head on and then another, her movements quick and precise in a way that tells me she has done something like this before, even if never exactly like this.
It is not enough.
One breaks past her and reaches for me. I try to pull on my light and it rises before the pain hits harder than anything before it, tearing across my abdomen and dragging through my pelvis with enough force to collapse whatever I was trying to gather.
The thing reaches me.
It is there for less than a second before something else takes it apart. Another follows and then another, each one that reaches the bottom of the stair cut down before it can fully enter, bodies coming apart as though whatever is doing it does not need to fight them, only pass through them.
The woman freezes. So do I.
Something moves at the top of the stair, slow and controlled, descending into the space as the air shifts around it. I reach outward without thinking, not for help but to understand.
Something answers, carrying intent that does not belong to anything living, turning outward toward everything else in the room, toward the bodies on the stair, toward the dead still forcing their way down.
Not toward me.
It steps fully into view. Black wings fold close to its body, streaked with blood that does not belong to it.
Its eyes fix on me for a moment, red and unblinking, its head tilting slightly as though measuring what it does not immediately understand.
Then it turns away, takes position at the base of the stair, and waits.
Anything that comes down does not make it past.
The woman stares at it. "What is—"
"It is not here for me," I say, though I cannot explain how I know that.
Another wave tears through me before I can think further, and this one is different. Stronger in a way that has nothing to do with the wound in my side.
The woman drops beside me immediately. "Now," she says. "You cannot hold it back anymore."
"I am not—"
"You are," she says. "Your body has already chosen."
Another wave pulls through me, stronger than anything before it, and this time there is nothing to fight it with, nothing to think past it, only the force of it taking over completely. I grip the blankets beneath me. My other hand goes to my belly.
The pain does not stop.
It builds. And builds. And does not break.