Henry’s mind lay adrift in the darkness. Consciousness came and went in bursts, like a flame guttering at the end of a candle. He had no idea how long he lay unmoving for, as his body had shut down almost entirely save for the bare minimum needed to keep him breathing.

  Eyelids remained firmly shut. The sounds of the world around him blended with the hallucinations of his own delirium, making it unclear what was real and what wasn’t. Carrion birds crowed, howls rose into the night sky from remote locations. The sounds of Randall’s defiant last stand echoed on the walls around him as prisoner’s cinema danced past his vision.

  He wasn’t asleep, though from the perspective of an outside observer, you would have never been able to tell the difference. It was closer to a trance-like state, somewhere in between experiencing and not. No linear progression of one moment to the next, instead a closed m?bius loop of repeating seconds that never seemed to be exactly the same at any two points.

  Up and down, up and down. His mind bobbed adrift on the sea of the unknowable.

  Until, after endless tumbling through the currents, it chanced upon an island.

  His eyes shot wide open with a gasp. The sharp intake of breath made the pain in his side flare, and he tumbled back with a sputtering cough. Aches and pains covered his body from head to toe. Throat felt like sandpaper, with how dry it was. He was – figuratively – dying for a glass of water.

  While his vision was still a little hazy, it was more from the crust that had accumulated on his eyes while he rested than any lingering damage. He hoped, at least. That hid to the back of the head had been pretty rough.

  Using the arm that hadn’t been broken in the fight earlier, he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. His vision adjusted rapidly to the low light conditions, accustomed to them as they already were. The sky outside was still as dusky as it had been when he’d passed out, the fog much hazier now. Through the shattered glass of the pub’s wreckage, it seeped inside, covering the floor in a nearly opaque layer. The misty carpet almost reached up to his stomach from where he lay on the ground.

  It seems not much changed in the meantime…

  Things were very clearly not alright, but at least he wasn’t in any immediate danger. For the moment, he had a chance to recover and figure out what to do with himself.

  Which, honestly, had always been a weak point of his, even during the good days. Planning things out tended to lose its appeal when the plan always ended up being dead on arrival. So, rather than taking proactive measures to, say, secure a shelter, or find some supplies, he instead just went with the flow of what felt natural to him in the moment.

  He watched the fog clouds roll down the street. Twirled his finger idly in the vapor at his feet, searching for meaning in the eddies and whorls its passage kicked up. Processed the insanity that had led up to this moment. Counted his lucky stars for simply being alive, albeit significantly battered and bruised. Simply just… stared off into space as he beheld the ruins around him.

  Piecing things back together in his head was no easy task. But, sometimes, there’s nothing quite like an hour of total idleness to make sense of the way your life has ended up. Slowly, he made progress towards resolving the wave of mental demons that followed in the aftermath of his life-or-death struggle.

  Whatever was out there, he would need to be ready to face. That meant not going crazy, first and foremost, he imagined.

  Though, maybe next time I can lay off the traumatic physical injuries as well, he winced to himself.

  Speaking of… how am I holding up? Because my guess right now is about as well as I feel.

  Gingerly, he wormed his fingers underneath his abused forelimb and lifted it to about head height. To his surprise, a splint held it in place, which he hadn’t noticed earlier as it had been completely enshrouded by the mist on the ground.

  Wait, what?!

  He hadn’t even been able to feel a difference in the coverings on his arm. That had some nasty implications about nerve damage written all over it, but getting to the bottom of that could wait. For now, he was more interested in figuring out why his wounds had been dressed out of nowhere.

  Out of curiosity, he rolled up his pant leg and inspected where the wood shard had pierced through his leg. There as well, a bandage wrapping had been applied, with signs of staunched bleeding both on the front of his leg as well as through to the meat of the muscle on the other side. Giving it an experimental poke hurt, but didn’t press down on any foreign objects inside as far as he could tell. Someone had removed the splinter from the other side and bandaged it up.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Did Layla do this? wait, where is she?!

  “…Layla?”

  His voice came out raspy from disuse and dehydration. Clearing his throat and trying again yielded a better result, but still no response.

  Carefully, he made to get up, supporting his weight with one hand. A piece of paper brushed against it as he placed his palm against the cool floor. His fingers wrapped around the corner of the sheet, and after looking down at it he discovered that it was a handwritten note on a piece of scratch paper.

  Henry,

  Went outside for a while to clear my head. Will be back when I get back, don’t worry I’ll be careful.

  Glad you’re alive. Sorry if the first aid doesn’t hold up, tried my best to follow the manual.

  When I get back, we need to talk about Dad. Give him a proper sendoff. All that.

  - Layla

  A short note, written succinctly. He read it over a few times more, worrying for her safety in the moment but also glad that she was still doing better than he was.

  Just like her, that is, he mused. Somehow, she always has a sense of what to do next.

  In a way, his whole attempt to get into Liverpool Institute was her idea. She’d planned on joining to follow in her mother’s footsteps when it first came up. Despite both of them being born without magical talent, the university offered her a potential route to meet the expectations that came with her maiden name and find her own path forward that didn’t leave her constantly living in the shadow of her mother.

  Comparatively, his own motivations felt a lot less noble. Just being by her side was all he wanted, in the end. Even learning magic of his own had felt more like window dressing.

  Though, will any of that even happen, now?

  The question was as simple as its answer was elusive. He had no idea. Everything was turned on its head basically overnight already. Would it be possible to just… pack up and leave this disaster behind?

  Where would they go? Where would he go? After all, even if she left, he hadn’t been accepted.

  He’d be back to square one. Though, he supposed he was already there.

  Ugh… I’m just mucking about, at this rate. At the very least, I need to see if I can get a tall glass of water somewhere here.

  Despite his body’s protests, he rose to his feet slowly and carefully. He limped his way over to the bathrooms, passing over the bar in its entirety.

  Here’s hoping the ley lines were still working well enough to summon something fresh.

  < -|- -|- >

  In the alley just behind the bar, there was a forgotten patch of dirt that had avoided being paved over. It lay equidistant between the three buildings closest to the street corner, and before today, was used primarily as a point for garbage collection between them. For the most part, it was loose earth with a little bit of crabgrass scraping by, though a few pebbles and stones littered the ground here and there. All in one, it was quiet, out of the way, and within spitting distance of the pub.

  All things Randall would have loved. Which is why the two of them had decided to bury him there.

  Henry wished he could have helped more. The broken arm and his other injuries, unfortunately, precluded him from taking part in the labor needed for the shallow grave. All he was able to do was leave the shoveling and hauling to Layla, and affix the makeshift headstone once she was done.

  They used his old service rifle for the main support of the grave marker. It had taken a swipe from the werewolf sometime after he’d fled, rendering it inoperable anyways. The end result was… not much, but… enough.

  As the last shovelful of dirt covered the old barkeep’s body, Layla cast aside the shovel, kneeling down in front of the grave in silence. Hands resting on her knees, she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, as a sense of finality washed over them both.

  He was no more. Sometimes, that fact likes to wait until you least expect it to sink in.

  Henry joined Layla by her side, staring at the shallow grave as well. He took a fistful of loose earth in his hand, letting it slowly trickle through his fingers back onto the pile.

  No coming back. A fate they nearly shared with him, had he not traded his own life for theirs.

  He looked over his shoulder. She stared at the grave with puffy red eyes, the tears long since dried but the sorrow still remaining. He wanted to say something comforting. That it would be alright, that he’d not died in vain, some other soothing words…

  None of it felt right. So he just maintained vigil with her. Watching over the grave, paying his final respects in what small ways he could.

  “I’ve… had some time to think about it,” Layla spoke up finally. “I know it’s not fair to think this, and I probably owe you my life right now… but…”

  Henry understood. “But I’m still the one that kept you away from your father in his last moments.”

  “…yeah…”

  “Do you hate me for it?”

  “No! Well, ugh- I mean…” She sighed exasperatedly. “I don’t know what to think, anymore. I feel angry, my dad’s dead, my home is in shambles, and… and… Henry, what do I do now?”

  Silence reigned for a long time before he responded.

  “… I wish I had an answer.”

  “…Me, too…”

  The full moon hung above them, entirely unmoved from where it had first risen yesterday. They had confirmed it had indeed been a full day since, both between Henry’s mobile phone and one of the surviving clocks on the wall allowing them to check the date and time. A full twelve hours where the sun should’ve been out, it simply wasn’t.

  Nothing but the fog and the moon remained. Certainly set the mood for the days to come.

  Layla turned to ask a question.

  “Henry?”

  “Hm?”

  “I… I think there’s something I need to tell you.”

  He raised an eyebrow in response. “Go on…”

  “Well… right now, we need to take care of each other and keep each other alive until we can… I don’t know… get away, find somewhere safe, something. But, once we reach there, and after you’ve healed up…”

  She tensed, unsure of how to properly word her thoughts.

  “I think we should go our separate ways.”

  His heart sank into his shoes. The wolf could have torn him to shreds and it wouldn’t have cut him as deeply.

  Because, deep down, part of him felt guilty looking at her. He understood needing space because he had been wondering if he needed it himself.