Chapter 13
Chapter 13 — The Exchange
Skylia reaches through the open membrane at the bleeding tree while Brody holds the gate with both hands on the iron rod. Maya's hand finds hers on the other side, but the shadows attack the tree directly, forcing Brody to hold against increasing pressure as the exchange completes. Maya comes through diminished but alive. The shadows turn their full force on Skylia as she pulls back, and Jasper fires his last shell before the gate destabilizes. Brody holds long enough for both girls to clear the threshold, then releases the iron and performs the closing gesture. The tree seals. Anne Koenig's journal reveals a final page warning that the Thinning cycle has been broken but the door will remember who opened it.
The light from the split bark is the color of something I don't have a word for. Not gold, not amber, not any shade that belongs to a October morning in Greythorne. It's the color of a place that doesn't have our sky, filtered through a crack in the world, and it falls across my hands on the iron rod like warm water.
My knuckles ache. Both palms are flat against the root, fingers wrapped around the iron Skylia drove in hours ago—was it hours? It feels like a different life, a different Sheriff, a man who still thought the system worked. The sap around the rod has stopped entirely. The tree is holding its breath the same way I'm holding mine.
Through the opening, the shape moves closer.
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