Chapter 15
Chapter 15 — The Frequency of Damage
Jasper watches the cabin overnight and notices Maya's new four-line mark pulsing in sync with the sealed door's rhythm. Brody wakes to examine the marks on both girls and reveals they are resonance marks—doorway signatures that signal permanent connection. When Skylia also wakes, the group argues over whether to move or hold position, complicated by Maya's weakened state. Jasper shares a guarded truth with Skylia: he has watched Greythorne's cycles for decades and once failed to reach another sensitive in time. Brody quietly begins reinforcing the cabin's iron lining with salvaged materials from Hemlock's supply. Jasper observes the tension between Brody and Hemlock shifting toward grudging cooperation as dawn approaches, but catches a sound outside that suggests the shadows have already adapted to the creek path he used to guide the group.
I don't sleep.
This surprises no one who knows me, which is precisely no one, so the surprise is purely internal and therefore mine to manage. The cabin has settled into that particular brand of quiet that isn't quiet at all—Brody's breathing saws through the room like a man fighting his own lungs in a losing negotiation. Hemlock is still, too still for sleep, the kind of motionless that comes from decades of listening to woods that listen back. The girl—the one who came back through the membrane, the one whose name I've heard spoken like a prayer for three chapters of someone else's story—sleeps in the chair by the dead fire with her hand locked around the other girl's fingers.
Maya. Her name is Maya. I should use it. She paid enough to earn that much.
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