Red-gold light bursts out of my chest. It does not feel like the wild fire that dragged me toward the Veil moments ago. It does not feel frantic. It does not feel hungry. It burns low and bright in my chest, then flares outward through the meadow in a single wave of heat.

The tear in the Veil stops growing. And it feels like the whole world stops with it.

The Shadow has almost reached us. I can feel it pressing through the opening like a cold draft. The tear hangs between the crossing stones, wide and dark, its edges glowing sick green. Beyond it, I cannot see Willow, though every part of me is searching for her. I only see darkness, and I can feel it seeing me back.

Then the fireflies gather. One by one, they rise from the grass and roots and low branches. Some are dim. Some flicker like they are already exhausted. Still, they come. They circle the edges of the tear, tiny points of gold against the green-black wound in the Veil.

The Shadow recoils. Only a little. Enough to make the tear shiver.

Snow stands beneath the glassleaf trees, pale blue light trembling at her chest. Her eyes are fixed on the tear as if she is afraid blinking will give the darkness permission to move.

Prose does not speak. That frightens me more than anything. Prose always has words. Even when they are few. Even when they are heavy. Even when they hurt.

Now he stands on the glimmer stone with his claws dug into the surface, watching the wound in the Veil as if he is seeing something older than any lesson he ever taught us.

My mother is somewhere behind me. But I don’t turn around. If I see her face, I might break open again. If I break open, the Shadow will feel it. It will use it. It will make my love into a road and walk straight through me to Willow.

So I keep my hooves in the moss. I keep my breath inside my body. I keep the red-gold light gathered around my heart.

“You cannot have my fear,” I say to the Shadow. The words shake. The light does not.

The tear hisses. I feel the Shadow reach for the part of me that wants to run. The part of me that still hears Willow’s voice inside the Veil, small and frightened, asking me not to leave her. The part of me that would rather burn the whole Hallow down than stand still while my sister hurts.

But the voice was wrong. It was almost Willow. “My sister would not ask me to feed the dark to prove I love her,” I say.

The fireflies flare gold. The tear stops trembling. Then the sky explodes. Violet light splits the air above the meadow. Green follows, bright and ancient. Gold pours through both of them until the whole Hallow is lit from above, every tree, every blade of grass, every frightened face washed in Aurora’s colors. Aurora is fighting back.

The relief that moves through the meadow is so strong I nearly fall into it. Then I feel the cost. Aurora’s light is beautiful, but it is not whole. It trembles at the edges. It spills across the sky like something bleeding brightness. The moss beneath my hooves glows, then dims. The fireflies along the tear brighten so fiercely that for one second they look like tiny suns. Then some of them blink out. They fall into the grass.

A sound moves through the meadow. A hundred small breaths caught at once.

Green, violet, and gold thread into the wound, pulling the torn edges of the Veil together, but every stitch costs the Hallow something.

A patch of moss beside the stones turns gray. A cluster of fireflies flickers and drops. The leaves on the glassleaf trees lose their glow. Aurora is saving us with the Hallow’s own light. And there is not enough to spend forever. The knowing moves through the meadow without words. It passes from fawn to fawn, from tree to root, from firefly to stone.

The tear folds inward. For a heartbeat, I see through it. I do not see Willow clearly. I see pieces. A broken moss path. Bark doors hanging open in roots above her. The shape of something without a face standing too close. Then I feel Willow. She is alive. She is afraid. She is still inside.

My mother sobs behind me.

“Willow,” I whisper.

Aurora’s light stitches the last open piece of the tear. The colors braid together, violet, green, gold, and then pull tight. The tear seals. Only a thin gold scar remains across the Veil.

The silence after is enormous. No one moves. The scar glows faintly, beautiful in a way that feels wrong. It looks delicate, almost gentle, like a line of sunlight caught in glass. I know what it is. A wound. The Veil has been wounded. The Hallow has been wounded. Aurora has been wounded.

The sky above us is pale now. Her colors are still there, but distant and drained, stretched thin across the trees. The moss paths are dimmer than before. The glimmer stone beneath Prose holds its shape, yet the fracture through its center remains. Around the crossing stones, fireflies lie in the grass like fallen sparks.

Some begin to blink again. Some do not.

I turn toward Prose, because Prose always knows what can be said when no one else can bear the truth. He looks older than he did before the tear opened. At first, I think he is going to comfort us. Then I see his eyes. He cannot.

“She is alive,” he says.

My mother makes a sound like the first breath after drowning.

Then Prose looks at the scar. “The Shadow was driven back,” he says. “It was not destroyed.”

My chest goes hollow. “Where is it?” I ask.

Prose turns toward me. He does not want to say it.

“Inside the Veil,” he says. “With Willow.”

My mother stumbles, and a Vine catches her before she falls.

The Shadow is inside with her. A Shadow that is not hers. A Shadow from the human world. Something that came from beyond Aurora’s forest, from shut-down hearts and unfelt pain and every silence that learned to grow teeth. It is inside the Veil now, where Willow is supposed to face herself. The Veil was meant to reveal her wounds so she could move through them. Now something else is in there with her.

“Then Aurora can go back in,” I say.

No one looks at me.

“Aurora can get her.”

The sky dims.

Prose closes his eyes. “She won’t have the strength to fix another tear,” he says.

I look around the meadow. At the fallen fireflies. At the dim moss. At the fracture in the glimmer stone. At the pale sky. The whole Hallow can feel what Aurora gave.

My legs begin to shake. “She cannot be alone in there,” I say.

“She is not alone,” Snow says quietly.

I turn on her before I can stop myself. Snow does not flinch this time.

“The Shadow is with her,” she says. “That is true. But so is the Veil. So are her Glimmers. So is every truth she has already named.”

“That is not enough.”

“I know,” Snow says.

Her honesty hurts more than comfort would have. Prose steps down from the glimmer stone. The fracture glows faintly behind him.

“Willow cannot simply outrun what entered with her,” he says. “If she runs, it will follow. If she hides, it will learn the shape of her hiding. If she believes its voice, it will root itself deeper.”

My red-gold light flickers. “Then what does she do?”

Prose looks toward the scar. “She has to take away what feeds it.”

I think of Willow as a fawn, standing at the edge of the moss path after Father left. Waiting until her legs shook. Waiting the next day. Then the next. I think of all the times she told me she was fine when she was not. All the times she became steady because the rest of us were falling apart. And now she has to face that alone.

I turn to Prose.

“I need to go in. I need to help her,” I say.

The meadow is silent.

“Soon,” he says. Prose looks around the meadow at all the fawns. “Tonight we rest, Tonight we remember why the Hallow is worth protecting. And tomorrow, training for all the Orders will begin.”

Above us, Aurora’s dim light spreads thin across the sky. Hurt but alive. I look at the fallen fireflies in the grass.

Tonight, I learned that love can become a weapon in the wrong hands. I learned that fear can open doors. I learned that even Aurora can be wounded. And I learned that my sister’s survival may depend on whether I can love her without letting the Shadow turn that love into panic.

I press my hooves into the moss.

“Hold on,” I whisper, though I know Willow cannot hear me.