On the cliffs of Lethinor, the Paragon fell like shattered glass.

Ruben had watched it like a dream, watched the way her feet drifted out, off the solid ground, and her arms rose up, almost reaching out toward the archer, the surprise not quite leaving her eyes as confusion broke across her face. Blood was already beginning to stain the struck spot between her ribs.

Meg and her friends ran after that—but that was of little consequence, perhaps even for the best, he had reflected then, and the sound of their feet crunching against the squelching earth had sharpened his mind once more; he dashed forward, skidding at the edge of the cliff, peering down into the murky waters.

Even now, he can feel how the wind whipped punishingly as he had begun the treacherous climb down the side of the cliff. He had found a narrow ledge, which had perhaps once been commonly used, but had crumpled away under salt and time, and his feet squeezed along the rocky side as he moved far quicker than he should have.

The old spirit of recklessness had seized him then—and, he must admit, sometimes seizes him still. He was running out of time, running out of that crazy, far-flung hope that had rattled around, unsaid, in his brain. But hope he did, because the bow was a fake—he knew it was a fake, he had planted it there years ago in the slight chance that someone would be clever enough to find it too. And if the bow was fake, if it didn't hit her heart, if he got to her in time...

So he moved faster, the freezing waves crashing over the rocks in front of him as his hands clutched at the cliffside.

When he reached the sea he waved a hand out, pushing the water apart, twenty feet deep, but there was nothing. He had then scanned the waves, the waterline, looking for a slump of sopping clothes and paling flesh.

Nothing...

He jumped in after that, and the water had been a frigid blast that knocked the air out of his lungs, but he ducked in anyway, eyes open against the burning salt, hands out, pushing away the buffeting waves.

Nothing...

He had gone deeper, down where the light began to dim, his body twisting around each way, looking for a break in all the blue-blackness.

Nothing...

Still he had pushed, his lungs clenching for want of air, farther still, and there had been nothing. The wind was a cold slap when his head broke the water, stinging his gasping mouth and blurring eyes. He had turned around, looking for the direction of the current, following it, going under again, and again, and again.

Nothing.

Aren stumbled over when he returned, her left hand a mess of blood and ruin.

The Paragon's work, he had thought absurdly then, and the words seemed to slide off his mind like oil over water.

"The wolf is dead," she had told him, pain crinkling across her face. "And Jasp—"

"I'm sorry," he had answered, and he was. Ruben can remember Jasper when he was just a cub, a young, goofy thing, his paws too big for his body, padding around after Aren like an eager duckling. His eyes had darted over to the stilled mound of black fur then, thinking of how, only moments before, it had been lithe and powerful. "He was brilliant. I'm so sorry, Aren."

Pain of a different kind swelled up in her face at that, pinching it, but she swallowed, her voice strained when she asked: "And the girl?"

"Maybe," he had answered, unwilling to say further, unwilling to feed the small kernel of hope that still lived inside him, despite the mounting evidence. "I'm going back down to keep looking."

"I'd come, but..." she gestured hopelessly to her arm.

"How's the hand?" he asked, gesturing toward the heavily bandaged mass cradled in her lap.

"Hurts like hell," she answered with a grimace. "I'll live."

"You should get to a doctor first thing," he replied, eying it.

She grunted in answer because even when it was common sense, she hated it when he mothered her.

"You should go now," he pressed on, squeezing her shoulder. It was, he knew, the most physical contact she could take at the moment without splintering. She'd want to hold it together still, keep her head about her until it was safe to fall apart. "You'd get back to Thalassa in a few days' time."

"No," she said flatly, and her eyes flitted over to Jasp's still form. "I'm not leaving yet."

"And besides, what about you?" she glared up at him. "There's only one boat."

"Send someone back in a week's time."

"She's dead," Aren had answered. She has always handled words bluntly, and then was no different. There was no question to her, no uncertainty. The Paragon was dead.

"There is no body," Ruben had answered, his hands passing over his clothes, pulling the water from them. "We cannot say for certain yet."

She gave him a look then, the look she wore when he had said something either stupid or stupidly vague. He could almost hear the grind of her teeth as she pushed the tangle of gray hair out of her eyes.

"If you didn't find her alive now, you won't find her alive tomorrow," she pressed on. "Nor the day after that, or the day after that."

"I might find something," he had answered. "Knowing is better than guessing."

This made her sigh, and, looking up at the looming structure above them—the shell of an old tower, tall enough for messenger hawks—she had answered: "I had better get moving then, if I'm to get back in time to send someone back to you in a week."

Shouldering her bag, she had slowly limped toward the dead cat. Ruben knew what she meant to do and knew that, with one hand shot, it would be a brutal task.

He stepped forward, called her "'Ren," like old times, but she had snapped at him, jabbing her good hand in his direction.

"If you want to help," she had retorted, "make me the shovel."

So he did, trying to get the curved stone thin enough to not be excruciatingly heavy. But she has always been built like a bull and when she grabbed the tool out of his outstretched hand her tendons bulged but her hand did not droop.

He remembers how she dug the grave with one hand, the forearm of her other sliding under the shovel's hilt to provide further support. Sweat had streaked down her face and air slid between her teeth in ragged puffs, but she wouldn't let him do it, swinging the shovel out at him if he tried to approach.

Instead, he had turned to the other animal, the creature of the other young man. In death, its prone body seemed small, the tufted fur matted with dried blood. The thought flitted across his mind as he dug the grave, a brief wonder if the man was thinking about it then, thinking about the bodies he had abandoned as they sailed away.

After that, Aren had left at dusk; he watched the dark plume of her boat as it sailed toward the horizon.

Ruben knows about hunches; he has had enough over the years to know the difference between an educated guess from the stomach and something bigger, something outside of wordless analysis. He had one of the latter at that moment, a feeling that wouldn't go away that told him what should be obvious wasn't true, the clear path ahead was a lie.

And so he turned, looking around.

The clear path is a lie.

He descended once more, his old bones groaning in protest, complaining that once was enough. This time he did not enter the icy waters, instead he moved carefully through the field of crumpling shore rocks, stretching from this stone to that, peering through the gray mist down toward the murky water below. He was looking for shadows in the water, shapes caught in the forest of stones. He was peering, his eyesight straining in the fading light, when he saw it.

But it wasn't still, it wasn't drifting—the limbed shadow moved, quick and eel-like, beneath the crashing waves, and there was something slick about it, something sly that Ruben remembered from an old memory.

Unease pricking along his spine, he tied the bag around his waist and dived.

Through the plunge of pulsing, pushing water he swam then, eyes wide against the salty sting, tracking the fleshy, wiry thing as it darted into the dark opening beneath the water's surface.

The suns' rays dimmed as the mouth of the cave swallowed him too, coating him in darkness. He swam forward then blindly, robbed of both sight and sound, until his eyes caught a new light, an unnatural, cold, green thing which splintered through the black-blue water.

When his head broke the surface the air was still and heavy in his lungs. A heavy arm slapped up against the black, dewy stone and he hauled himself up onto its cool surface.

It was watching him when he opened his eyes, and, in the settled darkness behind it, the glow of the stones caught the eerie milk-white glint of its eyes.

There are things in this world, things that live in the dark corners, things that have been forgotten. They are small and shrunken, and they creep, they die slowly. Their world is a wide expanse of darkness, with only a sliver of light. But they understand time much better than men do; and they understand fate.

He doesn't know their names, nor does he want to know them. Before the cave he had only met them once before, down, deep beneath the earth where the air was thin and the lungs squeezed and gasped for it. They had given him a token then, a cold, pale boon that had seen him safely to the surface but had sent goosebumps crawling up his arms and bile climbing up his throat.

This time they brought him to the body.

They had it in some kind of shallow pool, floating on its still waters. Their lidless eyes examined it; their pallid, bony fingers touched it, prodded the blackened wounds and blued bruises.

"We found it in the water," one of the creatures said to him, its voice a raspy twist, an insidious whisper across the rocks. "We pulled it up onto the slimy rocks and into the cave. It was very cold already, and slippery like eel fish. The stones have been singing for it, the stones want it alive."

They had looked at him then with wide, milky gazes, heads tilting in that eerily animal way, that tell that confirms the instinctual suspicion that they are not human.

"Will you do that?" he had asked in return, voice hoarse. "Will you bring her back?"

"We are," the other answered, voice squelching as water gurgled over its purple lips and slid down the weak chin. "It fell in here for us to find it. We pushed the water out already. We dug out the arrow tip and set the bone. The body is ready to inhabit; we must wait for the spirit."

At this, Ruben had looked at them uneasily. Proficient as he is in many things, this was one he knew very little about, one he had only ever heard of in theory, never in practice.

"How long will that take?"

One's head turned this way and that in answer; a strange motion that read like a shrug.

"It will come back if it wants to."

So Ruben had sat down, placing his bag on the ground beside him and crossing his knees.

Hours blurred into days as the cold glow of the rocks never faltered. In the corners of his dreams, Ruben thought he heard whispers, old words just out of the reach, babbling in dark corners. The pitter patter of flesh against slippery rock disrupted these reveries, but otherwise the creatures were silent, lurking amongst the shadows.

This was not how he thought he would meet the Paragon. This was not what he thought would happen. He had prepared for suspicion, maybe some hostility or distrust that he could, with patience and time, dissipate, but this... this limbo and the path they had taken to it...

I saw her, he remembered then, thinking back to the fruit stall, to the dark-haired, inquisitive girl who had stood there, looking a little bemused, a little wary. She had reminded him so much of Meg, and she had been going about her fruit picking all wrong. If he had known then, if he had suspected, perhaps paid more attention...

But he had not, and they had ended up here, between the low murmurings of creatures in the heavy gloom. The other two would return every once in a while, their pallid fingers twisting and breaking things—bones, scales, and other, nameless things—over the body. The remnants of the offerings remained in the murky water around it, swirling in the black hair that drifted slowly around the head in coiling, oil-like spirals.

As time went on, the damp air sunk into his clothes, turning them heavy and chilled.

Then, just as the light began to grow too bright for his eyes, one of them said it in a whisper that carried over to him:

"It is back."

Ruben had staggered to his feet at this, his knees feeling numb and weak against the weight of him, and he stumbled over, collapsing next to the pool. He peered down, but saw no change, no rise or fall of the chest—nothing to signify life.

"Look carefully," it prodded, its own clouded gaze passing over the face—lingering, if but only for a moment, on the mouth.

With this, Ruben had clumsily pulled out his blade, fumbling it with stiff fingers. He remembers now how the knife had glittered in the glowing light as he turned it, flat side down, and set it near her face. He had hovered, waiting, watching the cold reflection.

Then breath misted the silver metal.

She was alive.