The hunter wakes from a dream of a wicked vision and a ghost and knows exactly where to go. Manhattan is beside him, her body black, lean, and stoic as she stands guard over his fitful sleep in the wood. As soon as he wakes, she knows that he has changed. Something has happened in that sleep, something that has spurred him to rise and urge her forward.

Forward, to the Threshold.

She does not need to ask him why, why now in this dark night, or for whom they run. She knows because for once he has freed his mind completely, letting her experience his every thought and concern. And Manhattan knows, then, as his black hooves thunder through the wood and the pair kick up dirt and white-frosted pinecones together, that this is a mission that he has chosen to follow.

This is not the work of an ancestor, or at the urging of his mother's ghost. This is what Knox knows is right. And he has known ever since coming home without Aylin that he should have been seeking her, should have been turning back to follow the signs of his light that he had abandoned.

How foolish he has been to forget her, and how that dark night in the rain really occurred. With every step he remembers until his dark coat is dappled further by the shadows of the Threshold canopy. He remembers her until he can picture her so clearly as she was when he last saw her, and as he had forgotten her.

And then, as if he has willed her into existence, he enters a clearing and she is there.

He watches as she stumbles, lunging forward to break her fall, calling out her name in response to her murmur of his as if it is the only word he knows, the only thing he has ever exclaimed with such fervor:

"Aylin!"

He slides to a halt before her, kneeling over the rock, soaking himself in the white wet. At the edge of the clearing, Manhattan watches over as she once failed to do, vigilant and at peace in the presence of her master and his friend.

Aylin's eyes are drifting closed by the time Knox can find them with his own. But he sees there the faintest glimmer, the subtlest sign of silver, and he knows that her falling is his fault. From the point he left her in that Old Country rain, every harm that has come to her has been his fault.

And he will not forgive himself. He will spend as long as he must to make up for that sin, whether it was his or not. He must protect her, now. Even if it is all he can do for the rest of his days.

"I'm sorry..." he whispers, his own eyes forcing shut, brimming with tears so like the ones she first brought to his eyes so many years ago, now. "I'm sorry."

@[Aylin]