Color Hollow pressed their skeletal hand against the broken stump of their horn. The surface felt cold. No light pulsed beneath the bone. They held still and waited, counting seconds the way they used to count miles when running still seemed like an answer. At forty-three seconds, they felt it: a faint pulse, distant but unmistakable. The missing half was still out there. Still alive. That meant it could be found. They pulled the scanner from their pack and aimed it at the stump. The device hummed and clicked, its screen filling with patterns they didn't understand. But the pulse showed there, a rhythm marked in green lines that spiked and fell. The scanner couldn't tell them how far. It couldn't tell them which direction. It only confirmed what their body already knew: the missing piece existed somewhere in this world, and distance was the only thing keeping it from them. Color Hollow turned and looked back at the manor. Blood-red streaks ran down its white stone walls like old wounds that refused to close. They had stopped running here three days ago, collapsed at the gate with nowhere left to go. The horn had split that night while they slept. When they woke, half the rainbow was gone and their hand had turned the grass beneath them into a circle of gray. Now a group of small winged figures lay motionless near that same spot, their bright wings drained to ash where Color Hollow had stumbled into them yesterday. The fairies hadn't moved since. The scanner pulsed again in their hand. Color Hollow wrapped it in cloth and tucked it away. They had what they needed: proof that the missing half could be tracked. They stepped away from the manor, careful not to touch the stone, and started walking. This time they weren't running from something. They were walking toward it.

Color Hollow followed the scanner's pulse for two days before they saw the body. It lay twisted on the road ahead, one arm stretched toward them, the other curled against its chest. The stranger wasn't moving. Color Hollow stopped walking and watched for breath. Nothing changed. They counted to sixty, then started forward again, careful to step wide around the figure. That's when they saw the light between the stranger's fingers. A soft glow leaked through the gaps in their fist, pale and steady. Color Hollow crouched low without getting close. The light looked wrong. It pulsed the same rhythm as their scanner. The stranger's hand opened. Not voluntarily. The fingers just went slack, and a fragment of bone rolled out onto the dirt. It glowed brighter now, no longer muffled by flesh. Color Hollow stared at it. The bone was shaped like a horn tip, jagged where it had broken. Around it, the grass had turned vivid green, almost luminous. Flowers pushed up through the soil in a perfect circle, their petals bright enough to hurt. The fragment was giving color, not taking it. Color Hollow looked at their own hand, then back at the bone. They needed to touch it. They needed to know if it would turn gray like everything else, or if this piece of horn was different. The stranger made a sound, wet and rattling, and Color Hollow saw their eyes open halfway. A map lay crumpled beneath the stranger's body, its edges soaked dark. Color Hollow reached for the bone fragment. Their hand stopped two inches away. If they drained it, if their touch killed whatever made it glow, they would never know where it came from. The stranger's breathing had gone thin and uneven. Color Hollow leaned closer. "Where did you find this?" Their voice came out flat. The stranger's lips moved but no sound followed. Their eyes fixed on Color Hollow's broken horn, then dropped to the glowing fragment on the ground. One finger twitched, pointing past Color Hollow's shoulder. Color Hollow turned and saw it: a small stone structure in the distance, nearly hidden by massive orange-capped mushrooms. The stranger made that wet sound again, then stopped breathing entirely. Color Hollow wrapped the bone fragment in cloth without touching it directly. The glow dimmed but didn't fade. They pulled the map from beneath the stranger and unfolded it carefully. Most of the ink had run, but one spot was circled in red: a cluster of mushroom symbols around a small building. The same building they could see from here. Color Hollow tucked the map away and stood. The fragment pulsed against their chest, warm through the cloth. It wasn't their missing piece. The scanner would have screamed if it was. But someone had found horn fragments before, and that someone had marked where they found them. Color Hollow started walking toward the mushroom-covered structure. They had a direction now. That was more than they'd had two days ago.

Color Hollow stepped inside. The room glittered with soft pink light from the mushroom walls. A figure sat at a low table, back turned, sorting small buckets of bone shards that pulsed in slow rhythm. "Don't touch anything," the figure said. "I know what your hands do." Color Hollow froze. A scanner lay beside the buckets, ticking in time with the shards. The figure finally turned. Their own horn was whole, but scarred near the base. "I lost a piece once too. I've been collecting what others leave behind. Yours isn't here. But I know where it went." The figure slid a folded paper across the table, keeping their hands clear of Color Hollow's reach. "Take it. Don't thank me. The last person I sent after a fragment is the body you stepped around on the road." Color Hollow's throat tightened. They picked up the paper by its corner. The door behind them creaked wider in the wind. They had a name for the danger now, and a new place to go. The waiting was over. The walking had just gotten worse. Color Hollow looked past the table. More papers lay scattered across the floor in messy piles. Each sheet held sketches of horn shapes, dates, and small maps. Some pages showed Color Hollow's own broken horn, drawn from angles they had never shown anyone. "You've been watching me," Color Hollow said. The figure didn't deny it. "Since before the split. I track every horn that breaks. Yours broke loudest." Color Hollow's hands curled tight at their sides. The drawings meant someone had seen them running. Someone had seen the thing they ran from. Color Hollow tucked the folded paper into their cloth bag, beside the wrapped fragment. The figure turned back to the buckets without another word. Outside, the mushroom caps swayed in a wind that hadn't been there before. Color Hollow stepped through the door. The map in their bag pointed somewhere new. The watcher's words pointed somewhere worse. They started walking before they could think about which direction hurt more.