Separation

Chapter 4: Separation

They say when the rot begins, you know.

It starts small. A single gray patch of skin, a fingernail bending oddly, a strand of hair that gives way with a gentle tug. People hide it first, cover up, explain it away as stress, or a bad night’s sleep. But everyone knows.

They all know.

Atlas had heard it from whispers all his life, passed like some grim folklore from one student to another at Black Salt High. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who saw the signs in a friend, a sibling, a neighbor. The narrative always ran the same way: love blooms, the rot follows, the end arrives. It was less a story and more an inevitability.

When he brings it up with Nova again, she’s sketching lazily in her notebook, sitting on a cracked stone slab near the church. Her eyes never quite meet his.

"When it starts, people run," she says simply, her pencil flicking back and forth across the page.

Atlas frowns. "But why? If it’s already happening… wouldn’t you want to stay near the person you love?"

Nova pauses, her pencil hovering mid-sketch. "You’d think that. But no. It accelerates when you’re close. The rot quickens. Proximity feeds it. That’s not even the worst part, though."

"What is?"

"It’s ugly," she says flatly. "When the body starts giving up. When the hair falls in clumps, when the skin sags and grays, when bones start to show where they shouldn't. No one wants to watch the person they love turn into something unrecognizable. So they run. They always run."

Atlas tries to picture it—the person you love most in the world crumbling in your arms, their body betraying them. Their face becoming less them and more corpse. He shudders.

"No one ever stays?" he asks.

Nova glances at him sharply. "No one ever stays."

She says it like it's the sky is blue, the grass is green. Immutable fact.

"But what if—" Atlas begins, but Nova cuts him off.

"If there was someone who stayed, we’d know about it. There’d be stories. Tales passed down. Someone who defied it. But there aren’t. There’s only warnings, Atlas. And a lot of empty beds."

The graveyard around them feels heavier then, as if the earth itself listens and agrees.

"That’s awful," Atlas says quietly.

"That’s human," Nova replies.

"I don’t want to believe that."

She raises an eyebrow, as if daring him to argue.

"Maybe no one’s ever tried," he says. "Really tried. Maybe everyone’s just too scared. Maybe the rot isn’t unbeatable—maybe people are just cowards."

"That’s a pretty judgmental view for someone who’s never loved like that," Nova says. She turns a page in her notebook but doesn’t start sketching again.

"Maybe. But giving up feels like a worse option. I couldn’t leave someone I loved just because it got hard. That’s not love."

Nova studies him for a long moment. The wind picks up between them, rattling the leaves. The air smells like the rain that hasn't arrived yet.

"Do you know what they say happens when you don’t leave?" she asks.

Atlas shakes his head.

"They say the rot doesn’t just kill you. It changes you. It eats you slowly, but if you stay—if you stay long enough—the pieces that fall away don’t stay dead."

"What do you mean?"

"The woods," she says. "They’re filled with them. The ones who tried to stay. Not bodies—pieces. Skin that remembers, bone that walks. They forget who they loved, who they were. All they remember is loss."

Atlas shakes his head. "That’s a story. A scary story for kids."

"Maybe," Nova says. "But every kid in Black Salt knows not to go too deep into the forest."

He imagines it anyway. Pieces of people moving through the woods, driven by an echo of what they felt. Limbs moving without direction, seeking what was lost.

"Still," he mutters, "I wouldn’t leave."

"You say that now," Nova replies. "But no one ever does."

They lapse into silence, the sun sinking lower behind distant hills. Atlas watches the way the shadows lengthen, swallowing the gravestones.

"There has to be a way to fight it," Atlas insists quietly. "Maybe no one figured it out because no one’s tried together. Everyone splits apart, tries to save themselves. What if that’s why it wins?"

Nova leans back on her hands, watching the clouds roll in. "You think if two people stayed, really stayed, they could beat it?"

"I don’t know. But I think no one’s ever stayed long enough to find out."

Nova hums low in her throat, thoughtful but unconvinced.

"You sound like you want to test it."

"Maybe I do."

"You planning on falling in love anytime soon, Atlas?"

The question catches him off guard. He shrugs. "I don’t know. Maybe."

Nova chuckles under her breath. "Better hope it’s not with me then. I don’t believe in forever."

Atlas grins. "Then maybe you just haven’t had a reason to yet."

The conversation hangs there, fragile but alive.

For a while, neither of them moves. The graveyard, the church, the looming woods—all of it feels suspended in waiting.

Finally, Nova stands, brushing dirt from her jeans. She stretches, bones cracking with the motion.

"You coming back tomorrow?" she asks.

Atlas nods. "Yeah."

"Good. Someone’s got to keep the dead company."

She walks off, her figure growing smaller between crooked gravestones, and Atlas watches until she disappears.

He looks down at his hands. Whole. Clean. Unrotted. But in his chest, something feels like it’s already shifting, like the earth beneath him knows something he doesn’t yet.