( Theoran Vale's POV )
Four months had passed since I began searching for the Mirage Hermit.
For most men, four months would have been an unreasonable amount of time to spend pursuing someone who clearly had no desire to be found.
I did not consider it unreasonable.
In eighty-one years of life, I had learned that the difficulty of reaching a person often reflected the value of what they possessed.
The Mirage Hermit had spent decades ensuring that kings, generals, noble houses, and ambitious mages could not locate him whenever they pleased.
Considering the number of people who wanted something from him, I could hardly blame him.
That did not make the search any less irritating.
I had followed rumors through entire kingdom.
A nameless traveler who appeared in villages and vanished before morning.
An isolated forest where hunters regularly lost their sense of direction despite knowing the region since childhood.
