They were less than a day from home when Adam stopped and looked at Ashen.
Ashen didn't need him to say anything.
He reached into the pouch at his waist and pulled out the metal core. Its rings were spinning smoothly with the same soft glow vibrating under its surface, and Ashen gave it a playful twirl between his fingers.
"Look at this baby. Good as new, Pops." He grinned. "Told you to leave it to me."
The mark was gone. He had finished it on the night before they reached the zombies' valley, and checked it every night since. The final line of the brand had dissolved like sugar in water, and the metal had closed over the place where it had been until Patient Eye couldn't find so much as a scar.
Adam rolled his eyes and called a few of the brothers over. Orin was among them.
"Hey," Ashen protested. "I already checked it."
"Then you won't mind us checking it again."
The first to try was Gideon. His concealment skills had a counterpart, it turned out. If he could hide a link, he could feel one. He held the core in both hands and closed his eyes, feeling along every surface of it for any thread running out into the distance.
"Nothing," he said after a long while. "Not even a frayed end."
Then Ezra burned a charm and held it before his eyes, letting the ash rise and settle into script in front of his face. He read it carefully, then shook his head. "No rule or mark. Most importantly, there's no owner's claim."
The third was a brother called Abel, whose skills were all about sound. He tapped the core once with his fingertip and pushed a sharp pulse of mana into it, then tilted his head and listened, very still, as though waiting for an echo to come back from a long way off.
None came.
"Silent," he said. "If anything was out there listening, it would have answered."
Finally, Orin took the core.
He set it on the ground, pulled out a piece of parchment, and closed his eyes. His lips moved silently. Words began to write themselves across the page in thin, spidery ink.
It belongs to the one who tends it.
The parchment curled and rotted away in Orin's hands. He looked at Ashen and raised his eyebrows.
"Well. I suppose that's you."
Ashen pouted the whole time. 'My Patient Eye already cleared it, no problem.'
But he didn't actually mind. He was glad they were checking. Patient Eye had never failed him so far, but there was a first time for everything, and these were the experts. If there had been a loophole hiding somewhere, he would surely have missed it, and the price for missing it would have been paid by everyone back home.
Being certain put everyone at ease. That was worth a little hurt pride.
Orin tossed the core back. Ashen caught it, tucked it into his pouch, and turned toward the road. He expected the march to start again.
But Adam didn't move.
He was looking at his son, and his face was serious.
Ashen felt the change in the air, and his own expression also schooled. He stood a little straighter.
"Yes?"
"When we get home," Adam said, "You are not allowed to tell anyone what happened on this expedition. Nothing except the Narkals."
Ashen tilted his head rather than ask the obvious question.
The moment he heard the order, it felt like the last missing piece of a puzzle presented itself before him.
His mind was already turning, faster and faster, the pieces sliding into place. The mechanical force and the Unborn Heir. The twins, and the Lawless Lawgiver. The Sacred Beast in the forest. The mouth in the valley that spat out the dead. How carefully the men had spoken about the Outer Gods around the fire. How they lowered their voices, and how quickly they changed the subject.
How much the women and children back home actually knew about the world above them.
Adam watched his son's face change and laughed softly.
"Quick-witted as ever, my son. Looks like you understand already. But I'll say it anyway, just in case."
He looked out over the black land around them.
"Sometimes, just knowing something can be lethal. There are things out there that can feel it when enough people think about them, talk about them, or even just know of them. There were rumors in my old tribe that some of them can follow that link back, find the ones thinking about them, and curse them across vast distances."
"..."
"We've never met anything like that. We don't even know if they exist." Adam's voice was quiet. "But it all starts somewhere. A coincidence. A stray thought. Someone clever making a connection they shouldn't. We keep our mouths shut to lower the chance of it happening, however foolish it sounds."
He paused.
"And even without all that, I'd rather our women and children didn't live with more fear than they already have to."
He put a hand on Ashen's shoulder.
"So if anyone asks, we trashed a horde of Narkals and came back. Understood?"
"Yes…"
Ashen nodded, and his head dipped heavily with it. His face had gone grave.
Adam tapped his shoulder twice, gently like he was comforting a boy who had just learned something sad about the world. Then he turned and started walking, and the expedition followed him.
Adam thought he understood the look on his son's face. He thought the boy was only just realizing how dangerous the world above was, and how carefully his family had walked through it to keep everyone safe.
He had no idea of the real reason.
Something else had come back to Ashen in the middle of his father's speech. A single word had surfaced from the depths of his memory, and now it refused to sink back down.
'Secrets…'
The Keeper of What Should Not Be Known. The Whisperer of Truths That Unmake.
That darned Outer God.
Ashen had already killed that thing himself. It had taken everything he had.
But in this era, he should still be alive.
Like every Outer God, Secrets carried countless concepts crammed together into a single vessel. But the one he was known for, the one that made his name a curse among those who knew it, was Taboo.
He could know any secret in the world. All he had to do was ask himself the question, and the answer was his.
There was a rule to it, of course. Secrets could never reveal what he knew to anyone stronger than himself. And for anyone weaker, every single word he spoke cost them a price. The more ignorant they were of the secret, the more precious it was, and the more tightly it had been guarded, the higher the price would be. Old Ashen had used this very same rule to weaken the crow enough to kill him.
Ashen's hand drifted to the pouch at his waist without him realizing it.
A boy reborn into the past. A tribe hidden underground for fifteen years. A metal core that should never have been touched, an Outer God's mark wiped clean, two Oddities sealed in a pair of stones, and much more…
'So many juicy secrets… all crammed into a single place…'
If Secrets ever grew curious about any of it…
'All it would take is a single question. One idle question to himself.'
…And he would know everything.
Until this moment, Ashen had believed he was walking a dangerous, narrow tightrope; one he could keep his balance on if he was careful enough.
Now, he looked down and realized that the rope had been a thread all along. A thin, fraying one, stretched over the depths of hell, ready to snap at any moment.
For the remainder of the road, he didn't look at anyone or say a word.
'How many times do I have to kill you, you fucking crow…'
Only murderous thoughts of how to kill an Outer God kept ringing in his head.