The bell still echoed when he left Zareel.
He didn't bury Afaara. As there was no graveyard. Only wind, wheat, and her blood soaking quietly into the soil. A village elder offered to light a memory-lantern in her name. He refused.
"Let her rest where forgetting cannot reach."
He walked north, away from the smoke, away from the past. For three days, no one followed. Not the Ashwrights. Not the wind. Not even guilt. Just the silence of a name unsaid.
The hills gave way to hard ridgelines. Cold bled from the rocks. Crows circled lower.
It was in the Pass of Kharzun that he found the warrior.
A man sitting cross-legged on a ridge, shirtless despite the cold, blood trailing from his forearms like ink. Runes carved into his skin. The runes seemed oddly familiar yet so strange. A blade impaled in the stone before him.
"You Stand like a soldier," the man said without looking up. "But walk like a question."
He said nothing.
"You came to take the blade?" the man asked.
He looked at the sword. It was old. Black metal veined with something that shimmered blue. The hilt wrapped in memory beads. The pommel shaped like a wolf's fang.
"I came to keep a promise."
The man smiled faintly. "Then take it. And bleed on the hill, as I did. That blade remembers. It will not serve cowards."
He stepped forward. Pulled the sword free.
It whispered.
Not words. Not grief. Just recognition.
He bled. He did not scream. The runes lit up faintly beneath his skin.
The warrior rose, nodded once. "You wear the name of no one. And no one may yet survive this place. Go west, nameless. There is rot in the fog. And it bites."
By nightfall, he reached the edge of a sunken vale. The map scratched into an old bowl he carried called it Vanthaal. Once a kingdom. Now a frost choked ruin.
The tavern lights surprised him.
Nestled beside a ruined watchtower stood an inn of warm stone and crooked charm. Its sign swayed: The Black Boar. Laughter drifted through the windows. Smoke curled from the chimney. The scent of stew made his stomach ache.
He entered.
The warmth struck first. Then the music a slow fiddle tune, sharp with melancholy.The innkeeper, a broad-shouldered woman with scars on her knuckles, looked up. "Bed? Ale? Or are you selling death?"
"Sleep," he said. "And silence."
"You get one. Ale's free with the other."
He took a corner table. Didn't touch the drink. Watched.
Strangers came and went. A girl in a green veil danced with a knife between her teeth. A bald man argued with a whispering book. In the far booth, two soldiers played dice with bone chips shaped like screams.
He almost let his guard down.
Until the door slammed open.
Snow followed the figure in tall, robed in damp wolfskin, face hidden beneath an iron mask carved with tears. Its arms dragged behind it. And its shadow didn't match its shape.
Someone hissed: "Ghulkin."
The innkeeper reached for a bell.
The Ghulkin shrieked.
Everyone forgot why they stood. Forgot what they held. Names slipped. Hands shook.
Only he remained still.
The sword whispered again.
Wolfsbane rose.
The Ghulkin turned.
The people were quick to realise that this was the guy from the stories of the nearby village.
he was tall, shrouded in black linen which felt as mist,
The masked entity attacked before he could take out his blade
but the sword didn't reach him, for he swayed faster than a wild cat,
he drew his blade from the scilence of its scabbard,
The Ghulkin knelt, Its mouth split into three. From it poured a chant that stripped meaning from memory. Tables cracked. Wine soured. A woman forgot her child.
He stepped forward.
The blade in his hand burned with light. A rune pulsed near the hilt, unreadible and strange yet so clear, He spoke it.
"Ziraan."
The word was his. Or had once been.
The Ghulkin froze. Trembled.
He lunged. The blade struck bone, not flesh. It screamed no sound. Just the memory of sound, turned rancid.
He didn't stop.
When the creature finally collapsed, its mask cracked, he leaned close.
"I may not have my name," he said, "but I remember the rage."
The tavern returned to stillness.
The innkeeper poured him a drink herself. Strong. Bitter.
She sat opposite him. "That blade... it's one of the last of the Wolfbound Twelve, isn't it?"
"Maybe."
She studied him. "You don't remember who you are, do you?"
"No."
She tilted her head. "Then let me give you something until you do. A room. A roof. A little warmth."
He didn't say no.
And that night, in a room that smelled of lavender and steel, he let himself sleep beside someone whose name he didn't ask.
It wasn't love. But it was something.
And that was enough.
In the morning, the sword whispered again.
West.
Always west.