"They still stare when they see the blade. Some with awe, others with fear. But no one sees the man beneath the steel, and that is my only mercy."
----------------------
The world existed as fragments, broken pieces of sensation that his mind couldn't quite assemble into coherence. Cold air against burning skin. The rhythm of footsteps that weren't his own. Voices floated above him like echoes from a well.
"Where should we go, Kael?" The voice belonged to someone young and frightened. The wanderer tried to focus on it, but pain lanced through his skull like a red-hot blade.
"We're taking him to my house." This voice was steadier, older. Kael. The name meant nothing to him, but the tone carried authority despite its youth.
"But... won't they find us?" The first voice again, pitched higher with fear.
"There will be war, Adnir. They won't come to us."
War. The word penetrated the fog of agony that wrapped around his thoughts. Images flashed behind his closed eyelids. Tarkun's face twisted with rage, the sound of steel on bone, screaming in a great hall. But the details slipped away like water through his fingers.
His body was on fire. Every breath sent molten daggers through his ribs, and he could taste copper flooding his mouth. The beating had been thorough. Tarkun's men knew their craft. Internal bleeding, probably. Broken ribs at a minimum. The fever suggested worse damage, the kind that killed slowly from the inside.
They were carrying him. He could feel four hands supporting his weight, lifting him through the night air. The cold bit at his exposed wounds, each gust of wind like salt in fresh cuts. He tried to speak, to ask why they were helping him, but only managed a wet cough that sprayed blood onto his chin.
"He's bleeding too much. I don't think he will live." The frightened voice...Adnir..spoke like he was discussing a dying animal.
"Do not worry about that. Let's just hurry. They might still follow us." Kael's voice remained steady, but the wanderer could hear the underlying tension.
The world tilted and swayed as they carried him through what felt like eternity. His consciousness drifted in and out like a tide, sometimes aware of his surroundings, sometimes lost in feverish dreams of dungeons and chains. The cold night air cut through his bloody face, finding every fresh bruise and open wound. Each step his rescuers took sent shockwaves of pain through his battered frame.
"Hopefully, if we get there in time, Lady Nisheena will try to treat his wounds," Kael said to someone behind them.
Nisheena. The silver-haired, dark elf from the inn. Why would she want to help him? He'd been nothing but trouble since arriving in Baelur. But the thought of her crimson eyes and knowing smile gave him something to focus on beyond the pain.
"What about his royal longsword?" Another voice, from his left side.
"I don't know. They took it from him." Kael's reply hit the wanderer like a physical blow.
His sword. His identity. The massive blade that had marked him as one of the king's blessed, forged from star-metal and quenched in sacred water. It had been placed in his hands when he was barely more than a boy, still trembling from the blessing ceremony. The king himself had spoken the words of investiture, binding blade to bearer in a covenant older than memory.
He had never let it go. Through nineteen years of service, through battles that turned rivers red and sieges that lasted through seasons, the sword had been part of him. More than a weapon. it was his soul made manifest in steel and starlight. A king's blessed without his longsword was like a farmer without land, a priest without faith.
The loss cut deeper than any physical wound. Without the blade, what was he? Just another broken warrior, bleeding out in the arms of strangers.
He tried to speak again, forcing words past the blood in his throat. This time, he managed more than a cough, though the effort sent fresh agony through his chest.
"Fucking... bastard."