Rowan woke to the smell of ash and damp earth. The fire had long since guttered into gray powder, and the clearing where the ogres had fallen felt colder than before, as if the night itself had soured it. His hands still bore dark stains, dried in the grooves of his skin. He rubbed them against his tunic, but the marks clung stubbornly.
Ari was already awake. She stood at the edge of the clearing, bow slung over her shoulder, scanning the trees like a sentry carved of stone. Brennar was slower, grumbling as he pushed himself upright, wincing when his sling tugged.
"Another fine morning on the road," Brennar muttered. "Nothing like waking with one good arm and the other itching to swing."
Rowan strapped the harpoon to his back and tied the rope carefully, three loops just as Ari had drilled into him. He didn't speak. The memory of the ogre's eyes, wide and full of hate, still pressed at his chest.
"Move," Ari said simply, and they did.
The road wound deeper into the forest, thin as a thread. Days blurred, marked only by the ache in Rowan's shoulders and the slow change of the weather.
On the third day, rain came heavy and hard, soaking their cloaks and turning the trail into sucking mud. Rowan stumbled often, the harpoon's weight dragging at him. By evening, his boots squelched with every step, and his fingers were numb from clenching rope that burned at his palms.
By the fifth, the skin on his hands had hardened into raw calluses. His grip grew steadier. The rope no longer slipped free so easily. Brennar noticed and gave him a nod, rough approval without words.
But travel brought more than mud. On the sixth night, hunger gnawed at Rowan's stomach until he could hardly sleep. Their supplies were thin, and what little they had left was rationed carefully. Wolves howled somewhere deep in the forest, their cries stretching the dark thin. Rowan lay awake gripping the harpoon, every echo reminding him how small their fire really was.
By the seventh day, Rowan's muscles ached less from pain and more from use. He was beginning to harden, but each night when he sat with the harpoon across his knees, he still saw the ogre fall. He could almost hear the body hit the ground again, heavy as a felled tree. Killing a deer had been food. Killing an ogre was… something else.
He wasn't sure what it made him.
Food ran low after the fourth day. Dried meat from Verdant Hollow was nearly gone, and Ari announced, as simply as if she were noting the time, "We hunt tomorrow."
They set out at dawn. Ari showed Rowan how to read the ground: a faint press where grass bent wrong, a broken twig pointing where a hoof had passed. She moved like a shadow between trees, Rowan stumbling behind, Brennar trailing with exaggerated sighs.
When they finally spotted a rabbit, Ari handed Rowan the chance. "Your turn," she said, stepping back.
Rowan's heart raced. He adjusted his grip, kept the rope clear, and hurled. The harpoon struck the earth with a thud two strides short. The rabbit bolted, gone in a blur of white.
Brennar barked a laugh. "Might've killed the dirt. Clean throw."
Rowan's face burned.
They tried again later. Rowan stepped wrong, a branch cracked, and the deer they had stalked bounded away. Ari's eyes flicked to him, cold and sharp. "Feet first. Always."
By dusk, they found another rabbit. Rowan breathed slow, raised the harpoon, and let it fly. This time the head punched clean through. The rope jerked in his hand, and when he pulled it back, the animal came with it.
For a heartbeat, pride bloomed in his chest. Not as sweet as Brennar's roar or Ari's precise kills, but his.
Brennar slapped him on the back. "Look at you, feeding us instead of tripping over roots."
Ari only said, "Better," but she cooked the rabbit without another word, and Rowan let himself feel that small victory.
Evenings became drills. Brennar, restless with only one good arm, insisted on teaching Rowan stance and guard. He swung a stick like an axe, booming instructions. "Wider! Hold your ground! If you yield an inch, you're already dead!"
Rowan tried, sweat stinging his eyes, arms aching.
Ari interrupted often, her corrections short and sharp. "Lower elbow." "Not so wide. You'll lose balance." "Again."
Rowan grew frustrated, pulled between Brennar's roaring style and Ari's precise cuts. But slowly, as days passed, he began to feel the harpoon as more than a tool. It wasn't just for fishing anymore. It was his.
One night, as they sat by the flames, Rowan finally asked what had been twisting in his chest. "Why us? Why do we have powers at all?"
Brennar grinned through a mouthful of meat. "I've got powers because my father had a temper and my mother could lift a barrel one-handed. Good breeding."
Rowan almost smiled, but Ari's voice cut in, calm and cold.
"No one knows why," she said. "And no one who has been chosen remembers the life they had before. The power strips it away. But that doesn't change what we are."
Rowan frowned. "What are we, then?"
"Some flicker," Ari went on. "Some awaken. Some ascend. There are good Flickers… and corrupted ones. Twisted by greed or hunger. Our job is to destroy the corrupted, before they spread their rot."
Brennar poked at the fire with a stick. "Not all of us are noble about it. Some just enjoy the fight."
Ari ignored him, her eyes fixed on Rowan. "If you survive, you will see them for yourself. And when you do, you'll understand. Power doesn't make us heroes. It makes us weapons. What you point that weapon at is the only choice you get."
Rowan stared into the flames, chest tight. Ari's words rang in him like iron on stone. A weapon. Was that all he was now? Brennar swung his axe like a storm, Ari loosed arrows like lightning—what would he be? Cold like her, reckless like him? Or something else entirely? He had no answer, only the gnawing fear that the choice would be taken from him.
Rowan's voice was low when he asked, "Does it ever get easier? Killing, I mean."
Brennar chuckled at first, but the laugh faded. His eyes glinted in the firelight, suddenly older. "Don't think the fight ever gets easier, boy. It doesn't. You just get better at hiding what it takes from you." Then he rolled onto his side, grin returning like a mask.
Rowan lay awake long after, staring at the stars through the branches. He thought of the ogre's blood on his hands, of the way the water had clung to the harpoon for that one strange heartbeat. A weapon, Ari had called him. He didn't know if he wanted to be one.
By the seventh day, the forest began to thin. The air grew wider, the sound of water swelling ahead. They climbed a low rise, and the trees broke like curtains torn apart.
Below, the river spread broad and cold, foaming white around dark stones. A bridge arched across it—three wide spans of pale stone, ancient and sure. Beyond, sprawling along the far bank, lay Stoneford.
Even from here Rowan could hear it. The faint hammering of forges, the shouts of merchants, the bustle of life. Smoke curled from chimneys in lazy lines. The town dwarfed Verdant Hollow a hundred times over.
Brennar let out a breath that sounded like relief. "Walls. Beds. Ale."
Rowan didn't answer. His chest was tight. The river pulled at him again, a thread wrapping around his ribs. Not a scream, not panic. A steady tug, deep and certain, like it had been waiting. He touched the harpoon without thinking. The wood felt warmer under his palm.
Ari crouched suddenly, one hand brushing the dirt of the road. Her eyes narrowed.
"Tracks," she said. "Heavy. Fresh."
Rowan's throat went dry. "Ogres again?"
Ari shook her head. "Wagons. Boots. More than travelers." She straightened, gaze sharp as a blade. "Eyes open. We'll talk inside the walls."
Rowan looked back at the river, at the bridge waiting like a challenge laid across the water. His fingers tightened on the rope, and the pull grew stronger.
Stoneford loomed. The bridge called. And Rowan knew something waited on the other side.