The forest beyond the river was not the same forest that had whispered behind the village.
Here the trees pressed closer, taller than towers, their roots splitting stone like bones punching through old skin. The air smelled heavy—moss, damp rot, and something sour that clung to the throat. Light seeped in crooked shafts, pale and weak, as if the sun itself feared to enter.
Aruto pushed forward anyway.
Every step hurt. His ribs pulsed under Sachi's bandages, a rhythm of pain that reminded him of the chains inside—tight, unyielding, never silent. His fists itched for something to strike, not out of anger but to prove that his body was still his. He had left the village behind; he would not leave himself behind as well.
Sachi followed close, muttering curses with each step. She leaned on a makeshift staff, the birch wood raw where she had stripped it of bark. Her healer's basket was gone, abandoned at the riverbank. That sacrifice showed on her face more than fear ever had—Sachi without herbs was a sword without edge.
Yori moved last. Knife drawn, eyes scanning, every footfall as deliberate as a wolf on snow. He didn't waste words. He never did. But when his gaze flicked to the shadows, Aruto trusted him more than the priest's prayers or the village's walls.
They walked in silence until the sun climbed high enough to turn the mist silver. Only then did Sachi break it, her voice sharp with fatigue.
"Where exactly are we going?"
"Forward," Aruto said.
"That's not a place," she snapped. "That's desperation dressed as direction."
He almost told her she could still turn back, that she didn't need to share the weight of his curse. But when he looked at her—at the dirt smudging her cheek, the hands still red from binding his ribs—he swallowed the words.
"Better forward than kneeling," he said instead.
Yori's low voice followed, steady as ever. "We reach high ground. Decide from there."
That was enough. The matter closed.
Hours passed. The forest grew thicker, the ground softer. Mud sucked at their boots; every step left imprints that seemed too loud, too permanent.
Aruto slowed when he saw the first track.
A paw print. Wolf-sized, but wrong. Too wide. Toes splayed unnaturally, as though the beast's bones had forgotten their own shape. Behind each, a groove dragged, like something half-dead had refused to lift its weight.
Sachi paled. She crouched, touched the edge of one print, and pulled back as if burned. "Blight wolves," she whispered.
Aruto frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"They feed on rot," she said, voice taut. "They eat carrion until their flesh remembers the taste. And then their bite spreads it. Even clean skin goes black. Even the living rot."
Aruto flexed his hands. His knuckles still ached from the fight in the square, from fists driven into stone gauntlets. "Then we don't let them bite."
"Don't let them touch," Yori corrected. His eyes scanned the treeline. "They hunt with patience. If you see tracks, you're already hunted."
The words sank like stones in Aruto's stomach.
They pressed on, slower now. The prints multiplied, weaving around trees, circling, doubling back. Sometimes they vanished completely, as if the ground itself had chosen to forget.
At midday they found a trickling stream. Yori knelt to drink first, tested the water, then nodded. Sachi refilled her gourd and forced Aruto to sip. He grimaced at the metallic tang, but drank.
"We should keep moving," Yori said.
"Toward what?" Sachi demanded.
"Not toward. Away," Yori answered simply.
Aruto forced a breath, steadying himself against the pain in his ribs. "If they want us, they'll follow. So let them."
Sachi's eyes widened. "Are you insane? You can barely stand—"
But the words died when she saw the look in his eyes. Not bravado. Not cruelty. Just iron.
By late afternoon, the forest's hush grew unnatural. Birds stilled. Insects quieted. Even the wind seemed to pause, caught in its own breath.
Aruto froze. The chains inside him stirred.A faint click echoed through his chest, sharp enough to make him flinch. His vision shimmered at the edges—like shadows moving where no shadows should.
Sachi noticed. "Aruto?"
He shook his head. "Keep walking."
But the feeling did not leave. The chains rattled faintly, not yet breaking, but restless. Hungry.
They found a hollow beneath a fallen oak as dusk bled into gray. Roots tangled above like a cage, but it offered shelter. They collapsed inside, breath misting in the cooling air.
Aruto leaned against the trunk, sweat chilling his skin. Sachi uncorked her gourd and pressed it into his hands again.
"Drink."
"It tastes like dirt boiled in dirt," he muttered, swallowing anyway.
"Better than bleeding from the inside," she shot back.
Yori crouched at the hollow's mouth. His eyes did not leave the treeline. "They're close."
Sachi stiffened. "How close?"
"Too close," he said.
Night deepened. Mist curled low, rolling like breath over the ground.
That was when the smell came.
Sweet at first, like fruit left too long in the sun. Then thicker, heavier, until it coated the tongue and nose like syrup poured over rot. Aruto gagged, covering his mouth with a sleeve.
The forest shifted. Eyes glowed in the dark—pairs, then dozens, green and unblinking.
Shapes slunk into the clearing, first three, then five, then more. Wolves, but not wolves. Their hides sloughed in ragged sheets, ribs sharp as scythes beneath diseased flesh. Jaws gaped too wide, teeth too white. Black drool dripped in ropes that hissed where they struck soil.
Sachi's breath hitched. "Blight wolves."
The largest padded forward, its frame twisted but massive, eyes glowing hotter than the rest. It did not snarl. It did not waste sound. Its head rose, and the others followed its rhythm, circling wider, their bodies flowing like a noose tightening around the three humans.
Yori stepped forward, knife gleaming in the faint light. "They want a circle."
Aruto forced his body upright. Pain flared in his ribs, but he ignored it. "Then we break it."
Sachi's knuckles whitened on her staff. "If they touch us, it spreads. Remember that."
Aruto bared his teeth. "Then we don't let them touch."
The wolves fanned out. Their steps were unnervingly synchronized, as though one mind moved through many broken bodies. The stench thickened, choking, and the night pressed tighter.
The alpha raised its head.
It howled.
The pack surged forward, teeth flashing like sickles.
Aruto clenched his fists, heart hammering. The chains inside him rattled louder than ever—hungry, waiting.
The alpha's howl had not finished fading when the first wolf leapt.
It came low and fast, claws raking sparks from the gravel as it lunged for Aruto's throat. He sidestepped, pain screaming through his ribs, and drove his fist upward. Knuckles cracked against rotten jawbone. The beast spun sideways, yelping once before landing hard.
Another wolf surged immediately into the gap. Yori's knife flashed—one clean arc that split muzzle to ear. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling where it landed. The stench turned the air sour.
Sachi braced her staff like a spear. A smaller wolf darted for her side, but she planted her feet and jabbed, catching it in the chest. Bone gave under the impact. She yanked the staff free and pivoted, striking its jaw before it could recover.
"Circle's closing!" Yori barked.
Aruto spun. The wolves moved as one, hemming them in. Too many eyes, too many teeth.
Chains, not now, Aruto thought, his ribs flaring with every breath. He fought the urge to listen to the click-hum inside his chest. The last time it had stirred, it had almost broken him.
But the pack pressed closer. He couldn't ignore it forever.
Two wolves struck together, a coordinated blur of fur and bone. Aruto dropped low, caught one by its mangled scruff, and slammed it into the other. They crashed in a heap. Before he could follow through, the alpha came.
It moved differently—deliberate, calculating. Its eyes locked on his chest, where the chains coiled.
Aruto raised his fists, but the beast was faster. Its weight hit like a hammer. Pain exploded through his ribs. He tasted blood and earth.
The alpha's jaws opened wide, black drool dripping onto his face. Teeth descended.
"No!"
Sachi's voice cut through the chaos. Her staff smashed against the wolf's skull. Once. Twice. A third time. Bone cracked, but the beast refused to fall back.
Yori slammed his knife into its shoulder. The blade stuck deep, but the wolf writhed, refusing to release Aruto.
In that moment—pinned, breath leaving, teeth closing—the chains clicked.
Not faint. Not subtle. A single, iron snap that echoed in his skull.
Agony tore through him. His scream ripped the clearing. But the pain was not alone.
A shadow rose.
It unfolded behind him, tall and thin, crowned with antlers like jagged bone. Its arms stretched impossibly long, mirroring his own fists. Eyes burned in its hollow face, not bright but deep—wells of absence.
The alpha faltered. For the first time, it hesitated.
Aruto roared and drove his fist upward. The shadow's arm followed, larger, heavier, striking in tandem. His knuckles met rotten bone, and the echo broke the wolf's jaw sideways. It reeled, howling, before staggering back into the circle.
The other wolves froze. Hunger fought memory in their green eyes. Hunger pushed them forward.
Memory whispered retreat.
Hunger won.
They came in waves.
Yori fought like a man who had no blood to spare. His knife found joints, throats, the soft places under jawlines. He moved fast, never staying where teeth expected him. Three wolves fell to his blade, each with a silent grimace instead of triumph.
Sachi fought different. She was not a killer, but she was precise. Her staff cracked ribs, broke legs, shattered teeth. She turned momentum against them, refusing to meet strength with strength. One lunged for her throat—she angled her staff upward, catching its jaw, and twisted until it hit the ground in a heap.
Aruto was chaos.
Every strike tore his body further apart, but he refused to fall. He ducked under snapping jaws, slammed elbows into throats, kicked knees backward. His fists bled from bone and hide. Yet behind every punch, the shadow followed. It wasn't fully there—half-formed, flickering—but enough.
Where he struck, the wolves staggered harder. Where he blocked, they reeled as if struck by something greater than bone.
"Aruto!" Sachi shouted once, fear in her tone. "That thing—!"
"Don't stop him!" Yori barked back, cutting another throat.
The alpha returned, blood dripping from its broken jaw. It limped, but rage burned in its eyes. It circled wide, waiting for the moment Aruto would weaken.
Aruto met its gaze, chest heaving, ribs screaming. He could barely stand. But he would not give it the ground.
It lunged.
Aruto stepped forward, not back. His fist shot out, the shadow's echo striking a breath behind. Impact rang like a drum. The alpha crashed to the earth, convulsing once before lying still.
The pack hesitated. Silence hung.
Then, as if one mind moved them, they began to retreat—backs arched, growls low. They dragged their wounded, melted into the trees, eyes glowing once more before vanishing into the dark.
Only the stench remained.
For a long moment, none of them moved.
Sachi leaned on her staff, chest heaving. "That… wasn't human."
Aruto sagged to his knees, trembling. The shadow behind him flickered once more, then collapsed into nothing. He felt hollow, like part of him had bled into the air.
Yori crouched beside him, knife still ready. His wolfish eyes studied the empty space where the apparition had been. He didn't speak, but his jaw clenched.
Finally Aruto forced words past cracked lips. "Not… yours… to chain."
His breath broke, but the words lingered.
Sachi knelt, hands already reaching for his wounds. Her eyes darted to the trees, terrified of a second attack. "We have to move. If the pack returns—"
"They won't," Yori interrupted. He wiped ichor from his blade, sheathed it, and scanned the treeline one last time. "Not tonight. They fear him now."
"Fear?" Sachi whispered.
Yori's gaze flicked to Aruto. "Or what rides with him."
Aruto looked at his own hands, still trembling. He wanted to believe the shadow was his, that he had summoned it. But deep inside, he knew: it had chosen to appear. And one day, it might not choose to vanish.
They burned the corpses.
Sachi insisted—"Blight doesn't deserve graves. It spreads." Yori gathered green wood and sparked a fire, the smoke heavy and bitter. The carcasses hissed and cracked, the stench choking.
Aruto turned away, kneeling at the stream to wash blood and ichor from his skin. In the water, his reflection rippled—red eyes, bruised body, and behind it, for the briefest flicker, antlers. He blinked, and only his face remained.
He spat into the stream. "Forward," he whispered.
Not a vow. Not a prayer. A command to his own feet.
Behind him, the fire roared. The wolves turned to ash.
But the forest was not silent. Somewhere deeper in, something else had heard the echo of chains breaking. And it was listening.
Smoke trailed the three of them like a stain the wind couldn't scrub away.
They left the gravel bar and its char of blight behind, climbing through a tangle of dogwood and fern. The forest changed as they ascended: fewer pines, more oak and hornbeam, an old-cut road half-swallowed by moss. Stumps studded a clearing ahead, gray and spongy, ghosts of a lumber camp that had forgotten its name. Beyond those rotten teeth hunched the thing Yori had pointed out from the ridge—a squat shape of stone and timber in a shallow trough where two hills leaned together.
Up close, the ruin resolved into an outpost. A wall waist-high ringed a yard overgrown with thistle. The gate had fallen inward and lay like a rib cracked by too-hard breath. The main building was two rooms grafted into one: stone storehouse at the back, timber watchroom in front, its roof bowed by years and wet. A signboard hung canted from one iron hook. Weather had peeled most of the paint, but enough remained to make meaning.
A symbol of crossed spears inside a ring of leaves.
Sachi's eyes flicked to it. "Guild mark," she murmured. "Old style."
"Abenteurer-Gilde," Yori said. He stepped over the gate plank and into the yard like he was stepping into a story he already disliked. "This is a road post. There should be a register. A water cache. Maybe a bell."
Aruto followed, breath shallow to spare his ribs. The chains inside him had subsided to a background thrum, the way a river keeps speaking under birdcalls. He kept one hand near his belly anyway, as if he could palm the hum down if it grew teeth.
Inside the yard, the quiet had weight. No birds roosted on the sagging eaves; no mice scurried under the door. Sachi lifted the fallen gate plank and set it aside, more out of habit than need. "If this was Guild," she said, "why abandon it?"
"Because the road moved," Yori said. "Or because something made men decide not to pass this way."
"Comforting," Aruto muttered.
They approached the door. Yori pressed fingers to the wood, then to the frame, tracing runnels cut by rain and time. He set his palm to the latch, breathed once, and eased it open. The hinges protested in a low, wet groan. A stale breath rolled out—a bouquet of old oil, damp parchment, and the sweet-sour ghost of breath that hadn't left properly.
Sachi covered her mouth with her sleeve. "Rot," she said softly. "Not like the wolves. The kind buildings get when people don't."
They stepped into dim. The watchroom had been meant to be simple: a long table, a bench on either side, a hearth that could warm wet men and their lies. Now a mat of leaves carpeted the floor, and a birch sapling had dared the hearth stones and won, thin trunk bowing toward light through a hole in the roof. On the far wall, a board of notices had swallowed half a year of rain and spat out a clotted mass of paste and pulp. Only a few scraps clung whole. Yori went to them first.
He pried one free with his knife tip and flattened it on the table. Letters swam into meaning: a Guild posting with a wax seal cracked and gray.
SEEKING: CART GUARD—LOW RISK—PAY FAIR—ROUTE: RIVER ROAD (NORTH FORK) TO CAIRNMARK.
WARNINGS: PACK SIGN EAST OF MILL VALLEY.
INQUISITORIAL ACTIVITY REPORTED—KEEP PAPERS IN ORDER.
Sachi's mouth tightened around the last line. "They were here."
Yori flicked another notice loose. This one bore a different hand, harsher, ink blotted where anger had pushed too hard. A sketch of an antlered silhouette rendered in quick strokes, beneath it a single word:
SHADE.
"Not ours," Yori said, not looking at Aruto and looking at him anyway.
Aruto held the paper. The sketch was nothing like the precise lines in the book. It was fear's drawing—wrong in angle and proportion, too many teeth, not enough reason. But the antlers were right. His hand wanted to shake and didn't. "Someone else has seen one," he said.
"Or wanted to be paid for saying they had," Sachi muttered. She touched the paper anyway, as if texture could teach truth.
There were more scraps—lost dog; wagon axle for sale; a warning that an ice-elf troupe had been seen in a hunting copse north of the ford and should be left alone unless one desired frozen fingers. On the far side of the table, a ledger lay swollen with damp, its cover curled. Aruto opened it gently. The ink bled in places, but names still marched, thin and stubborn: parties passing, dates, routes, the clean bureaucracy of a world convinced of its own order.
Three entries drew Yori's finger.
— Blackspur Mercantile Caravan (six wagons). Note: delay at shrine inspection.
— Brother-Serjeant Kel of the Pale Throne, two men. Note: papers in order. Destination: East March.
— Jackals (freeblades). Note: refused to sign. Advised to seek work elsewhere. Advised again with spear haft.
Sachi glanced up. "Pale Throne."
"Inquisitors," Aruto said.
Yori nodded once. "They came through, then came back through. See?" He tapped a later page where a scrap of rag had been used as a bookmark. "No names the second time. Just the sigil."
He turned the rag. A dull stamp bled on one corner: a wheel with seven spokes. The priest's wax had borne nine. This had fewer.
"Eight who chain," Aruto said, more to himself than to them. "One missing. Aion."
Sachi rubbed her arms as if the room had cooled. "Don't preach theology in a place like this."
"Wasn't preaching," he said. "Just counting."
They searched the rest with the quick thoroughness of people who knew that time and safety fought on opposite sides. In the stone storehouse—cooler, dryer, less forgiving—they found shelves gone to fuzz and a row of old lockboxes bolted under a counter. Three had been ransacked; their lids lay in the corner like thrown-off shells. Two remained shut.
Yori crouched, blade tip testing the seam. "Bell traps," he said. "Maybe worse. Guild didn't like strangers opening strangers' mail."
"Can you do it?" Sachi asked.
He didn't answer until he'd listened with his fingertips, with his breath, with that other thing in him that was not hearing but did the same work. "Yes."
He worked a sliver of bone into the keyhole, then a strip of brass. The lock decided to remember its job; it clicked. He opened the lid like lifting an eyelid he didn't trust.
Inside lay a bundle tied with belltwine and a seal flattened long ago by heat. Aruto recognized the knot-work before he recognized the symbol impressed in wax. The twine's prick against his skin stung cold. He saw the cellar under the shrine like an afterimage. His palm remembered the burn of old wards.
"Don't," Sachi said.
"I won't," he lied, and reached. He didn't break the seal. He turned the bundle and tugged a corner where age had frayed the cloth. A sliver of parchment slid free, fell to the counter, and lay there like something breathing shallowly.
It wasn't leather this time. The cover that wasn't a cover had been stripped away. But the ink—those thorn-hook letters that refused to stay letters if you looked straight at them—were there. Fainter. Crooked. As if someone had copied a copy in a hurry and a storm.
He looked sideways. The hooks resolved. A diagram like the ones in his book, but not of breath—a body mapped by lines that ran from the soles through the calves, up through hips, spine, shoulder, crown, down again; nine points, a tenth larger; a path like a loop snared in barbs.
Sachi drew in a breath she didn't mean to. "Is that—"
"Not the same," Aruto said. His voice sounded like someone else's voice asked to speak quietly in a room full of knives. "But it's trying to be."
Yori didn't touch the page. "Whoever kept it wanted it kept," he said. "Whoever left burned the rest." He nodded to the hearth; in the ash tray below, Aruto saw curlings the exact color of regret.
The second lockbox yielded a leather satchel wrapped in oilcloth. Yori passed it to Sachi. She opened with her healer's care, cutting knots rather than tugging them. Inside: dried strips of meat gone to stone; a roll of coins verdigrised; a small tin stamped with the Academy's mark—she sniffed and smiled despite everything. "Comfrey. Clean."
"Keep it," Aruto said.
Under the tin lay a folded map. They spread it on the counter. The parchment had held up better than the ledger. Ink lines drew roads, real and wished-for. The outpost sat like a knuckle where three paths met—river track to the west, hill path north to a grim little square labeled BRACKEN GRANGE, and a bolder line east, fat with annotations and stamped with that leaf-ringed spear: CARAVAN WAY—CAPITAL BOUND.
Sachi's finger traced the east road to an icon of walls. "Hauptstadt," she said, voice hushed. "Adventurer Guild headquarters, if this map isn't lying."
"Nothing on maps lies," Yori said. "Only men holding the map."
Aruto leaned on the counter because leaning hurt less than standing and stared at the line to the capital until it felt like it would burn through the paper. "We go there."
Sachi's head snapped up. "Across the heartlands? With an Inquisitor on our heels and wolves in our wake?"
"Forward," he said.
She pressed lips into a line that would rather be a scream. "Forward isn't a plan, Aruto. It's a prayer with the verbs rubbed off."
Yori tapped the map's margin. A faded hand had written in the space between roads: BAND SIGN—GREY BINDERS — DO NOT PARLEY. Next to it, a narrow sketch: a knot of rope around a wrist.
"Bandits," he said. "Grey sashes. If they still haunt this road, we will meet them before we meet the Guild."
Sachi closed her eyes for a heartbeat like she was negotiating with gods she no longer respected. When she opened them, they were flint. "Then we prepare."
They scavenged quickly: rope not yet rotten, two intact waterskins, a coil of waxed thread, a short spear under the bench with a cracked shaft that Yori rewrapped with strip and patience. Sachi claimed the tin and three small vials that still smelled right. Yori found a bell by the hearth—the kind guilders hung from doorframes to make spirits remember to be polite. He set it on the counter and struck it lightly. The note came thin and true.
"A good bell," he said.
"Pretty," Sachi murmured, and then frowned. "Why ring it?"
"Because if anything unfriendly is listening very hard," Yori said, "it will flinch."
They were almost done when Aruto felt it.
Not a sound. Not a light. A pressure in the air, a weight that slid under doors and through teeth. The chains inside him answered it with a low chord, the note you hear when a blade leaves a scabbard in a quiet room.
Yori's head lifted. Sachi's hands went still.
Aruto reached for the bell without knowing why and stopped himself with his fingertips on the metal. He didn't ring. He breathed—four in, hold, six out—and let the pressure resolve.
Horses. Far off. Several. Moving as a group the way disciplined men move as a group: not rushing, not meandering. He angled toward the door. Yori beat him to it and slid to the jamb, one eye searching the yard without offering his face.
"Riders," Yori whispered. "South rise. Sashes." A beat. "Grey."
Sachi's mouth went paper white. "Binders."
The bandits did not approach the gate. They crested the hill above the outpost and fanned, three left, three right, one holding the peak—a man wearing a grey coil at his bicep like a pet snake. He surveyed the yard with a smile that didn't include teeth. He had the look of someone who had decided the world belonged to him first and would ask later if anyone had objections.
"Old Guild post!" he called, voice bright as copper. "Always happy to see it in use."
No one answered. The outpost seemed smaller with eyes on it.
The captain lifted both hands in a gesture he likely told himself was friendly. "We only want a drink and a word. Roads are unkind without friends."
Yori didn't blink. "You aren't friends."
The captain laughed, delighted. "Then we'll settle for a word."
Aruto had no breath left for diplomacy. He had weight, pain, and a map that promised a direction. He let Sachi step beside Yori because she could bend the world with tone where knives failed.
"We're leaving," she said. "You can have the post when we're gone."
"Oh, we'll have the post regardless," the captain said. His eyes slid to the signboard, to the ring of leaves, to the scraps. "But we are civil men. We'll wait. In return, we want nothing." His smile lengthened. "Except your names. And a look at your packs. For banditry, of course. One must keep the roads safe."
Yori's knife moved a hair. "You keep them safe by bleeding them."
"It's a kind of safety," the captain said. He tipped his head, eyes scanning the corners of the yard like a man checking cupboards for rats. He smelled the faint smoke on Aruto's clothes and lifted his chin toward the north. "Had trouble with blight? Nasty business. We free men keep it down when we can. For a price."
Sachi's patience cracked. "We owe you nothing."
"Everyone owes someone," the captain said cheerfully. "Even the Church pays. Especially the Church."
He leaned a touch farther in his saddle, and his gaze snagged on Aruto. Not on his face. Lower. Chest level. As if he saw something that wasn't stitched into cloth.
The chains inside Aruto thrummed. The captain's smile cooled half a degree. "There now," he said softly. "That's a rumor with legs."
Yori's body changed in the way that means a man has made his peace with something. Sachi stepped half in front of Aruto without thinking, staff grounded, chin up.
The captain noted the micro-choices. He sat back in his saddle and clapped once, the sound startling birds from a bramble. "No need for ugliness. A drink, a word, and we'll be on our way. But do invite us in. I insist on hospitality where Guild standards once held." His grey-sashed men laughed obligingly, boots creaking, hands near hilts and bows but not on them. Yet.
Aruto looked at the map on the counter, at the road east drawn fat with ink, at the coin-roll gone green, at the bell that hadn't been rung. He thought of the Inquisitor's voice telling marrow to kneel and of wolves that remembered fear. He thought of how many kinds of chains a man could wear, and how pleasantly some of them spoke.
He straightened. Pain flared, loyal as ever. He accepted it. "We're not staying," he called.
"Of course you aren't," the captain said, eyes bright. "No one important ever stays. They just pass through and leave the cleaning to men like me." He widened his smile another tooth. "Last chance. Names, packs, and we'll wish you well."
Yori's answer was to swing the gate plank back up from where Sachi had set it aside and wedge it in the gap, a gesture that meant less than a wall and more than a welcome.
The captain's laugh lost half its pleasure. "Ah," he said. "So we are choosing the expensive road."
Hooves shifted. Bows lifted a finger's width. Somewhere beyond the hill's shoulder, another horse blew. Not seven then. More.
Sachi's knuckles whitened on her staff. Yori's knife lifted, point low, ready to rise.
Aruto's breath found the rhythm that had carried him through worse, and the chains answered with a quiet, curious hum.
"Forward," he said, not loudly, not to them—an instruction to bone.
The captain's hand fell.
Hooves broke the hill's silence—measured, confident. Three riders slipped left to sweep the yard's flank, three to the right, while the captain and another held the crest like a lid pressed on a pot.
"Inside," Yori said, already moving. He didn't run; he flowed—one hand on the door frame, the other flicking the bell off the counter as he went.
Aruto and Sachi fell back into the watchroom. The fallen gate plank scraped as Yori shoved it tighter into the gap—no wall, but a trip for a careless horse. "Windows?" he asked.
"Two—storehouse and hearth," Sachi answered, breath thin.
"Good." Yori set the bell on the hearth stone. "When they breach, this rings. I want their horses to hate this place."
An arrow clipped the doorframe—warning, not kill. "Packs on the table," the captain called. "Names, nice and slow. No one bleeds."
Aruto's ribs burned. He felt the chains in him answer the iron in those voices, humming like a struck wire. Not now. He forced his breath to the river rhythm: four in, hold, six out. Pain steadied instead of drowning.
Sachi's eyes darted. "I can blind them for a heartbeat," she whispered. She held up a small clay vial. "Burn salve—strong mint and turpentine. Smoke if it hits flame."
Yori nodded once. "On my count."
The first Grey Binder pushed the door with his boot—a test. The hinges whined. Two more slipped to either side of the opening; a fourth crept along the yard wall, bow half-raised. They were good. Not great. Good enough to get men killed.
Yori tossed the bell.
It skittered across the floor, kissed the doorpost, and chimed. Not loud—thin, pure, insistent.
The horses on the rise flinched. The sound carried like a thread through teeth and tack. The captain's mount tossed its head, ears pinning.
Yori moved in the tiny stagger the chime bought. He stepped into the doorway and cut at the first man's reins hand before the rider could push through; leather parted, the horse jinked, and the rider's knee slammed the doorframe. He swore, grabbed for balance. Yori was already gone, back into shadow.
"Now," he breathed.
Sachi snapped the vial against the hearth stone and flicked the cloth-wet shard into the doorway. Mint and turpentine burst into a harsh, white smoke that clawed throats and eyes. A horse screamed. The bell chimed again, delicate and merciless.
"Inside! Take the door!" the captain barked, coughing. Two men dismounted; boots hit dirt.
Aruto braced as one Binder lunged into the room, forearm high, short sword low. The man was trained—weight forward, not overcommitted. Aruto slipped inside the reach and hammered a fist into the man's ribs, then his throat. The short sword swung high in reflex; Aruto jammed his elbow into the man's bicep, deadening it. Sachi's staff cracked the shin from the side; Yori's knife tugged the blade free of the Binder's hand as if he were removing a thorn. The man fell hard, breath finding the floor.
"Next," Yori said.
The second Binder came smarter, shield up, sword testing. He shoved the shield to wedge the door, trying to create a mouth for his friends to pour through.
Aruto planted, ignoring the scream in his ribs. The chains inside him lifted like wind under a tent. Not a door. A hinge. He struck—not the shield's face, but its rim, twice, fast, to twist it sideways. Sachi's staff stabbed under it toward ankle; the man hopped, shield dipped, and Yori's blade bit the exposed wrist. The sword clanged on old stone. The bell, jarred by the scuffle, chimed a third time.
Outside, the captain swore in a way that meant he recalculated, not panicked. "Back off the door. Arrows through the windows. Smoke them."
"Move!" Yori hissed. They ran low toward the storehouse—stone, small, one slit window and a narrow service hatch that looked onto the yard.
An arrow hissed through the watchroom and feathered itself in the ledger. Another shattered on the hearth. Smoke thickened, mean and mint-bitter.
Yori slammed the storehouse door behind them. "Hatch," he said. "We take the trough and cut east along the gully."
Sachi coughed, eyes watering. "They've got bows."
"Bows hate corners," Yori said, dropping to unlatch the hatch. He paused, then looked to Aruto. "You good?"
"No," Aruto said honestly. "Enough."
They cracked the hatch like an eye. Yard: two men dismounted and angry, one bow up at the back window they'd just abandoned, one clearing his breath, a fourth circling toward the storehouse corner with a hook meant for dragging doors.
The captain and another rider still held the crest. The captain's head tilted, listening. "There," he said, pointing—not at the hatch, but at Aruto, at something under skin and cloth. His lips thinned.
"Go," Yori whispered.
They slipped out into a crouch-run along the storehouse wall. The nearest Binder rounded the corner and saw three shadows where none should be; his mouth opened to shout. Yori's hand found it first—palm, then knife-blunt to temple. The man sagged into thistle.
Aruto cleared the corner and ran for the gully trough. An arrow sang past his ear and buried in dirt. Another would find him—he knew the cadence of archers, the breath between release and nock.
Not now. The chains hummed, hotter, closer. Vision thinned to a line.
A bowstring thrummed.
An antlered flicker leaned out of him and wasn't. The arrow's path bent a hair—just enough to kiss the doorpost instead of Aruto's neck. The bell chimed, bright as laughter.
He stumbled, half from shock, half from the price the flicker took. "Keep moving!" Sachi shouted, hauling his arm. Yori slipped into the trough ahead, knife backhand, shoulders tight.
They ran bent by the gully's spine, using its low wall to break sightlines. Hooves clattered behind—two riders plunging the slope to cut them off. The captain didn't follow; he angled to shadow them from above, smart enough to let gravity and range do work.
"Bridge," Yori snapped. Ahead, a rotten beam spanned the trough—an old drainage plank. He pivoted, slashed once, and the beam's middle gave with a puff of punk-dust. "Over, then drop it."
Sachi went first, light and sure. Aruto followed, trying to be smaller than pain. Yori crossed last, then kicked the beam into the trough. One rider, committed, tried to jump it; his horse's front hooves struck the collapsing plank, back hooves scrambled air, and the animal twisted, screaming, throwing the Binder hard. The second reined in with a curse, circling wide to search another cut.
Aruto's vision pulsed black at the edges. The shadow in him stirred, curious as a cat at a door. Not yet. Not on this. He forced his breath, forced focus: one foot, the next, the weight centered.
They climbed out of the gully into scrub. The hills beyond broke into a patchwork of coppice and old pasture—sightlines wide enough to make bows mean, but distances too long for a clean charge.
"North edge," Yori said, pointing. "Stone fence. If we reach it, they can't ride us flat."
"Then we reach it," Aruto said.
They did not sprint. They moved with the brutal discipline of people who knew sprinting was how you die loud. Twice, arrows hunted them. Twice, the land saved them—dips and thorn clumps catching shafts meant for ribs.
A horn finally sounded on the hill—a single flat note. The captain, withholding the second and third he had in him. He'd learned enough: the bell, the smoke, the way arrows went wrong around one boy in bandages. He didn't like spending men on unknowns.
"Let them go!" he called at last. "Road goes nowhere they don't have to pass again."
Yori didn't slow. "He'll set a net east," he said. "We'll see him later."
"Later," Sachi echoed, half fury, half relief.
They reached the fence—a low pile of stones sunk with years. Yori shoved a gap with his shoulder. They slipped through into a strip of alder and birch that ran like a scar toward the east.
Only when the outpost fell behind the hill's belly did they stop.
Silence arrived raw. Aruto bent with hands on knees, fighting the tremor that wanted to own him. Sachi braced his back with a palm, then touched his ribs where the bindings held; her fingers were gentle even when her mouth wasn't. Yori faced the way they'd come, knife sheathed now, eyes still measuring ghosts.
"No kills if we can help it," Yori said finally. "Men like that keep lists. Names, grudges, prices."
"We didn't," Sachi said. "We just broke pride."
"Pride bleeds loud," Yori said.
Aruto straightened. The chains in him had settled from a fever to a simmer. The flicker that had bent an arrow-path lingered in his bones like an aftertaste. He didn't know whether to be grateful or afraid.
"Forward," he said, because the word was small enough to carry and big enough to mean it.
Sachi rolled her eyes at the sky. "One day you'll add a second word to that."
"When we earn it," he said.
They angled east along the alder line until the ground remembered being a road. Wheel ruts hid in the grass like old scars. In the far distance, clouds bruised the horizon where the heartlands lay. Somewhere beyond, walls and guild bells and a city that wrote names down waited.
They didn't go yet.
They sank under the roots of a split oak and made themselves smaller than the night coming. Sachi stitched what she could—not cloth, but breath, but courage. Yori watched until his eyes watered and then watched again. Aruto slept in slices, each one edged with antlers and bells.
When the dark was thinnest and the world held its breath for morning, he woke to Sachi's whisper.
"Dawn soon."
He nodded. His body ached in honest ways. The fear was still there; the road was still long. The captain would set nets. The Inquisitor would listen to chains and follow.
But the outpost was behind them. The wolves were ash. The first men who had tried to take their names had failed.
They rose with the birds.
"East," Yori said.
"Forward," Aruto answered, and this time the word felt like more than one.