The light is going, and everyone knows it.
Not all at once—just enough that the road stops feeling generous. Shadows stretch longer than they should, clinging to the low brush and the uneven rise of the land ahead. The trees crowd closer here, their branches knitting overhead in a way that turns dusk into something heavier.
"We could stop," Khalid offers, a little too carefully. "Make camp before it's fully dark."
Jaheira slows, considering the slope ahead, the way the road bends out of sight. "We're close enough to push through," she says at last. "Another hour, perhaps less."
No one argues. Not outright.
The decision settles anyway—momentum choosing for us.
Boots crunch on gravel. Packs shift. The road rises slightly, then narrows again, shrubs thickening along one side where the ground lifts just enough to break the line of sight.
Behind me, Montaron snorts softly. "Most folk with sense would've stopped already."
Xzar hums beside him, unbothered. "Caution is unfashionable."
"Caution is expensive," Montaron replies. "Costs time. Comfort. Nerves."
Xzar's smile curls faintly. "And yet some seem willing to pay."
They walk in silence for a few steps.
"Still," Montaron adds, eyes flicking ahead, "some people move like they've made peace with trouble."
Xzar tilts his head. "You've noticed that too?"
"Hard not to." A pause. "Too disciplined to be aimless. Too restrained to be desperate."
Xzar's smile widens by a fraction. "Ah. The sort that serves an idea."
Montaron huffs quietly. "Ideas don't bleed. People do."
I don't turn around. I don't ask.
The road slopes again, shallow but persistent. Nashkel still isn't in sight.
Jaheira glances back over her shoulder, voice level, almost casual. "You two seem intent on reaching the town," she says. "More than most."
Montaron's eyes flick to her, then forward again. "Coin dries up when trouble starts," he replies easily. "Nashkel's got trouble."
"That's n-not quite an answer," Khalid says, gently. "I m-meant—about the m-mines."
Xzar chuckles under his breath. "Ah. Everyone means the mines." He adjusts his grip on his staff, gaze drifting toward the darkening hills. "When something vital falters, people grow imaginative."
Montaron's mouth twitches. "You always talk like that?"
Khalid stiffens. "I—only when I'm t-thinking."
"Huh," Montaron says. "Must be exhausting."
Jaheira turns her head just enough for Montaron to see her expression.
"Try not to mistake a mannerism for weakness," she says. "It leads to poor judgments."
Montaron snorts quietly, neither apologetic nor offended, and lets the matter drop.
"And you?" Jaheira asks, her attention returning to Xzar.
Xzar smiles at her. Not evasive. Curious. "We prefer to see a problem before it finishes becoming someone else's solution."
Montaron grunts. "Rumors spread faster than rot. Best to know what's real before the stench settles in."
Jaheira studies them for a long moment. Whatever she's weighing, she doesn't press.
"Then be careful what you uncover," she says quietly. "Some truths draw more blood than they're worth."
Xzar's smile thins. "Oh, we don't uncover truths."
A pause.
"We observe."
The road curves.
The light dims another shade.
And whatever more might have been said never gets the chance.
It happens without warning.
No shout. No challenge. No time to name the fear before it arrives.
Jaheira and Khalid had taken the lead by a few paces, shields and staff setting the rhythm, leaving Imoen and me in the narrow pocket of road behind them.
There's a thunk—wood biting wood—so close to my ear that the sound feels personal. The arrow buries itself in the packed dirt at the road's edge, vibrating, the fletching shivering as if unsure it's done its job.
Jaheira's hand snaps up. "Down."
Another arrow follows, higher—clipping a branch overhead and showering us with leaves. A third skids across the road, sparks jumping where iron kisses stone.
"Ambush," Montaron says calmly, already moving.
The world fractures into angles and cover. Jaheira shoves Khalid toward the inside of the bend, staff raised, voice cutting clean through the chaos. "Trees. Now."
Imoen stumbles, catches herself.
And then I see him.
Up on the rise to the left, half-hidden by scrub and shadow. A man, not armored, not steady. His bow is already drawn, the string trembling against his cheek.
The arrow is meant for me.
Everything narrows.
Sound thins to a dull ring. The space between his fingers and my face feels impossibly short, like the world has folded itself to make the distance easier.
This is wrong, some part of me thinks. I shouldn't be able to see this. I shouldn't have time.
His eye squints.
The bow creaks.
Move.
My body doesn't listen.
Someone fires too early.
The arrow comes from above and left, rushed and ugly—and something hits me hard enough to steal the breath from my chest.
For a heartbeat, I don't understand what's wrong. The world lurches. Heat blooms along my side like I've brushed a forge. My hand comes away slick.
Blood.
Jaheira swears. Khalid shouts my name. Imoen's face drains of color.
"Stay with me," Jaheira snaps, already between me and the slope. "Down. Down."
Another arrow thuds into the road where my head was a moment ago.
Then Xzar gasps.
Not a scream. A sharp, startled sound—like someone waking from a dream too fast.
He stumbles sideways, one hand flying to his shoulder. The arrow didn't bury itself deep, but it struck hard enough to spin him, snapping cloth and flesh alike.
"Oh," he breathes, more surprised than afraid. "That does sting."
Montaron is there instantly, yanking him down toward cover. "Idiot," he snarls, more alarm than insult. "You don't stand still when arrows are flying."
Xzar presses his palm to the wound, fingers already slick with blood. His eyes flick to his hand, then back toward the rise.
Fascinated.
Jaheira's voice cuts through everything. "Archers on the rise!"
There's no talking now.
Only the creak of bowstrings and the certainty—cold and immediate—that the road has decided it's done with us.
Khalid moves before the thought finishes forming.
He steps sideways and forward in the same breath, shield snapping up with a practiced jerk that leaves no space between me and the slope. The impact rings through the metal a heartbeat later—thang—an arrow skidding off at an angle and vanishing into the brush behind us.
"Stay b-behind me," he says, voice tight but steady.
Jaheira doesn't look back. She doesn't need to.
Her hand closes around her staff and the wood answers, a low hum passing through it as if something inside has woken. A faint green sheen ripples along the grain—subtle, alive—before the staff hardens in her grip.
She steps forward.
Not charging. Claiming ground.
A bandit breaks from the brush downhill, blade in hand, shouting more to convince himself than anyone else. Jaheira meets him halfway. The staff comes around in a short, brutal arc and catches him across the ribs with a sound like a snapped branch. He folds, air torn from his lungs, weapon tumbling uselessly into the dirt.
Imoen gasps.
Then she swears.
She fumbles her bow up, fingers shaking, breath too fast. Her first arrow goes wide—thuds into bark somewhere off to the right—but she doesn't freeze. She nocks another, jaw clenched, eyes wet and furious.
"Stop—" she mutters. "Just—stop—"
The second arrow flies. It disappears into the shrubs on the rise, followed by a sharp yelp and a crash of movement. Not a kill. But enough to make them shift.
Behind us, Xzar laughs.
A brittle sound, edged with pain.
"Oh, this is educational," he says, blood soaking the sleeve at his shoulder.
He lifts his free hand. His fingers curl inward as if grasping something just out of reach.
A thin thread of pallid light snaps from the brush on the rise to his palm.
Someone cries out—a short, strangled sound—and Xzar inhales sharply.
The color returns to his face by degrees. Not much. Just enough.
"Yes," he murmurs, surprise flickering through his grin. "That will do."
An arrow snaps past his head in answer, close enough to make him duck this time.
Good.
Montaron is already gone.
One moment he's behind us, crouched and coiled—the next he's sprinting uphill, cutting left, then right, boots skidding on loose stone as arrows chase where he was. He zigzags without breaking stride, low and fast, a moving problem the archers can't quite solve.
One panics. Fires too high.
Montaron vanishes into the brush.
There's a wet, abrupt sound. A strangled cry.
Then nothing.
The ambush doesn't end.
But it breaks.
Arrows come slower now. Wilder. The certainty is gone, replaced by fear and noise and bodies that won't move the way they're supposed to.
Jaheira plants her staff and turns her head just enough to check us.
"Khalid."
"I've g-got him," he answers immediately.
She nods once—and steps forward again, green-glimmering shillelagh raised, eyes hard.
The road is no longer theirs.
And it never was going to be.
The bandits break in pieces.
One bolts first—boots crashing through brush on the far side of the rise, breath loud and panicked. Another looses an arrow without looking, the shot sailing high into the trees before he turns and runs, vanishing downslope without dignity or plan.
Montaron doesn't chase.
He emerges from the brush instead, blade wet, eyes already searching for the next threat that doesn't exist. He pauses, listening. Counts heartbeats. Then relaxes by a fraction.
"Gone," he says.
Not relieved. Confirming.
Jaheira doesn't lower her staff immediately. She scans the rise, the brush, the road ahead and behind—measuring silence the way others measure noise. Only when nothing answers does the tension ease from her shoulders.
"Hold," she says.
Khalid exhales shakily behind his shield. He lowers it just enough to look at me, eyes wide with something between fear and apology. "A-are you—?"
"I'm here," I manage. My voice sounds wrong. Thin. Distant.
He nods, swallowing, and steps closer anyway, still half-turned toward the slope as if daring it to try again.
Imoen lowers her bow slowly, hands trembling now that they don't have to be steady. She looks from the brush to the body on the road and then at me. Her face crumples for half a second before she forces it back into place.
"Don't move," she says, too quickly. "You'll—just don't."
Xzar sinks down against a tree with a hiss, finally letting the pain catch up. He presses hard against his shoulder, examining the blood with academic interest.
"Remarkable how loud silence becomes," he muses. "Afterward."
Montaron wipes his blade clean on the grass before sheathing it.
Jaheira turns at last and closes the distance to us in three long strides.
Her eyes flick to my side. The blood. The way I'm holding myself.
"You're lucky," she says. Not gently. Truthfully.
Then she looks to Xzar. "Both of you are."
She kneels.
The fight is over. Now comes the cost.
The quiet presses in unevenly. My ears won't stop ringing, a thin, persistent whine that makes every sound feel distant and wrong. The road smells sharp now—sap torn from branches, damp earth churned up by boots, iron carried on the air. My hands won't quite stop shaking. Not badly enough to show, I think—but enough that I tuck them close, as if that might keep the tremor from spreading. When I breathe in, it catches halfway, like my body is still waiting for the next arrow to arrive.
Jaheira sets her staff down within reach and places one hand lightly at my shoulder, grounding, steady.
"This will sting," she says. No warning beyond that.
She murmurs a word I don't catch, voice low and even. The air around her hand warms—not hot, not burning. Something gentler. Something that spreads instead of presses.
The pain pulls inward.
It doesn't vanish. It recedes—drawn back from the edges, from the screaming sharpness into something duller, manageable. The heat fades. The wetness at my side dries beneath her palm. I gasp despite myself, breath shuddering as sensation rearranges into something I can live with.
Jaheira exhales slowly and lifts her hand.
"Move your arm," she says.
I do. It hurts. But it works.
"Good," she says, and that single word lands heavier than any praise earlier.
Khalid lets out a breath he's clearly been holding and lowers his shield at last. "Th-thank the gods," he mutters, rubbing a hand over his face.
Imoen crouches closer, eyes darting between my side and my face like she's afraid one of them might lie. "You scared me," she says, and then, quieter, "Don't do that again."
I try to smile. It comes out crooked.
"I'll try."
Behind us, Xzar watches Jaheira's work with open interest, head tilted.
"Efficient," he observes. "Restorative magic always feels so… forgiving."
Jaheira doesn't look at him. "It closes what should not have been opened," she replies. "That is all."
Xzar's smile flickers, unreadable.
Montaron glances once toward the rise, then toward the road ahead as if measuring how quickly trouble could return. "They won't be back," he says, more to himself than anyone else.
Jaheira rises, reclaiming her staff. The green sheen has faded now, leaving only wood again. Ordinary. Solid.
"We camp," she says. Not a suggestion. "Here. Now."
No one argues.
The road can wait.
I sit there a moment longer, feeling the ache settle into my bones, feeling the space where pain had been and realizing how close it came to staying.
Around us, the light continues to fail.
And for the first time since we left the inn, I understand that surviving isn't about moving forward.
Sometimes, it's about knowing when to stop.