I.
Kinan stopped at the threshold.
He turned his head back toward Amro — lying still, unconscious — and his eyes held something that had no clean name: regret and grief pressed together into a single, heavy expression. Inside him the real conflict was unfolding — the one he had never been remotely prepared to face. The conflict between what he genuinely wanted and what he was having to leave behind.
The man looked at him.
"Are you still thinking about staying? Or do you want to move toward the life you actually want?"
Kinan lowered his head, eyes on the floor. Then he took two steps forward — slowly, as though each one cost something.
Behind him, the man watched. A smile of victory settled at the corner of his mouth.
"You've made the right choice," he said, stepping forward. "From today, you have a new beginning — one you chose with your own hands."
The words planted something in Kinan that felt, briefly, like pride. For the first time, he had the sensation of having done something through his own will entirely. But beside that feeling, another one had already begun to grow — the feeling that belongs to those who have turned away from someone who gave them everything.
He hesitated. He went still, caught between two things. Then he made himself continue.
"I'm sorry, Amro," he said — only to himself. "But this is my choice. There are questions I need answered. And you were always the one who refused to answer them."
The man moved toward the horses tied by the post — two of them, waiting. Kinan followed, placed his hand on the saddle, and tried to mount. He didn't know how. The man helped him up without comment.
Then Kinan's eyes caught movement — a group of armed, masked men heading directly into the Peach House.
Fear moved through him. He wanted to get down. Some pull toward Amro made him reach for the saddle to dismount — but the man stopped him.
"Don't worry. He'll be fine. They only want to take him somewhere safe."
Kinan didn't believe a word of it. He pushed to get down anyway — and nearly stepped onto a dagger that had been planted in the ground exactly where he would have landed.
"Remember: you chose to come. Do you want to lose your chance at knowing your own past? I won't offer this again — and any further attempt to go back will have serious consequences. You accepted responsibility when you made this choice."
The voice was calm and without warmth.
Kinan understood what had happened. He had bound himself with his own hands. He climbed back onto the horse. The man took hold of the reins, pressed his heels into his horse's flanks, and rode — Kinan behind him.
II.
They passed through several quarters, moving steadily outward, away from the city. The roads roughened. Even the horses struggled at points, picking through stones. The man stopped briefly, smoothed his hair back, and said:
"From here we go carefully — we'll walk the horses rather than ride them. Watch where you step. Don't let the wolves have you."
He said the last part with a slight smile.
"Wolves?" Kinan said, his voice dropping.
The answer came from the forest itself — a long howl from somewhere deep among the trees, followed by others. The sound moved across Kinan's skin and left it raised. But he steadied himself and kept walking.
While they moved through the rough terrain, Kinan kept trying to form a picture of the man he was about to meet. But something else kept interrupting it — a question that wouldn't settle.
"Is this man actually telling the truth? I think I moved too fast. But I didn't have a choice — if I hadn't come, he would have killed Amro."
He looked at the man's back and thought, briefly, about running. Then the man spoke — and what he said stopped Kinan mid-step:
"Let me tell you something. Human beings are ungrateful by nature. No matter what you do for someone, they will not acknowledge what you gave them. A person never abandons their pride — they go on resisting and denying the very people who helped them stand up. Exactly as you just did."
The words were designed to make a person feel buried. Kinan couldn't yet determine what kind of man this was — sometimes he behaved as though Kinan's wellbeing was his genuine concern, and then in the next breath he issued open threats, and now this: engineering guilt.
Kinan closed his fist slowly. Then opened it. He remembered what he was here for.
He looked up at the man and said, with more steadiness than he felt:
"I haven't denied anyone's kindness. I'm trying to build my own path — a path where no one hides things from me."
The man stopped walking. He closed his eyes and smiled. Then he half-turned, opened his eyes, and said in a serious voice:
"Oh? Is that so?"
Kinan nodded. His neck was trembling slightly — a small, visible effort to conceal his fear.
The man ignored him, drew his sword suddenly — Kinan stepped back by reflex — and used it to cut through several branches of bramble blocking the path ahead. He glanced at Kinan.
"What's wrong? Were you frightened?"
Kinan swallowed and moved forward.
Then the man broke into a run — heading toward a wide clearing inside the forest — and kept running until he had disappeared from Kinan's sight entirely. Kinan tried to follow and couldn't close the distance.
He stopped in the middle of the clearing, hands on his knees, catching his breath. He wiped his forehead with his wrist and looked around. The fear had settled deep enough that his stomach had tightened against it.
"Where did he go? Have I actually been tricked? God — what a fool I am. I should never have trusted him."
III.
Then he stopped talking to himself.
His ears had caught something: the sound of branches and leaves breaking, somewhere close. From between the trees, three wolves emerged — one large, two mid-sized — their eyes forward, their bodies low.
Kinan's pupils widened. He swallowed again, with difficulty. He began backing away slowly, and felt the weakness arrive in his legs — that particular sensation where the ground beneath you stops feeling reliable.
The wolves growled and advanced, then separated into three directions, moving to surround him.
A sword landed in the dirt beside him. And from behind:
"Pick it up if you want to survive."
Kinan turned toward the voice. The man was sitting on a high branch above, watching him with a provoking calm.
"Pick up the sword quickly — or the wolves will have their dinner. This is your one chance. I have no intention of interrupting their meal."
Kinan bent toward the sword. One of the wolves lunged and pushed him backward — but he didn't go fully down. By chance, as he stumbled, his knee caught the wolf's nose. The animal recoiled with a sharp, ugly sound and retreated.
Kinan got back to his feet. He reached the sword, drew it from its sheath, and gripped the handle with both hands — and waited.
The second wolf came slowly, eyes catching moonlight, mouth opening to reveal two rows of teeth like curved knives. It held its distance, then covered the remaining two metres in a single leap.
Kinan watched it coming — both arms shaking — and swung the sword without aim. The wolf landed on him and drove him backward, but he kept swinging, kept the blade moving.
From above, the man watched with an expression that had sharpened into something that wasn't quite concern and wasn't quite indifference — but he held back. The boy would face this or he wouldn't. There was no middle option.
IV.
Kinan's eyes began to fill. And in that moment — on the edge of being overwhelmed — he felt it: the reality of what he had had. With Amro, no one had ever gotten close enough to touch him. No one had ever dared lay a hand on him. Amro's presence alone had been a kind of armour.
He remembered what the man had said on the path:
"Human beings are ungrateful by nature."
And standing here — sword in two shaking hands, wolves closing from three sides — he understood that it had been true about him. He thought of the night at the beach, and the sentence he'd thrown at Amro without thinking, and the look it had put on the man's face.
Then the large wolf jumped and caught his right cheek with its claws, sending him to the ground. The sword flew from his hand.
He lay on his back and looked up directly into the wolf's eyes. The other two closed in from each side. His whole body was trembling now, and his eyes had dried past the point of tears. He couldn't tell whether what was in them was fear or regret — it had become the same thing.
Death was two steps away. And here it was — the moment he had only ever heard described.
"I don't believe it. Am I actually going to die here?"
The large wolf moved in and lunged for his throat. By pure reflex — nothing decided, nothing planned — Kinan pushed his wrist into the animal's mouth. The wolf bit down and pressed, bearing its full weight. Kinan cried out from the pain.
But then he noticed something: the other two wolves hadn't moved. They were waiting for the largest to finish before they came in. He was still alive.
That small observation was enough.
He pushed forward — drove himself into the wolf rather than away from it — and the animal stumbled back, surprised, releasing his wrist.
Above, the man's eyes widened.
"Extraordinary," he said, his voice quieter than before. "There it is — the survival instinct showing its full force."
V.
Kinan began hitting the wolf across the face — not with technique, with desperation — until the animal finally backed away, whimpering. He clutched his wrist against his chest, pain running through it in long, burning waves. But he couldn't stop a smile from forming.
Then the second wolf attacked — no warning, immediate — lunging and recoiling, lunging and recoiling. Each time, Kinan pushed it back. And the whole time, he was moving — step by slow step — toward where the sword had fallen, until his hand finally closed around it.
"All right. Hold yourself together, Kinan. You hit one of them. You can finish this one."
The wolf launched itself again. At the last instant Kinan dropped low and drove the blade upward into its stomach. The animal went down, blood running fast and dark into the ground.
One dead. The large one had fled. One remaining.
Kinan stepped toward it, gripping the sword in reverse. He opened his mouth and screamed — not a word, just sound, raw and full — directly at the wolf. The animal startled, turned, and ran.
He dropped to his knees.
He stayed there, breathing, until the breathing slowed. Then he threw the sword aside and looked at his hands.
For the first time in his life, he had been tested for survival — and he had passed. Not with training, not with preparation. With nothing but the decision, in the last possible moment, not to stop.
He felt something he didn't quite have a word for yet.
Then he laughed — not quietly — and said to himself:
"I did it. I beat them. I'm alive and they're the ones who lost."
He turned and looked up at the man, who was watching him from the branch with an expression of genuine admiration.
"Did you see that? I managed to beat them. Do you want me to cook you a wolf?"
The man jumped down from the branch, expression flat.
"Your sense of humour is terrible. Don't say things like that again."
Kinan smiled — slightly embarrassed — and then:
"My hand — I can't believe this pain—"
"Stop shouting. You'll bring more wolves."
The man crouched and extended his hand. Kinan offered his good arm — the man took hold of the injured wrist instead and pulled. Kinan cried out. The man put his hand over Kinan's mouth.
"Didn't I tell you to stop? Listen carefully. There is no going back on this road. There is no fear. There is no one who cries out from pain. From this moment — you are no longer the soft, unremarkable boy called Kinan. You are Kinan the fighter."
He released the wrist. Then pointed at the sword.
"Pick it up. From today, it's yours. It will be your companion — until the time comes for you to become one of the element-users."
Kinan crouched and picked it up. He slid it into the sash around his waist, then looked at his wrist in silence — blood still moving from it in slow drops. He followed the man without another word.
"This is the first real thing I've done. But what comes next? Where is this man taking me?... Slowly. Don't rush it. I'll find out everything one step at a time."
VI.
They walked in silence for another half-hour, moving deeper and away, until the trees began to thin. Then the man stopped and spoke without turning.
"My name is Anwar. Remember it. I don't repeat things."
"Anwar."
"Yes. Anwar. Does the name suit you?"
"Not exactly — but it's unfamiliar to me."
Anwar didn't respond to that and kept walking. And then — on the edge of the treeline, up on high ground — a house came into view.
Old, built behind a stand of tall trees, its roof made of clay tile, a solid wooden door in its front. The elevation was significant — from here you could see the entire city spread out below, lights and shapes and the dark geometries of rooftops. Kinan nearly forgot to keep walking. He stood and stared until Anwar pulled him by the arm toward the door.
They stopped in front of it.
"Prepare yourself. You're about to meet the Master. Be respectful."
Something moved through Kinan — not quite fear, not quite readiness. He had learned, somewhere in the last hour, to hold himself steady when things arrived.
Anwar pushed the door open and stepped to the side, gesturing for Kinan to enter.
He hesitated for just a moment.
Then he stepped through.
"Welcome, hero — Kinan. It has been a very long time since I last saw you."
Kinan turned toward the voice.
A man sat in a wooden chair, a sword leaning against the wall beside him. Every detail about him suggested something layered and unresolved — the posture of someone who has been carrying something difficult for long enough that it had become part of how he sat.
"Come forward. Don't be afraid."
Kinan moved toward him slowly and carefully. He recognised the face — this was the same person who had come the day before to defend them. He had not expected to find him here. He had not expected any of this.
"I hope the journey wasn't too hard on you."
The man reached up and removed the covering from his face — and what it revealed was a smile that produced in Kinan something that sat exactly between awe and fear, without resolving into either.
He rose from the chair and said:
"And now I can say — what was entrusted has returned to its rightful owner."
To be continued…