Davin had learned later what had happened after he had stopped watching the group in the forest.
Tim and Thomas had managed to kill more than half the goblins. The survivors, panicked, had fled into the undergrowth. Exhausted, covered in sweat and blood, they had not tried to pursue them. Instead, they had spent a long time searching the forest for Sylvia, calling her name until their voices cracked. Then, unable to find her, they had returned to the village to alert the grandfather.
They had finally found her at the guild, still pale but standing, to their great astonishment.
Tim did not show it much, but since their departure, he had been relieved to see his sister whole. From time to time, his gaze slid toward her, checked that she was all right, then moved away again with his usual bravado, as if none of it mattered.
A discreet attention, hidden beneath his boasting.
On foot, the trip to Mehian would have taken them about seven hours, including breaks. With the cart, they hoped to make it in a little over five.
The first hours passed without incident.
The road wound between stretches of pale grass, dark rocks, and a few groves of black trees twisted by the wind. Kassis climbed high into the sky, bleaching the hills with harsh light, while Mira followed farther behind, softer, more golden. The mixture gave the landscape a strange clarity, almost unreal.
The group spoke less than at the start. Fatigue, heat, and the road always wore down conversation in the end.
Then, after three hours, they reached a low hill covered in dry brush and shattered stones.
The explosion rang out without warning.
A sharp, brutal sound that made the air itself vibrate.
The three-eyed horses reared up with hoarse cries. The cart lurched violently. Sylvia barely caught herself on the edge. Tim cursed. Thomas already had a hand on his weapon.
Ahead of them, the ground looked as if it had been torn open.
A section of the road had exploded. Black soil, overturned clumps of earth, smoking shards of stone.
Thomas, Tim, and Math immediately climbed down to investigate.
Davin did not move right away.
Something was wrong.
Too clean.
Too prepared.
Then they emerged.
Bandits, hidden until then in the bushes, behind rocks, in the tall grass. About ten in total. Dirty, armed, fast. They surrounded the group in moments with the confidence of people who had already rehearsed this scene.
Davin immediately felt the pressure from one of them.
The leader.
Tall, lean, his face marked by a scar cutting across his jaw, he advanced without the slightest nervousness. Mana emanated from him like a dull heat.
The leader is emitting mana. Denser than mine. Almost as dense as the grandfather's, but not quite. He's an Adept. No doubt.
Bad news.
Very bad news.
An Adept in ambush, with a dozen men, prepared terrain, against a small group already tired.
The probability had just dropped sharply.
The leader studied them like a butcher evaluating hanging carcasses.
"Drop your weapons, your gold, your supplies, and you walk away alive. Refuse… and you all die."
His voice was calm.
That was what made it worrying.
Not the calm of a man bluffing.
The calm of a man who had already decided what he would do with the bodies.
Tim drew his sword at once.
"Never!" he spat. "We'd rather see you dead!"
Davin closed his eyes for half a second.
How stupid can you be? Curse the grandfather who handed him to me.
"Wait!"
He stepped down from the cart at a measured pace, hands raised to show he was not seeking a fight.
"We can negotiate. Fighting here serves no purpose."
The leader turned his head toward him and gave a thin smile.
"Hm. Junior. I knew you weren't completely stupid. I sensed you from the start. That's why I haven't killed that insolent brat yet."
I understand you so well it worries me.
Davin kept his voice steady.
"We're heading to Mehian to join our guild. Honestly, I don't think attacking us is a wise decision. I offer you one gold coin and our supplies. That's all we have. We aren't merchants."
The leader sneered.
"One gold coin? Are you mocking me, Junior?"
"Not at all. But two or three kilometers behind us, we passed some merchants. Only two escort soldiers. Visible goods. If you want real profit, I can describe the route and—"
"Bullshit!" Thomas roared, his face red with fury. "You want to drag innocents into this? Do you have no honor?"
Tim, Math, and Sylvia turned toward Davin with shocked, furious, almost disgusted expressions.
Davin did not care.
Honor passed through him like wind over stone.
He kept his gaze fixed on the bandit leader, waiting for the only answer that mattered.
The leader looked at him with malicious amusement.
"Hm. You're clever, Junior. But that little bastard disrespected me. So here's how this is going to work: you put down your supplies, your weapons, and your gold. You leave without the cart. That is my last kindness."
Davin felt his breathing loosen slightly.
It was not ideal.
It was humiliating.
But it was survivable.
No cart. No gold. No weapons.
They could recover from that.
No one needed to die yet.
The transaction was finally taking shape.
It did not last.
Without warning, Tim lunged forward.
Fast.
Much faster than Davin would have expected.
His blade flashed and cut the nearest bandit's throat in a red spray. The man instinctively brought his hands to his neck, staggered, then collapsed to his knees, gurgling.
Thomas and Math, unable to endure the humiliation any longer, drew their weapons as well.
"Idiots!" Davin and the bandit leader roared at the exact same time.
For one absurd second, their voices overlapped perfectly.
The silence that followed was almost comical.
Magnificent. I finally found someone in this world who shares my opinions. It just had to be a bandit chief.
Then everything exploded.
The group refused to yield and defended their position with brutal efficiency. Tim was sharper than he let on. He dodged a first strike, parried the second, pivoted, and drove his blade into the stomach of a second bandit with almost joyful ferocity.
Thomas advanced like a battering ram. His shield smashed through an opponent's guard before a downward blow split the man's skull. Bone cracked with a dry sound.
Math stayed back, colder, more precise. He covered their flanks, striking when necessary, not when it looked impressive.
Three bandits fell in seconds.
Enough to create the illusion that this was winnable.
Only an illusion.
Davin saw it immediately.
Their line was too short.
Their terrain was bad.
Their formation improvised.
And above all…
The leader had not truly moved yet.
They're better than I thought. But they won't hold. Not against the Adept. Not with an ambush this clean. Even if they kill two or three more, the outcome no longer changes.
Sylvia and Davin remained near the cart.
She had drawn her small blade, trembling, useless in this kind of situation. Her eyes searched for Tim, then Thomas, then returned to the bandits closing in.
Davin, meanwhile, calculated.
Distance.
Angles.
Numbers.
Terrain.
Escape possibilities.
Very few.
Then the leader reappeared at the rear of the melee.
He had deliberately stayed back.
Waiting for the right moment.
He murmured a few words in a harsh language Davin did not understand, then extended his hand.
A condensed fireball formed above his palm.
Dense.
Orange.
Compact as a mass of living embers.
He launched it at the cart.
"Take cover!" Thomas shouted.
Davin and Sylvia barely had time to throw themselves aside.
The fireball struck the wood with a muffled explosion.
Flames spread instantly. Canvas, dry wood, sacks—everything caught fire as if the flames had only been waiting for permission.
The beasts had no chance.
Their cries tore through the air.
High-pitched, almost human screams mixed with the smell of burnt hair, roasted flesh, greasy smoke. They reared, pulled against their harnesses, then collapsed, overturning the cart in a crash of wheels and splintered wood.
Then silence.
Davin felt his stomach tighten.
Not from compassion.
From calculation.
No mounts. No cart. No fast escape. The probability just dropped again.
In the chaos, a bandit circled the melee, appeared behind Sylvia, and suddenly wrapped an arm around her throat. She let out a strangled cry. Her small blade slipped from her fingers.
"Let her go!" Tim screamed.
He turned immediately, out of his mind, and charged toward his sister, sword raised.
Too fast.
Too straight.
Too predictable.
Davin turned his head in the opposite direction almost at the same instant.
He had not seen the archer yet.
But an Adept leader disciplined enough to set up an ambush would not expose himself without ranged cover.
And the archer was there.
Twenty meters away.
Half-hidden behind a dark stone block, just behind the leader.
Bow already drawn.
The arrow shot forward with a dry whistle.
Too fast to dodge.
It struck Tim full in the throat.
Not the cheek.
Not the shoulder.
Not even the upper chest.
The throat.
The impact was horrific.
The arrowhead pierced the soft flesh beneath his jaw and came halfway out behind his neck in a thick spray of blood. Tim's head snapped violently backward. His momentum broke. He still took two disordered steps, as if his body refused to understand that he was already dead.
His hands released his sword.
He brought his fingers to his throat with a wet gurgle.
Blood pulsed between them.
His eyes, wide with surprise and hatred, found the bandit holding Sylvia, then the leader, then nothing.
His mouth opened.
"Bast—"
The word drowned in blood.
A strangled rasp tore from his throat.
His legs gave way.
He collapsed face-first into the dust with a heavy, final sound.
He was dead before he could finish insulting anyone.
"TIM!"
The cry burst from Thomas, Sylvia, and Math at the same time.
This time, there was no going back.
No clean retreat.
No intimidation.
No trade.
No compromise.
Tim's blood was already darkening the earth.
The group had just understood what Davin had known for several seconds already:
They were not all leaving this hill alive.
Perhaps none of them were.
Sylvia screamed until her voice tore.
Then her gaze emptied all at once.
Her body gave out.
She fainted.
The bandit holding her cursed and slapped her violently across the face to wake her, like shaking damaged merchandise that had fallen at the worst possible moment.
Thomas roared and tried to break through toward her, but two bandits blocked his path while the leader finally advanced, sword in hand.
Math stepped back.
Not from cowardice.
From lucidity.
He had seen the same thing Davin had.
The line was broken.
Tim was dead.
Sylvia captured.
The cart was burning.
The mounts were gone.
The archer controlled the rear.
And the Adept had not even started fighting seriously.
It was over.
Not quite in fact.
But already in the structure of the battle.
Davin tried one last time.
"You've made your point!" he shouted. "We'll put down our weapons! Take everything!"
The bandit leader did not answer immediately.
He looked at Tim's corpse with a satisfied smile. Like a craftsman pleased with clean work.
Then his eyes slid toward Davin.
"Too late, Junior."
There it was.
Negotiation had died with Tim.
Davin understood it in a single second.
A confirmed Adept.
Enough bandits still standing.
An archer who shot accurately.
Thomas and Math already under pressure.
Sylvia held hostage.
Me: no technique, no mastered spell, two gold coins in my pocket, and a saber I barely know how to hold.
Survival probability if I stay: below ten percent.
He needed nothing more.
"Thomas, Math, hold on for just a moment!" he shouted. "I'm going to cast a spell I learned!"
The group heard him.
Despite Tim's death, despite the chaos, despite the smoke, Thomas and Math felt an absurd spark of hope return. Their lives were on the line. They clung to that sentence like drowning men to a rotten plank.
Among the bandits, the effect was the opposite.
Several stiffened.
Even the Adept leader paused briefly. His eyes narrowed. He grabbed Sylvia by the hair and placed the bare edge of his sword against her throat, ready to open it at the slightest suspicious movement.
The archer, meanwhile, drew his bow again.
Thomas instinctively moved slightly in front of Davin, shield raised.
Math shifted backward at an angle, searching for an opening.
Davin slowly raised one hand in front of him.
Theatrically.
Very slowly.
Like someone needing space to channel a complicated power.
He murmured a few incomprehensible syllables, just loudly enough for everyone to hear.
The leader stiffened even more.
Two bandits stepped back half a pace.
The archer fired.
The arrow flew straight at Davin.
Thomas raised his shield in time. The projectile cracked against the metal, deflected to the side, and buried itself in the dirt with a sharp sound.
Two seconds passed.
Davin opened his eyes wide.
Pivoted.
And ran.
No hesitation.
No backward glance.
No excuse.
His legs moved as one, driven by a coldness so perfect it almost felt inhuman.
For one full second, everyone froze.
Bandits and companions alike.
Unable to understand the reversal.
Then the screams erupted behind him.
"DAVIN!" Thomas roared.
Sylvia's scream followed, broken, animal.
A second arrow whistled.
Too late.
Too far.
Davin was already running.
They're dead or captured. The variable is settled.
He did not slow down.
He ran until his lungs burned, until the hill was nothing but a memory behind black trees, until the screams faded into the distance.
Only after putting nearly a kilometer between himself and the scene did he finally slow.
He placed a hand against the rough trunk of a black tree and leaned on it.
His chest rose and fell violently.
Sweat glued his clothes to his skin.
The silence of the forest closed around him like cold water.
He waited for his breathing to stabilize.
No remorse came.
Out of analytical habit, he still searched for it.
A trace of guilt.
A regret.
A moral nausea.
Any inner friction at all.
He found nothing.
Nothing but the dull beating of his own heart gradually slowing.
Sylvia had given me a pill. I saved her life. The debt was settled.
Tim had glared at me from the start. I owed him nothing.
Thomas and Math were strangers paid to make the trip.
The grandfather paid me to escort them, not to die.
The equation is simple: I am alive. They probably aren't. In this world, that is the only statistic that matters.
He straightened.
"AI, I deviated from the main road. Help me bypass it and reach Mehian."
[BEEP. System Message / Analysis in progress…]
[Mapping complete. Alternative route established: four-kilometer detour through the forest. Estimated time to Mehian: three hours and ten minutes.]
Davin brushed dust from his jacket with an automatic gesture.
Then he resumed walking west.
Toward Mehian.
Toward the Academy.
Behind him, somewhere on the hill, the wind carried one last scream before everything returned to silence.
Davin heard nothing.
And did not look back.