The morning began with mist.
Not the kind that clings like breath from dying machines, but a soft veil—thin, wandering—sliding through vine and bough, coiling across moss and leaf like a memory made of water.
Casamir woke in the woven shelter near the Hermit's dwelling, where bark walls curved like cradle-hands and the wind whispered lullabies meant for no living man. His blanket smelled of crushed mint and pine ash. A blue-winged moth watched from the ceiling, still as a question.
The ceiling sagged ever so slightly with the weight of dew, and in its damp hush, the forest beyond pressed softly into his bones. This place didn't echo like the steel corridors of Karnox. It absorbed. Held. The silence here wasn't hollow—it was full, thick with old breath and patient memory. He sat still for a while, unsure whether waking meant beginning… or simply continuing something that had no end.
Outside, the forest didn't speak—it breathed. Layered chords of birdsong, breeze, and the hush of branches shifting overhead. Beneath it all, a deeper murmur: the roots remembering.
Casamir rose slowly, cautious not to disrupt the hush.
Each morning here unsettled him with its stillness.
No artillery. No red suns. No alarms. No blood in the creases of his palms.
Just life. Quiet. Undemanding. Whole.
And he still didn't know how to hold it.
Didn't know what to do with a world that didn't need defending. Or destroying. Or fixing.
⸻
The Hermit wasn't at the glade.
Instead, by the river's bend, a child stood—barefoot, eyes too tired for six winters. He held a crooked pail nearly as tall as his arms could carry.
His name was Nim. Sharp-eyed. Quiet. A little wild. A little afraid.
Today, his eyes were rimmed red—not from crying.
From coughing.
The kind that carves itself into ribs. That sounds like something trying to claw its way out from beneath the skin.
He didn't speak when Casamir approached. Just stared at the water. One hand gripped the pail. The other trembled.
Casamir crouched beside him.
It would've been easy to say something light. Or leave. Or pretend he hadn't noticed.
But he didn't.
"The river won't take your voice," he said gently.
Nim didn't answer. He just coughed again—wet, ragged, raw.
Casamir placed a hand on the boy's back.
And felt it.
A Thread. Tangled. Brittle. Not illness, but memory worn too thin. A Thread frayed by grief that didn't begin with him—but clung to his name. Inherited ache. A grief coiled so tight, it had become sickness.
"Your mother," Casamir said softly. "She was Threadtouched?"
Nim flinched. Then gave a slow, reluctant nod.
She had died last winter. Not from hunger. Not from war.
From forgetting.
The villagers spoke of it only in whispers—that some people, even here, bore too deep a bond to the broken world. That sometimes, the Threads pulled them apart from the inside.
Casamir closed his eyes.
He didn't reach to fix. Only to feel.
The Thread in Nim shivered.
It wasn't just sickness.
It was loneliness. The small kind that festers. That knots itself around silence and tightens with every unspoken night.
He didn't cast a spell. Didn't draw a rune.
But he could have. That was the truth of it. He could've burned the Thread clean, forced it to realign, bent the boy's sorrow into order.
Instead—he hummed.
Not words. Just a low, cracked tone—something from Karnox. A lullaby once used to comfort the mad. A song with no cure in it. Just warmth enough to hold pain without flinching.
On Karnox, they called it ember-hum. A rhythm for the broken. Casamir remembered hearing it once in a shelter buried under the wreckage of Tier 14. A soldier had sung it to a brother too far gone to be saved. Not to heal—but so he wouldn't die alone. Casamir had thought it useless then. Now, it came unbidden, cracked from his throat like breath he didn't know he'd kept.
The forest leaned in.
The Thread relaxed.
The coughing quieted. Not vanished—but softened.
Nim blinked. His breath came easier. He looked up at Casamir with a cautious wonder.
"How'd you do that?" he asked.
Casamir hesitated.
"I listened," he said. "And I remembered what it feels like to need someone to hold the Thread for you."
⸻
Later, the village watched as Nim walked beside Casamir, pail swinging at his side.
He wasn't coughing.
He was grinning.
The children noticed first. Then the mothers. A few of the elders gave small, almost imperceptible nods when Casamir passed.
Not welcome.
But the beginning of trust.
A stranger who sang not to command—but to soothe.
A foreigner who touched the world without bruising it.
A boy who had every reason to take—but didn't.
One child whispered, "Is that the cough boy?" Another murmured, "He hasn't smiled since last winter."
A woman near the well drew a line through the air—a blessing meant for the silent Threads. She didn't look at Casamir, but she didn't look away either.
Casamir walked quietly. He didn't smile, but the ache in his shoulders loosened. On Karnox, if someone walked beside you, it meant they trusted your blade. Here… it meant they trusted your silence.
⸻
That night, Casamir sat alone atop a stone arch near the glowing mushroom fields at the village's southern edge.
The sky shimmered with strange stars. Some danced in patterns he almost remembered. Others refused to.
Below, fireflies spun slow circles. The trees whispered old names into the dark.
And then—he felt it.
A Thread.
It didn't bind.
It didn't warn.
It simply brushed against his soul, as if to say: I see you.
Casamir exhaled.
It wasn't the Hermit. It wasn't even the forest. It was something quieter. A memory that hadn't yet happened. A future that hadn't yet spoken. But it saw him—and for once, he didn't recoil.
This wasn't conquest. Wasn't prophecy.
This was the weight of a small moment—not heavy like a blade, but warm like a hand resting on your shoulder when you didn't know you needed it.
He had been a weapon once. A survivor shaped by ruin. Not a healer. Not a guide. On Karnox, every kindness cost blood. Every soft thing became a blade eventually.
But here, on this strange, breathing stone above fields lit by dreamlight fungi and fireflies, no one demanded anything of him. They didn't ask where he'd come from. Or who he'd failed. Or what he could be twisted into. They let him walk. They let him hum. They let him rest.
He thought of Nim's hand in his. Small. Warm. Real. Not pleading. Not clinging. Just there.
And he thought: maybe the smallest things didn't weigh less because they mattered less. Maybe they only felt lighter when they were shared.
For the first time in either life—the one that burned and the one that was still becoming—he felt the fragile weight of being wanted without condition.
The forest didn't ask him to save it.
The boy didn't want him to be perfect.
The villagers didn't care who he had failed before.
They only saw what he did.
And for now… that was enough.