Kael's grim determination settled over me like a second cloak. His question had been answered. We were no longer talking about legends; we were acting on them.
"First," he said, his voice low and urgent as he moved about his small home with practiced efficiency, "we hide the star." He went to a dusty chest in the corner and pulled out a small leather pouch. It was dark, plain, and felt unusually heavy for its size. "This is lined with lead shavings. An old prospector's trick for handling magically reactive ore. It will not hide the Tear completely, but it may cloud its signature. Make it look like a flickering candle instead of a bonfire."
I took the pouch. My fingers trembled slightly as I picked up the Star-Tear from the table. Its light seemed to pulse with a sad, lonely rhythm. For a moment, I felt a strange kinship with it—a beautiful, displaced thing, capable of causing so much trouble just by existing. I slipped it into the pouch and pulled the drawstring tight. The soft azure glow was immediately swallowed by the dark leather. The room suddenly felt dimmer, emptier.
"Get your things," Kael commanded. "Whatever you can't bear to leave behind."
I quickly gathered my meager possessions. My hydro-canteen, now filled with water from Kael's well. My satchel, with its contents mostly intact. My shiv, which I tucked back into my belt. I left the borrowed clothes on the chair and donned my own desert gear. It was still damp, but it was mine. It was a suit of armor forged from memory and hardship.
Kael handed me a heavy, dark green cloak with a deep hood. "This will help you blend in. And keep the worst of the rain off." He then pressed a knife into my hand. It was simple, with a well-worn wooden handle and a sharp, clean blade. "It's not much, but it's balanced. Do you know how to use one?"
"I know how to survive," I answered, my voice flat. That, at least, was a truth that crossed worlds.
He nodded, accepting my answer. With one last, long look around the home that had held his entire life, he blew out the oil lamp, plunging us into near darkness, lit only by the faint embers in the hearth. "Stay in my shadow. Do not make a sound."
We slipped out the back door like ghosts. The village was asleep, a collection of dark, silent shapes. We moved through the muddy alleyways between houses, our feet making as little noise as possible. I watched Kael as we passed the last house. He didn't look back. He was leaving a life behind. I had only just stumbled into one, and already I was destroying it. The weight of his kindness was a physical thing, a stone in my gut.
The forest at night was a different beast entirely. It was a black, living labyrinth that whispered and clicked with a thousand unseen lives. Every hoot of a night bird, every rustle in the undergrowth, sent a jolt through me. In the Expanse, I could see for miles. My enemies were vast and loud. Here, death could be a tiny, venomous thing hiding under a leaf.
I felt naked, stripped of my primary sense. The Sandsong was my sight in the dark, my ears for leagues in every direction. Now, I had only my own two ears, which felt clumsy and dull. I was deaf and blind in a world of whispers.
"The shadow-owl," Kael murmured, so low I barely heard him. We had been walking for what felt like hours. "Do you hear its call? As long as it sings, the path is clear. When it stops..."
He didn't need to finish.
We continued our trek, deeper into the oppressive darkness. I focused on placing my feet where he placed his, on controlling my breathing, on ignoring the damp chill that was starting to seep through my cloak.
And then it happened.
The forest, which had been a symphony of soft, nocturnal sounds, fell silent. Utterly. Instantly. One moment, the shadow-owl was hooting its lonely call; the next, there was nothing but the sound of the dripping leaves. It was a profound, unnatural silence. The kind of silence that comes just before a predator strikes.
Kael froze, his hand shooting out to stop me. His head was cocked, listening. Not with his ears, but with some other sense I didn't have. His face, illuminated by a sliver of moonlight breaking through the canopy, was a mask of grim certainty.
"They're here," he breathed, the words turning to mist in the cold air. "Not hunters on foot. A scryer. They're watching through the trees, through the leaves. Looking for the light of the Tear."
My blood ran cold. "I thought the pouch—"
"It only dims it. To a powerful scryer, it's enough," he said, grabbing my arm. His grip was surprisingly strong. "They can't get a precise location, but they know the general area. Now they are hunting for us. We can't sneak anymore. We have to run."
He pointed ahead, into the deepest dark. "There is a river, the Old Ghyll. About a league from here. Running water confuses their magic. It will mask our trail and wash away our scent. We have to reach it before they pinpoint us."
And then we were running. There was no grace in it, not like running on the packed sand of the dunes. It was a clumsy, desperate scramble through mud that tried to steal my boots and grasping roots that tried to trip me at every turn. Kael, despite his age, moved with a surprising swiftness, his knowledge of the terrain giving him an advantage I sorely lacked.
My heart hammered against my ribs, my lungs burned for air. My first real run in this world wasn't a race against the setting suns, but a blind flight from a magic I couldn't see, toward a sanctuary I couldn't imagine.