Rain had turned the marsh to glass. Every leaf dripped silver under a half-light sky, and every footstep sent ripples through the black water. Inside a tilted hut swallowed by vines, Aiden crouched near the embers of a dying fire, counting the seconds between distant horn calls.
Three horns. Then silence.
Again, three. Then two.
He'd learned the pattern already. Patrols, circling closer.
Lyra scribbled sigils on the floorboards with a piece of chalk scavenged from the ruins. The markings pulsed faintly, a soft blue haze that barely cut the gloom. "They're tightening the perimeter," she murmured. "The horns mark sectors. Once the last call sounds, they'll move inward."
Eira knelt by the doorway, her eyes closed, breathing with the rhythm of the marsh. She was the calmest of them, too calm, Aiden thought. "There are five squads," she said. "The mana around them trembles with iron. Soldiers and Blades both."
"Blades?" Lyra looked up sharply.
Eira nodded. "Silent ones. Their presence distorts sound. I can feel the void they leave."
Aiden rubbed his temple. "So they're still hunting me. I thought maybe..." he bit the sentence off. I thought maybe they'd forget.
Lyra gave a humorless laugh. "You're the first man to breathe in five centuries. Do you think they will forget about you."
He stared into the fire. The flames cast shadows that stretched like bars across the floor. "I didn't ask for this," he muttered. "I didn't ask to be some… myth."
Lyra's chalk snapped in her hand. "Neither did I ask to destroy the world's last summoning orb," she said softly. "But here we are."
Silence stretched between them. Outside, frogs croaked, a sound almost comforting in its ordinariness. Aiden wanted to cling to it, to pretend the marsh was just a swamp and he was just a lost traveler.
Eira moved to the table where jars of old alchemical reagents lay in dust. "We should leave by dawn."
Lyra shook her head. "No. I need one more night to finish decoding the rune shard." She lifted a small crystal fragment, its surface webbed with faint light. "This came from the Orb. If I can align its resonance, it might tell us how it drew you across worlds."
Aiden frowned. "You still think you can reverse it?"
"I think," Lyra said, eyes bright with fatigue and obsession, "that if the Orb could summon you, then somewhere in its pattern is a way to summon others. Maybe even..."
"...other men," Aiden finished for her.
She didn't deny it. "If I can prove it's possible, then maybe they'll stop hunting you like livestock."
Eira watched them, silent, her hands resting on the hilt of her staff. "And if you fail?"
"Then he must mate with all the women in this world or keep running," Lyra said flatly. "And if you choose to run, I will follow you."
Aiden rose, pacing the narrow space. "Running only works if there's somewhere to go. Every town I pass, they stare like I'm a ghost. I can't even breathe in public."
Eira's voice was gentle but firm. "That is the price of being the impossible. But impossible things do not last long in this world unless they become necessary."
He looked at her. "Meaning?"
"Meaning the queen will make you necessary to her rule," Eira said. "The people already chant your title in the marketplaces. Progenitor. Some pray for your blessing. Others curse your name. Either way, you hold their hope."
Lyra gave a weary smile. "Welcome to our world."
He slumped against the wall. "Your world will get me killed, I can't mate with so many people. If I do that I will die ." He looked between them. "What do we do when they find us?"
Lyra's gaze softened. "We survive long enough to choose something better than running. You said you studied science, didn't you? Then help me think. If the Orb acted like a portal generator, what powered it?"
Aiden blinked. "Energy conversion, mana is basically energy, right? So maybe it needed a catalyst."
"Exactly." She placed the shard in his palm. It pulsed faintly at his touch, a warmth that sank under his skin. "You might be the catalyst."
He drew his hand back instinctively. "I'm not a battery."
"No," Eira said, her tone distant. "You are a bridge. The world pulled you here because its balance was broken. Now it tries to repair itself through you."
The words sent a shiver through him. He remembered the queen's eyes that day in the ritual hall, the way her voice trembled when she called him our salvation. Now he wondered if salvation always came chained.
Outside, thunder rolled, a slow, crawling sound that might have been hooves on flooded ground. The horns blew again, closer.
Lyra scattered dust over the rune circle. "We need to move."
Aiden grabbed his satchel. "Where?"
"There's a fisher's passage under the southern ridge. It leads to open water," she said. "From there we can slip toward the old mana wells."
They doused the fire and stepped into the rain. The marsh swallowed sound; only the slap of water and the whisper of reeds followed them. Distant torches flickered, search parties moving like fireflies across the dark.
Halfway through the shallows, Aiden glanced back at the hut. The blue runes still glowed faintly, a ghost light among the vines. For a heartbeat he thought he saw figures moving near it, shadows wearing mirrored masks.
Eira tugged his sleeve. "Don't look back."
They pressed on until the land fell away into deep water. Lightning cracked, revealing the endless tangle of reeds and mist ahead. Somewhere beyond that haze, the world's power was shifting, queens issuing decrees, priests calling omens, and a man without a place trying to make sense of a prophecy written in a dead language.
Aiden whispered to himself, "If I can't run, then I'll learn why they want me."
Lyra heard him and nodded once, rain streaming down her face. "Then we'll find the truth together."
The marsh swallowed their words as the horns faded behind them.