Scarface saw it before anyone else did.
The moment the drunk brute shoved Tristan to the ground, the wind shifted. It wasn't in Tristan's body, not really, but the direction of the air changed itself, moving sharp and deliberate, like it noticed what was happening before the boy even did. Scarface stared; he didn't blink. He had felt this before — power stirring, nature heeding to a quiet command.
He stayed still, unmoving, watching with absolute concentration.
Swift glanced at Scarface, waiting for a command to de-escalate things before it got out of hand, but he only watched, eyes locked in on the boy. The man kept shouting, spitting words, calling Tristan names, swinging his arms. Then the boy looked up and for just a second, Scarface saw and felt it, that hollow calm, that kind that comes right before something bad happens.
"Look at me when I'm bloody speaking to you!" the man yelled.
Scarface didn't move. He waited — waiting for something to happen. Swift watched him, tense, still waiting for a signal. He gave none.
Then came the breath — soft, slow and peaceful.
Scarface felt the pulse. The wind pressed against his skin. Dust skimmed past his boots; the air began to gather — subtle at first, then gaining momentum, twisting, finding its rhythm. Then the laughter at camp died down.
Ropes snapped. Tents rippled. The Hygrons stirred, uneasy, growling low in their throats.
With one small movement — a hand, a thought — the air compressed into a razor-straight line and shot forward at an incredible speed. Scarface could swear it was aimed at the brute's head.
Boom. Straight to the neck — a hole. Clean and silent.
The man dropped before anyone could scream.
Scarface didn't move for a while after the body hit the dirt. He watched the boy like a man reading a map — patient, calculating, like a predator thinking three steps ahead.
When the others finally stirred, murmurs swallowed themselves back into the dust. Scarface wiped his hand on his boot and walked to where Tristan stood, hands still outstretched. He crouched, close enough for the boy to see the shadow of the scar cutting across his face.
"You're a work of art, dangerous," he said, voice low, almost conversational, "but not like the rest. This is going to make you useful to me."
Tristan only stared. Wind-touched hair clung to his forehead; the smell of blood hung between them. He didn't speak. He didn't know how.
Scarface's fingers brushed the hilt at his side — not as a threat, but as a habit, a way to hold the shape of a thought. "I could kill you right now," he went on. "Easy. Quick. And then we will leave you to rot, and someone would tell my tale like always."
He paused, watching for any reaction at all, but there was none. That calm only hardened his grin.
"But I don't want that." He looked over his shoulders, at the band — the Hygrons, sleeping like black hills. "I want an edge. A weapon that answers to me. The world is changing, crumbling bit by bit. The earth moves for me. The sky…" he smiled with that same sadistic expression, "…moves for you. Together—" his eyes drifted again over to the beasts, the men, the empty lands, "—together we can do more than take and take and take , We can make."
Swift stepped forward, closer than anyone else dared. She studied Tristan, then Scarface, then back again. Her jaw tightened. She knew Scarface's rules — always leave one to tell the tale. She'd watched him break everything else except for that one rule . But this… this was different. Her hand fell to her blade.
"You'll make him a weapon?" she asked. The words were flat — a test, not a question.
Scarface laughed once, quiet and satisfied. "A weapon that can walk the world and not just break it. One that commands the air while my beasts tear the ground. Towns, caravans, people, whole regions — they'll learn fear like a language. They'll know our name."
Swift's eyes narrowed. "And the rule?" she pressed. "You made an exception for him. Why?" That thought had been on her mind for days now.
He looked her dead in the eye. "Because he's like me. Special." He shrugged. "Because he's going to be useful to me, Because he won't betray me if I sharpen him right. And because I like those looks in his eyes —"
Swift studied him a beat longer. Her face didn't change, but her shoulders did — a small shift. She was loyal, but not blind. "Training will take time," she said. "He might not bend. He might break. And when he breaks, what then? Do we end him — or does he do to us what he just did?"
Scarface's reply was simple. "We break him the right way." He stood, firelight sliding off his boots. "We teach him obedience before taste. Give him hunger and a place to feed it. Make him afraid of losing what we give."
Swift's hand slipped from her blade. Her mouth thinned. "And if he refuses?"
"Then we remove the problem." Scarface's tone was flat, measured — a promise, not a threat. "But first, we try something better. We bind him. Teach him. Make him want to be needed."
She stepped closer to Tristan, studying him as if measuring bone and breath. For the first time since the raid, a flicker of pity crossed her face — quick, then gone. "You'll watch him," she told Scarface. "I'll subdue and end him. If he turns."
Scarface nodded. "Do it, give him rules. Make sure he remembers who fed him first."
He turned to Tristan again, grin deepening along the scar. "Aim better next time, boy," he said softly.
Tristan felt the words like a wind that carried more than meaning — it carried fate.
Behind them, the Hygrons shifted as if in answer. The camp exhaled. Men began to bury the dead. The old rule had been broken; a new one whispered into being — the rule of use.
Swift watched Tristan one last time before fading back into the camp, eyes cold and ready. She believed in Scarface's plan because it made sense. She feared it because sometimes the world gives back more than it owes.
Scarface listened to the wind and smiled. He had made a choice. He would shape the boy into a tool, or a soldier, or a story. Either way — he intended to be the one remembered by all.