The caravan rocked with the rhythm of worn wheels and tired horses, the creak of wood and muffled clatter of hooves blending into a low, steady cadence.
Outside, winter stretched wide and pale.
Inside, beneath the sheltering canvas, three "travelers" sat among crates and barrels, wrapped in the muted fragrance of dried herbs, salted meat, and old timber.
Kel—Heral, to anyone who asked—sat near the opening of the wagon flap, where cold light filtered in and pooled over his features like thin silver. His posture remained straight, even as the wagon jolted over uneven ground. Hands gloved in dark leather rested loosely over his knees.
Reina—Elira—sat to his right. She had her cloak wrapped properly around her, chin dipped slightly, gaze steady and sharp beneath lowered lashes. Outwardly calm.
Inwardly calculating.
On Kel's left, Landon—Bran—shifted occasionally, testing his weight against the wagon floor, restless energy carefully bottled. He glanced out from time to time, as if double-checking that the world was still moving with them.
At the front, holding the reins and humming a vague road-tune, sat Ganz, the caravan driver.
For a while, only the sounds of travel filled the air.
Then the humming ceased.
The reins settled.
And Ganz, without turning fully around, called back:
"Sir Heral?"
Kel's eyes slid toward him.
He didn't flinch at the new name.
He had already worn it once.
"Yes?" he answered.
Ganz cleared his throat.
It was not a shy gesture.
But neither was it fully confident.
It carried something like a quiet, hopeful boldness.
"If you don't mind," the driver said, turning his head just enough that his profile was visible, "would you honor this humble caravan driver by letting him hear some of your poetry?"
Reina's fingers, folded lightly over her lap, tightened by the smallest degree.
Landon's shoulders went still.
A beat of silence.
Then two.
Their thoughts flickered, separate but overlapping:
…Young Master only used "poet" as a fake profession.
He didn't actually plan to recite anything, did he?
But neither of them moved.
Neither of them allowed the tension to reach their faces.
Reina's breathing remained steady, her expression unchanged—only the tiniest twitch at the corner of her eye hinted she was bracing for something unexpected.
Landon coughed once into his hand, disguising the brief, nervous shift of his gaze.
Kel, for his part, did not appear disturbed.
His lips parted, then closed again.
He could have refused politely.
He could have said, "Another time."
He could have claimed he was not in the right state of mind.
Instead…
He smiled.
It was faint.
Barely there.
But real.
"Sure," Kel replied.
His tone remained soft.
Calm.
He shifted slightly, turning just enough that his gaze fell upon the open flap, where winter's pallid light framed the world outside.
Frost-blanketed fields blurred past. The sky remained a low, heavy grey, as if the heavens themselves were still deciding whether the day deserved more light.
Kel's eyes absorbed it all.
The brittle grass.
The glimmer of ice on dead branches.
The distant smudge of hills, faint as old ink on parchment.
His breath left him slowly.
Reina watched him from the corner of her eye.
Landon leaned forward a fraction, then caught himself and sat back again.
Ganz chuckled quietly at first, unaware of the shifting tension behind him.
"Forgive me," he said, one shoulder lifting in a half-shrug. "You said you were a poet. This is the kind of trip that benefits from good words. Keeps the road from getting too quiet."
Kel closed his eyes.
For a heartbeat.
Then opened them again.
Something changed.
Not in his posture.
Not in his expression.
In the air around him.
It grew… stiller.
Focused.
Winter itself seemed to lean closer.
He spoke.
His voice fell into the caravan like snow.
Soft.
Unhurried.
Yet with every syllable landing precisely where it should.
"The wind has teeth today," he began, tone quiet, "but it remembers warmth."
Outside, a faint gust pressed lightly against the canvas.
"It scrapes across the fields of white," he went on, "seeking the last breath of autumn, buried beneath glass."
His eyes halfway lowered, he continued, gaze unfocused yet sharp.
"Grass that once drank sun now kneels beneath crystal,"
"Every blade a soldier frozen in mid-salute."
Reina's fingers slowly eased.
Landon's brows rose despite himself.
Kel's voice shifted subtly—not louder, but deeper, sinking into the bones of the wagon.
"The sky hangs low," he said, "like an old god tired of watching."
"It smothers color, steals distance, presses the earth in its gray hand."
"And yet…"
He paused.
The wheels creaked softly.
The horses huffed.
Ganz had stopped humming entirely.
Kel's lips curved slightly.
"And yet there is a kind of mercy in this cruelty."
He reached out with one gloved hand and pushed the flap aside just an inch more, letting in harsher air.
The cold bit the space between them.
He looked out.
"Snow hides the scars of the soil," he murmured. "Softens the edges of broken things. It covers the graves it made."
His lashes lowered, shadowing his eyes.
"Winter kills without hurry. Without malice. It simply… insists."
Something about the way he said it made the cold feel older.
Wider.
"But in its insistence," he continued, "it grants us something no spring ever does."
Reina tilted her head slightly.
Ganz's grip on the reins tightened.
Landon watched, breath suspended.
Kel's grey eyes deepened.
"Stillness."
He breathed the word out like mist.
"The kind of stillness where a man can hear his own cowardice… and decide what to do with it."
For a brief moment, the wind outside swelled, brushing along the canvas with a long, low sigh.
Kel's tone shifted again—becoming less like description, more like confession, though it never turned inward by name.
"In cities, noise hides what festers in us," he said. "In crowds, we become someone else. In comfort, we forget we are temporary."
His gaze fell upon the frost gathering at the very edge of the wood.
"But out here," he murmured, "beneath a sky emptied of warmth, with nothing but frost watching…"
His hand lowered.
"We remember."
His voice grew softer still.
Each word deliberate.
"That breath is a borrowed ember."
"That skin is a robe we will one day return."
"That the road does not care who walks it—only who continues."
The caravan fell utterly silent.
Only the measured clop of hooves and the creak of wood existed between his verses.
He let a brief pause stretch.
Then let the final lines fall.
"So the ice is cruel. Yes."
He looked out at the vast, pale expanse, where the world seemed suspended between existence and erasure.
"But in its frozen mirror, we see ourselves without excuses."
His fingers curled slightly over his knee.
"And if we can still admire beauty in the thing that slows our blood…"
His voice softened to almost a whisper.
"Perhaps we are not ready to die just yet."
He fell silent.
Nothing followed the last word.
No flourish.
No apology.
No explanation.
It simply ended.
Like winter often did—
Without warning.
Without ceremony.
The caravan continued moving.
But everyone inside felt, for several long heartbeats, as though it had stopped.
Reina's eyes lowered, shielded by dark lashes.
Her chest rose, then fell, measured.
Her expression remained composed, but inside, something had tightened.
Young Master…
She had known he was different.
She had known he held thoughts that did not belong to thirteen-year-old boys.
She had known his gaze sometimes lingered on unseen horizons.
But hearing the way he spoke of cold—as if it were an old enemy and reluctant teacher both—
She understood something new.
He doesn't just see the world.
He confronts it.
Landon stared openly.
His usually straightforward brown eyes carried a hint of disbelief.
…He really is a poet.
Not the court kind who wrote decorative lines for noble dinners.
This was harsher.
Sharper.
More honest.
Words like these did not come from safety.
They came from someone who had stood at a threshold and decided to step back—or forward—on purpose.
At the front, Ganz let out a low breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
His shoulders eased.
The lines around his eyes shifted.
"By the old roads," he muttered under his breath. "You weren't just making up a trade."
He laughed once.
But it was soft.
Reverent.
"You speak like someone who has walked more winters than his bones should've survived, Sir Heral."
Kel's lips moved faintly in what could almost be mistaken for humor.
"Sometimes," he replied quietly, "words carry the journeys our bodies have not finished yet."
The driver shook his head, a faint smile curving beneath his beard.
"If this is what you call 'traveling for inspiration,' then you might just turn border snow into legend."
He clucked the reins lightly, coaxing the horses into a slightly smoother gait.
"You honor my humble wagon with that tongue," Ganz said. "I'll have a story to tell at the next roadside tavern that doesn't involve bandits or broken axles."
Kel inclined his head in thanks, the motion minimal but sincere.
Maintaining the Mask
Reina knew they had to match the atmosphere now.
The driver believed in "Heral."
Doubted less.
Trust was forming—not the deep kind, but enough that suspicion would sleep for a while.
She adjusted her cloak, letting her features soften a fraction.
"He writes better than he speaks," she said evenly, playing into the role. "You heard only fragments. When ink is involved… his work is worse on the heart."
Ganz let out a genuine laugh at that.
"A scribe's verdict carries weight. I'll take your word for it, Lady Elira."
Reina bowed her head slightly at the false name, perfect composure never slipping.
Landon decided to add something before the conversation turned to them in unwanted ways.
He scratched his cheek and muttered, "He's been like that since I met him. Talks like that about rain, too. And food. And knives."
Ganz barked a short, amused laugh.
"Gods preserve us. Philosophy even about knives."
Landon shrugged. "They cut more than bread, he says. It's unsettling."
Kel did not deny it.
Did not confirm.
He simply shifted his gaze back out to the road.
The roles held.
The story grew.
Heral the poet.
Elira the scribe.
Bran the wheel-fixer with a blunt tongue.
In this wagon, for now, the world accepted those names.
And beneath them—
The cursed heir.
The fallen house child.
The third-place knight.
Three truths walked wrapped in lies, beneath words more honest than anything their false names could ever hide.
The Driver's Quiet Joy
The caravan rolled on, but now the silence between creaks and hoofbeats felt different.
Warmer.
Not in temperature.
In texture.
Ganz resumed humming—but this time, there was a pattern to it. A borrowed rhythm from Kel's verses still echoing in his mind.
He glanced at the sky, at the frost, at the world he had rolled through a hundred times before.
Today, it looked slightly changed.
"It's strange," he said after a while, voice musing. "I've driven this route for years. Always cursed the ice. Never thought to admire it."
Kel's gaze remained forward.
"It kills slowly," he said. "No one is wrong to curse it."
A beat.
"But if it is the thing that will test us… we may as well be honest about its beauty while we endure it."
Ganz shook his head in wry wonder.
"If you ever put those words to paper, Sir Heral, I'll buy a scrap, even if I can't read it."
Kel's lashes lowered.
"Words," he answered quietly, "are heavier than paper."
Reina heard the double meaning.
Landon didn't grasp all of it, but felt the weight regardless.
Ganz only chuckled.
"Then may your heavy words keep you warm, poet."
Kel did not reply.
But his eyes—those storm-grey, unyielding eyes—softened for a fleeting moment.
As if acknowledging that in this small, creaking, frost-wearing wagon…
There was a brief, fragile warmth.
Not of fire.
Not of safety.
Of shared silence after truth had been spoken in disguise.
Outside, winter carried on.
Unchanged.
Unmoved.
Inside the moving canvas shelter, however, something had shifted.
They were no longer just three figures hiding behind temporary names.
They had shared a piece of something real.
A verse.
A perspective.
A glimpse into the mind of someone who had walked through too many endings to be unsettled by harsh beginnings.
The caravan continued toward the northeast.
Toward the borderlands.
Toward mountains, barbarians, and a lake that drank curses.
Kel rested his back lightly against a crate, closed his eyes for a brief moment…
And let the rhythm of wheels, hooves, and distant wind mix with the rhythm of his thoughts—
Already forming newer verses.
Already measuring newer battles.
Already whispering:
"If words can shape how we see winter… perhaps they can shape how I face what waits beyond it."