Kael woke to the smell of roasting meat.
It was the first thing that had changed in five years.
For one heartbeat he lay still on the straw, ribs rising and falling beneath the ragged shirt, black with old sweat and older blood. The roof above him was the same sagging thatch, the walls the same crumbling wattle, the cracked clay bowl on the floor still empty.
Everything was the same.
Except the smell.
He sat up without a sound. The hunger that lived inside him like a second, sharper skeleton stirred and snarled, but Kael only breathed once, slow and deep, and forced it back into its cage. Calm was the only thing the world had never managed to take from him. He would not give it away now.
He stepped outside.
The clearing was small, ringed by ancient oaks whose trunks were wider than village houses used to be. Mist drifted between them like ghosts that had forgotten where they were going. Dawn had only just touched the canopy; the light that reached the forest floor was thin and green and very cold.
Five women stood around a fire.
They were tall (taller than any human Kael had ever seen), and old in the way only immortals can be old: their faces still young, their eyes older than mountains. Silver, auburn, midnight, platinum, and deep forest-green hair spilled down backs wrapped in worn hunting leathers. The firelight slid across generous curves, across skin marked with faint glowing runes that pulsed like slow heartbeats.
A stag turned on a spit above the coals. Fat hissed. The smell punched Kael in the gut so hard his vision flickered.
The women noticed him at once.
Five pairs of ancient eyes took him in: the skeletal shoulders, the rags, the black eyes that reflected nothing. Something soft and painful passed across their faces at the same time, like wind over a lake.
The auburn-haired one (Liora, he would learn) spoke first. Her voice was warm, low, the kind of voice that could soothe a dying soldier or command an army.
"Come, little brother. Sit."
Kael did not move for three full breaths. Then he walked forward, bare feet silent on the cold earth, and stopped at the edge of the firelight. He waited.
Liora tore a haunch from the spit. Steam curled from the meat like incense. She wrapped it in a broad green leaf and held it out.
He took it with both hands. The weight of it made his arms tremble, but only slightly.
"Thank you," he said. The words came out steady, almost formal.
He sat cross-legged a respectful distance away and began to eat.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Small bites, chewed until they dissolved.
Even though the hunger screamed at him to tear and gulp and devour, he ate like a man who still remembered what dignity felt like.
The five elves watched in silence. When he finished, he wiped his fingers on the leaf, folded it neatly, and set it aside.
Only then did he look up.
The women were smiling (small, sad, approving smiles).
Liora crouched in front of him, close enough that he could smell pine and woodsmoke in her hair.
"What is your name, child?"
"Kael."
"Just Kael?"
He inclined his head once. That was all the name he had left.
"I am Liora. These are my sisters (by oath, if not by blood)." She gestured to each in turn. "Sylvara. Maevra. Ceridwen. Aeloria."
Each nodded when her name was spoken. Their eyes never left him.
Liora's voice dropped, gentle as falling ash.
"Will you walk with us, Kael?"
He looked at the fire, at the five faces lit gold and green, at the endless dark beyond the clearing.
Five years of silence pressed against his ears like deep water.
Then he looked back at them, black eyes calm as a winter well.
"Yes," he said.
Just that one word.
But the forest itself seemed to exhale.
Somewhere far above, in branches older than language, a single silver leaf unfurled for the first time since the world broke.
And the World Tree listened.