The clearing was empty.
The mage, the soldiers, Maeve—gone.No bodies. No blood. Not even a scrap of torn cloth left behind.
Only disturbed soil and a faint indentation where she had fallen.
I stood in the center of the hollow, breathing slowly, the hunter's knife hanging at my side. The night pressed close, dense and watchful. The trees leaned in, branches knitting overhead like ribs around a beating heart.
She was right here.
My gaze drifted to the patch of ground where the spear had gone through her side. I could still see it in my mind: the angle, the depth, the color of her lips when the warmth left her cheeks.
If I closed my eyes, I could hear her voice.
Live, Elias.
I didn't close my eyes.
The forest was too quiet.
No wind.No insects buzzing near my ears.No distant call of hunting beasts.
Just my heartbeat and the muted roar of the village burning far behind the wall of trees.
I exhaled slowly.
Grief tried to rise—a pressure beneath my ribs, something hot and heavy that wanted to claw its way up my throat.
I pushed it down.
Years spent killing strangers had taught me how to break emotion into smaller pieces, manageable fragments I could file away and study later. Now, that discipline turned inward.
Later.
Later, I could decide how much this hurt.Later, I could decide what it meant.
Right now, survival came first.
I crouched and pressed my fingertips to the dirt where Maeve had lain.
No warmth. No stain.
Whatever the forest—or the thing inside it—had done, it had not left traces humans knew how to read.
"I don't forget," I said quietly. "Even if you erase the evidence."
My words vanished into the stillness.
No answer came.
The pale eyes that had watched me before were gone. If the creature still lingered, it had hidden itself completely.
Fine.
I straightened and turned my attention inward.
My core pulsed like a bruise, swollen and tender. When I probed it lightly with my will, the fracture within flared in response. Shadow moved under my skin, a cold thread winding between bone and vein.
Not enough to kill me.
More than enough to remind me how close I had come.
I had drawn on the fracture repeatedly in a single night, tugging at roots and space and whatever half-memory of ancient runes still lingered in Duskwood. My body was paying the price.
Limit reached, I thought. Anything more tonight and I snap.
A snapped core didn't heal. Not properly.
And broken things that couldn't be used were discarded.
I had no intention of being discarded by this world as easily as Blackstone had been.
The hunter's knife felt reassuringly solid in my hand. Iron. Leather. Weight. Simple, honest things.
"A blade only cuts where you decide," Elian had said.
He was dead now.
Maeve too.
The thought should have shattered something in me. Instead, it left a cold, clear line in my mind.
They were gone.
The world had taken them.
The world would pay.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I was weak, exhausted, in the middle of a forest that tolerated me only because something within it had chosen not to kill me yet.
That could change.
I sheathed the knife and forced my legs to move.
Leaving the clearing felt like stepping away from an unmarked grave.
I didn't look back.
The forest closed in almost immediately, trunks rising like dark pillars all around me. Roots bulged from the ground in twisted patterns. Fallen leaves muffled my steps. The air smelled of earth and old bark and the faint, distant tang of smoke being slowly devoured by damp night.
I moved slowly, not out of caution alone but because my body refused anything faster. Every breath stretched the ache in my chest; every step sent a dull throb through my bones.
I catalogued each sensation.
Ribs intact but bruised from the shockwave.No sharp stabbing in the lungs—no puncture.Muscles tired but functional.Core strained, unstable, but still holding.
Survivable.
I tilted my head, listening.
No pursuit.
If any of the Ironbrand had survived the forest's intervention, they weren't close. Either they'd retreated to regroup, or they were dead.
Dead was simpler.
Ahead, the terrain began to tilt. I followed the slope upward, not enough to truly climb, but enough to put distance between myself and the path we had taken from the village.
Think.
Duskwood was large. I knew the edges, not the heart. The outer rings had paths hunters used, game trails, familiar landmarks. Here, deeper in, those patterns fell apart. That was both advantage and threat.
The deeper I went, the less likely Ironbrand would follow.The deeper I went, the more likely something worse than them would take interest.
I needed balance.
Shelter. Water. Food. Information.
Those were the pillars of survival, whether in cities or forests.
Food could wait a day. Water could not. Shelter was negotiable, but not with a fractured core and a body one misstep away from collapsing.
Information, though?
Information began collecting itself automatically.
The air temperature.The density of roots.Which trees leaned in which direction.How the faint light filtered through branches.
The forest is a map, I thought. I just haven't learned the language yet.
Yet.
That word mattered.
I kept walking.
The first stream I found announced itself with sound.
Not the roar of a river, but a consistent whisper, like someone dragging a ribbon of cloth over stone. I followed it, pushing through low branches until the ground dipped and the trees parted around a narrow ribbon of water.
The stream was shallow, its surface catching what little starlight filtered through the canopy. Pebbles glinted beneath the ripples. The water smelled clean—no metallic tang, no rotting stench.
I knelt at the bank and cupped my hands.
For a moment, I hesitated.
In some worlds, water killed slower than blades. Toxins, parasites, industrial runoff. But this wasn't that world. The dangers here were older—and often more obvious.
I drank.
Cold slid down my throat and pooled in my stomach.
It felt almost painfully good.
I splashed some over my face, washing away soot and dried sweat. My reflection wavered on the surface—sharp cheekbones, dark eyes, hair matted and tangled.
I didn't look fifteen.
I barely looked human.
"Elias Vale," I murmured.
The forest offered no reaction to the name.
Good. Names held power in some places. I preferred mine to remain unremarkable for as long as possible.
I followed the stream's edge until I found a thick-barked tree whose roots formed a sort of shallow niche against a small rise of earth. It wasn't a cave, but it would block the wind and hide my outline from casual glances.
Good enough for a first night.
I cleared away loose branches and leaves, more for insects than comfort. Then I sat with my back against the trunk, one knee drawn up, the other leg stretched out slowly until the cramped muscle in my thigh stopped protesting.
The hunter's knife rested across my lap.
Darkness settled fully, swallowing what little grey had clung to the edges of the sky. Somewhere in the distance, a low, mournful howl rose and faded.
I rolled my shoulders, testing stiffness.
Sleep would be a mistake.
Not tonight.
I let my eyes half close and listened instead, blanket of leaves against my back, dagger warm under my fingers.
Minutes passed.
Or hours.
Time blurred.
I didn't think about Maeve.
I thought about the Ironbrand crest.
The hammer and anvil, surrounded by chains.
They burned a village that posed no threat. They sent soldiers and a mage, not thugs. That means orders. That means intent. This wasn't random.
If it wasn't random, then something about Blackstone had mattered.
Location.Resources.People.
I pictured the monolith in Duskwood. The ancient runes. The half-remembered laws thrumming beneath its surface.
Did they know about it?
If they did, their mage had been painfully clumsy in the forest.
So maybe not the monolith.
Then what?
Every question stacked on the previous one, forming a tower of uncertainty.
I didn't like uncertain towers.
In my previous life, I'd responded to uncertainty with investigation. Surveillance. Interrogation. Extraction.
Here, all I had was a knife, a broken core, and a forest that either tolerated me or was waiting for the right moment to dispose of me.
Better than nothing.
I shifted my attention inward again.
The fracture pulsed under my inspection, a dark line through the structure of my core. Normal cultivation texts—the ones I'd overheard older villagers mumble about—spoke of smooth, uniform cores. Stable pools of Arcanum, round, solid.
Mine was a cracked plate held together by shadow.
The shadow wasn't passive, either. When I nudged it, it responded like a caged thing—pressing, probing, looking for ways to seep into places it wasn't meant to go.
You and I are stuck together, I thought. At least try not to tear me apart from the inside.
If I focused too hard, the pain sharpened. So I didn't.
Instead, I tried something else.
Breath in.Breath out.
I followed the rhythm of my lungs, loosely guiding Arcanum along the same cycle. Not pushing, not constricting—just observing how it moved when left mostly alone.
Patterns emerged.
On each inhale, the energy swelled against the cracks in my core. On each exhale, some of it flowed smoothly along old pathways, while the rest hesitated at the fractures, as if unsure whether to leak through.
It reminded me of damaged pipes back in my previous world—water seeking any weakness to escape through.
I had patched those before. Temporary fixes. Enough to last a mission.
What I needed now wasn't a permanent repair.
I needed… control over the leaks.
I shifted my focus, encouraging the shadow lodged in those fractures to behave less like spilled ink and more like a sealant. Not forcing it, just… inviting it to fill space deliberately rather than chaotically.
The reaction was immediate.
Pain shot through my chest.
I hissed quietly through my teeth, hand tightening around the knife.
Steady.
I held the pattern as long as I could.
A few breaths.A few heartbeats.
Too much.
I released it.
The pain eased, fading back to its usual dull throb.
Not failure.
Information.
You can move, I thought at the shadow. You can hold. You just don't like being told how.
That made two of us.
A thin, humorless almost-smile tugged at my mouth.
"I can work with that," I murmured.
The forest stayed quiet, as if listening.
At some point, exhaustion forced compromise. I didn't truly sleep, but my awareness slipped into a lighter state—half-dream, half-alert.
Memories bled in.
A knife in an alley.A target's last breath.A motel room with peeling paint.A bullet in my back.Blackstone's square.Elian's hand closing mine around the dagger.Maeve's whisper: I'm glad that it was you.
I woke with my jaw clenched and my fingers aching from how tightly they gripped the hilt.
My throat felt dry again.
The stream still whispered nearby.
Sky above the trees had lightened to a dull, colorless grey. No sunrise visible, just a hint of less-dark.
I pushed myself up, muscles stiff.
Survived the first night.
Step one.
I drank, splashed water on my face again, then looked at the hunter's knife more carefully.
The blade was clean. I'd wiped it in the leaves after the fight without thinking, the habit too ingrained to skip. The edge was still sharp, though small chips spoke of years of use.
Elian had kept it in good condition.
I intended to do the same.
I turned it in my hands, studying balance, weight, the line of the spine. The handle bore shallow scars along the leather, marks of old work, perhaps teeth, perhaps rough cuts.
It was a simple, honest weapon.
It deserved more.
From a pocket in my torn shirt, I pulled a small sliver of stone I'd used before to scratch practice runes. Not ideal, but workable.
I pressed the blade against my knee and, with slow, careful movements, began to carve.
Not a full rune.
Not yet.
My core couldn't handle that.
Just a single, small line near the base of the blade—a horizontal mark parallel to the edge.
A beginning.
Each stroke sent a faint vibration up my fingers. I let the sensation ground me, focusing on the precision of the cut, the angle of the scratch, the depth of the groove.
When I finished, the mark was barely visible.
But I knew it was there.
"One line," I said softly. "For one night I survived and you didn't."
The words weren't for the knife.
Or for the forest.
They were for them.
For Elian.
For Maeve.
Two people who had decided that I was worth protecting.
People who were now dead because the world had decided their village wasn't important enough to live.
The anger that rose then felt different from grief.
Cleaner.
Sharper.
Not hot, but cold—a blade laid out on ice.
"I won't forget," I said.
Not their faces.Not Ironbrand's crest.Not the way the forest had swallowed the evidence.
For now, the Order would think Blackstone gone.No survivors. No witnesses worth worrying about.
They were wrong.
I slid the knife back into its sheath.
Moving blindly through Duskwood would be suicidally stupid.
I needed vantage. A sense of direction beyond "north" and "away."
Climbing a tree would give me a look at the canopy and, if I was lucky, the faint glow of distant fires or cities.
It would also expose me.
Risk and reward.
I chose.
The third tree upstream from my shelter had thick, layered branches and bark rough enough to grip. I tested the first handhold, then pulled myself upward, ignoring the protest from my arms and shoulders.
Climbing hurt in all the ways a recently fought body expected.
Good.
Pain meant I wasn't dead.
Halfway up, the forest smell changed. Damp earth gave way to something colder, thinner. The air stirred slightly, circulating more freely near the upper branches.
When I finally broke through the last layer of needles and leaves, the world opened.
Grey sky stretched above, mottled with the last traces of smoke drifting like bruises on a pale skin. Far to the south-west, a faint smear of darker grey hinted at where Blackstone used to be.
No flames visible now.No glow.
Just residual ruin.
My jaw tightened.
I scanned the horizon.
Mountains rose in the far distance, jagged lines marking the edge of the known terrain. Somewhere beyond them lay cities, academies, Orders, continents I only knew by name.
Ironbrand's banners.
Auric Dawn's temples.
Obsidian Veil's rumors.
Places where power organized itself into pyramids and called its weight "order."
Places I would reach one day.
Not yet.
For now, my world was the forest, the stream, my core, my dagger.
And a creature with pale eyes that could fold reality like cloth.
I descended carefully, bark scraping my palms.
No missteps. No torn muscles. No falling.
At the base of the tree, I paused.
The stream ran beside me, tireless, indifferent.
"I'll need you," I said to the forest as a whole, feeling faintly foolish and utterly serious at the same time. "And you'll need me, whether you realize it or not."
The trees did not laugh at me.
They didn't agree, either.
That was enough.
I set off along the water's edge, deeper toward where the air felt thicker with old magic.
Alone.
But not empty.
The world thought it had ended my story in Blackstone.
It had only closed the first chapter.