Harlen shut the door and didn't look back.
Vesperyn did.
The structure sat half-collapsed against the trees, one side torn open from the centipede's rampage.
Three weeks of his life. Training. Pain. Learning to survive.
Now just a shell they were abandoning.
Harlen was already walking.
Vesperyn glanced back one more time—at the porch where they'd eaten grey mash, at the training yard where he'd climbed until his hands bled.
Then he followed.
They walked east.
The forest changed gradually around them. Dense undergrowth gave way to broken hills and stretches of exposed ground. The trees thinned, letting in more light, more sky.
More visibility.
Vesperyn didn't like that.
Every time they crossed open ground, his shoulders tensed. His eyes tracked movement that wasn't there. Shadows that turned out to be rocks. Sounds that were just wind.
Harlen noticed but said nothing.
They kept moving.
The sun climbed higher, then began its slow descent toward the horizon. Vesperyn's legs burned. His shoulder, the one the Echo had torn, throbbed with each step, a dull reminder that he wasn't fully healed.
Harlen set a brutal pace, and Vesperyn had learned enough to know that meant something was wrong.
Finally, as the light started fading, Vesperyn broke the silence.
"Where are we going?"
"Oracle Kingdom," Harlen said without slowing. "Southeast. Four days if we're lucky."
"Why there?"
"Because it's the only place that won't execute you on sight."
Vesperyn stumbled slightly.
Harlen caught his arm without looking.
"Pilgrim kills Harbingers," Harlen continued, voice flat. "Shade would claim you as property. Oracle just… taxes you."
"Taxes?"
"Everything in Oracle has a price." Harlen glanced at the darkening sky. "Even tolerance."
He adjusted his grip on Vesperyn's arm, steadying him.
"We need to cross the border before the Church finds us. Three days, maybe four. Depends how fast they mobilize."
"And if they find us first?"
Harlen didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Vesperyn could see it in the tight set of his jaw.
They were running.
And Harlen didn't think they'd make it.
The first night, they didn't make camp.
Harlen kept them moving through darkness, following terrain he seemed to know by memory.
Vesperyn's legs screamed. His lungs burned.
"Can we stop?" he asked finally, voice thin.
"No."
"I can barely—"
"Then barely walk," Harlen interrupted. "But keep moving."
Vesperyn gritted his teeth and pushed on.
The moon rose.
It gave just enough light to see by, enough to avoid tripping over roots.
By the time dawn broke, Vesperyn's vision was spotting at the edges. His hands trembled.
When Harlen finally called a halt near a cluster of rocks, Vesperyn collapsed immediately.
"Fifteen minutes," Harlen said, dropping a piece of dried meat into Vesperyn's lap. "Eat something."
Vesperyn forced himself upright enough to chew. The meat tasted like leather and salt, but he swallowed it anyway.
Harlen stood watch, eyes constantly scanning the treeline. His broken arm hung stiff against his chest, wrapped in the bandages Vesperyn had tied days ago.
The skin around the injury was still darkened, swollen.
It had to hurt.
But Harlen didn't rest. Didn't complain.
Just watched.
.
By midday, the landscape shifted.
The trees grew sparser. The ground became rockier, harder to navigate.
Hills rose and fell in uneven waves, forcing them to climb, descend, climb again.
Vesperyn's body protested every step.
His chest ached with a pressure that had nothing to do with exhaustion, something deeper, like the weight he'd felt in the void.
He tried to ignore it.
Tried to focus on the rhythm of walking. Left foot. Right foot. Breathe.
But the pressure grew.
By the time they stopped for water near a narrow stream, Vesperyn could barely stand.
"Sit," Harlen ordered, already crouching beside the water.
Vesperyn lowered himself to the ground, breathing unevenly. His hands shook as he pressed them against his chest, trying to ease the tightness.
"I told you," Harlen said, filling a canteen.
"When it hurts like this, don't fight it. That makes it worse."
"I'm not fighting it," Vesperyn snapped, then winced. "I don't even know what it is."
Harlen capped the canteen and tossed it to him.
"Your Pathway," he said. "It's still settling. Power doesn't just appear fully formed, it has to learn your shape. And you have to learn its."
He sat down across from Vesperyn, expression serious.
"Close your eyes."
Vesperyn obeyed.
"Feel where it's blocked," Harlen continued. "Not where it hurts—where it stops."
Vesperyn focused inward.
At first, there was only discomfort. A vague, formless ache that spread through his chest and down his arms.
Then, something else.
A sense of pressure that didn't belong to muscle or bone. Like a current trying to move through a channel that was too narrow, too rigid.
He focused on it.
Didn't push.
Didn't pull.
Just… followed it.
The pain dulled slightly.
"There," Harlen said quietly. "That's better. It'll keep happening for a while. Your body's adapting. Just don't force it."
Vesperyn opened his eyes, breathing easier now.
Harlen was watching him with an expression Vesperyn couldn't quite read. Not quite approval. Something softer. Sadder.
"You're doing better than most," Harlen said.
He stood, turning away before Vesperyn could respond.
"Rest for ten more minutes. Then we move."
They walked in silence for the next hour.
The pressure in Vesperyn's chest eased gradually, settling into something manageable.
His thoughts drifted as his body fell into the rhythm of walking.
He thought about home.
About Darian.
About his mother pressing the ring into his palm with trembling hands.
Break it when I tell you. No matter what you see.
She'd known.
Known this would happen. Known he'd end up here—lost, hunted, alone.
Except he wasn't alone.
Harlen walked ahead of him, shoulders tense, constantly alert. A man who'd given up his shelter, his safety, his life to help someone he barely knew.
The question slipped out before Vesperyn could stop it.
"Why are you doing this?"
Harlen didn't slow. "Doing what?"
"Risking your life. For me."
"I'm not risking anything."
"You killed for me," Vesperyn said. "The centipede. The Echoes. You're hurt because of me."
Harlen's jaw tightened. "I'm hurt because I got careless."
"That's not what I meant."
Silence stretched between them.
Vesperyn pushed harder. "You don't owe me anything. You don't even know me."
Harlen stopped walking.
He turned, and for the first time, Vesperyn saw something raw in his expression. Not anger. Grief.
"I've failed enough people," Harlen said quietly. "I'm not failing again."
The words landed heavier than Vesperyn expected.
"Who did you fail?" he asked.
Harlen looked at him for a long moment.
At his red hair, catching the afternoon light. At his stubborn expression. At the way he refused to quit even when his body was breaking.
"Someone who deserved better," Harlen said finally.
He turned and started walking again.
"Come on. We're losing daylight."
Vesperyn stood there, processing.
Then followed.
He didn't ask again.
But the answer sat heavy in his chest, unexplained and aching.
It happened during a rest stop on the second afternoon.
Vesperyn was sitting against a tree, trying to steady his breathing, when his vision doubled.
Not blurred.
Doubled.
The world split into layers.
One layer showed the forest as it was—trees, rocks, fading sunlight filtering through branches.
The other showed something else.
Colors that shouldn't exist. Dark crimson streaks moving through the air like smoke caught in an invisible current. Distant shapes that pulsed with wrongness, each beat sending ripples through the strange overlay of his vision.
"What—" Vesperyn gasped, pressing his hands against his eyes.
It didn't help.
The crimson remained, vivid and wrong.
"Ves?" Harlen turned immediately, hand moving to his belt.
"I see—there's something…." Vesperyn pointed toward the ridgeline with a trembling hand.
Harlen followed his gaze, squinting.
"What do you see?"
"Red. Dark red. Moving." Vesperyn blinked hard, but the vision wouldn't go away. "Like… blood in water. Spreading."
Harlen went very still.
"How far?"
"I don't know. Far. Maybe… two miles?" Vesperyn squinted, trying to focus. The crimson stains were moving. "There's more than one. Five. Six. Maybe more."
"Shit," Harlen breathed.
He grabbed Vesperyn's arm and hauled him upright.
"What is it?" Vesperyn asked, vision still splitting between normal sight and the crimson overlay.
"Your Pathway," Harlen said grimly. "Harbinger's Sight. You're seeing their auras."
"Whose aura?"