Ethan didn’t head for the road right away.

  That was instinct, not strategy.

  He moved parallel to it through the trees, keeping the packed earth in sight but never touching it. Roads meant people. People meant language. Language was still half a step out of reach, hovering at the edge of his thoughts like something he could almost grab and shouldn’t rush.

  The Gu stirred faintly as he walked.

  Not pain. Not hunger.

  Attention.

  Sounds carried differently now. Not clearer exactly—sharper at the edges. A birdcall wasn’t just noise anymore; it came with direction attached. A snapped twig didn’t just happen. It pointed.

  Ethan hated how quickly he adjusted.

  “Don’t get used to this,” he muttered under his breath.

  The forest didn’t respond. It never had.

  By midday, hunger forced a decision.

  Berries weren’t cutting it. He could feel the weakness creeping in—not dramatic, not sudden. Just the slow erosion that made bad choices feel reasonable.

  He stepped onto the road.

  It felt wrong immediately. Too open. Too defined. A line that assumed movement had purpose.

  He followed it anyway.

  Bootprints appeared now and then, pressed into dust. Cart ruts. Hoof marks. Recent enough that the edges hadn’t crumbled yet.

  People were close.

  He slowed his pace, adjusted his posture, let himself look tired instead of alert. He practiced holding his face neutral, neither wary nor welcoming.

  Rule three, revised: look like someone who belongs nowhere in particular.

  Voices reached him before the figures did.

  Two men, walking toward him from the opposite direction. Not soldiers. No armor. Packs slung loose, conversation unguarded. One laughed at something the other said, the sound easy and unforced.

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  Ethan stepped off the road and waited, half-hidden behind brush.

  The Gu nudged at his thoughts as the men passed.

  Fragments slid into place.

  Complaints about prices. A mention of rain coming late this year. A name—maybe a town, maybe a person. He caught the tone more than the words.

  Casual. Unafraid.

  One of them said something about goblins.

  The word landed cleanly this time.

  Ethan’s stomach tightened.

  It wasn’t fear in their voices. It was irritation. The way people talked about pests that refused to stay gone.

  He didn’t move until they were well past him.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “So that’s how that’s said.”

  He repeated the word once, carefully. The Gu shifted, satisfied.

  He waited another ten minutes before returning to the road.

  The town appeared in pieces.

  First smoke. Then rooftops. Then the sound of iron on iron—someone hammering something into place.

  No walls. No gate. Just fences and habit and the quiet confidence of people who expected tomorrow.

  Ethan stopped at the edge of the trees.

  This was the moment he’d been avoiding.

  He checked himself without looking down. Clothes clean enough. Knife hidden. Ear covered. Nothing obviously wrong.

  Still wrong enough.

  He walked in anyway.

  No one stopped him.

  That was worse.

  He passed a well. A pair of children arguing over a bucket. A man mending a wheel. A woman watching him watch her, eyes sharp but not hostile.

  Pattern recognition kicked in fast.

  No patrols. No obvious authority. No immediate pressure.

  This wasn’t a dangerous place.

  Which meant it could become one quickly.

  The tavern announced itself with noise and smell. Heat. Food. Bodies close together.

  He went inside.

  The sound hit him like surf—voices overlapping, chairs scraping, laughter breaking and reforming. He picked a seat with his back to the wall and the door in sight without thinking about it.

  A woman approached. Older. Calloused hands. She said something.

  Ethan waited half a heartbeat too long, then answered.

  “Stew,” he said, and followed it with the word for drink the Gu nudged into place.

  Her eyes flicked over him—boots, hands, face—and moved on.

  He didn’t relax.

  When the bowl arrived, he ate slowly, forcing himself not to rush. The stew was thin but hot. Meat, maybe. Roots. Salt.

  He almost laughed at how good it tasted.

  He listened while he ate.

  Prices. Names. Complaints about weather and work. A rumor about a caravan running late. Someone mentioned the road he’d come in on, cursed its condition.

  Language settled in him unevenly. Not fluently. Not safely. But enough to map shape and intent.

  No one asked him anything.

  That was temporary.

  He finished his meal, paid carefully, and didn’t linger. Leaving too fast was as noticeable as staying too long.

  Outside, the sky had begun to darken.

  Ethan walked until the sounds of town faded behind him and the road narrowed again, then stepped off it and into the trees.

  Only then did he stop.

  His hands were shaking.

  Not fear. Not revulsion.

  Adrenaline with nowhere to go.

  He leaned against a tree and breathed until the tremor faded.

  “That worked,” he said quietly.

  The words felt dangerous.

  He hadn’t been questioned. He hadn’t been challenged. He hadn’t been noticed.

  Not because he was safe.

  Because he hadn’t mattered.

  Ethan straightened and adjusted his satchel.

  Language was coming.

  Money would have to follow.

  And sooner or later, attention would too.

  He started walking again, already planning his next mistake—

  this time with his eyes open.