Ethan woke before the sun.

  Not because of danger.

  Not because of dreams.

  Because his body hurt.

  The ache had shifted overnight—less sharp, more insistent. The kind that didn’t demand attention so much as remind him it would be there whether he acknowledged it or not. He lay still for a moment, breathing shallowly, letting his body inventory itself the way he’d learned to.

  Ribs: sore, manageable.

  Shoulders: tight, scars pulling faintly when he shifted.

  Forearm: stiff beneath the bandage, warm but no longer angry.

  He pushed himself upright slowly and waited for the dizziness to pass. It did, leaving behind the familiar pressure behind his eyes. Not pain. Just weight.

  The shadow stayed folded into him. Quiet. Aligned.

  Good.

  He checked his wounds first. That wasn’t fear—it was discipline now. The bandage came off carefully. The cut had closed cleanly. No spreading redness. No heat where there shouldn’t be. He cleaned it anyway, crushed leaves between his fingers and pressed the paste into the skin.

  It stung. Then numbed.

  “Still works,” he murmured.

  Not everything needed magic.

  That thought steadied him more than he expected.

  Food came next.

  Berries kept you alive. Roots kept you moving. But neither kept you strong. If he was going to stay alone—really alone—he needed something substantial.

  He took the knife from his satchel and tested its weight. Balanced. Better than what he’d started with. Someone had cared about this blade once.

  “Alright,” he said quietly. “Let’s see if I can do one thing right.”

  He moved into the forest deliberately.

  Not chasing. Not wandering. Watching.

  The land wasn’t wild in the way untouched places were. Paths existed—not roads, but habits. Narrow tracks worn smooth by repetition. He followed one until it widened slightly, then stopped.

  Waited.

  It took time.

  Then he saw it.

  A doe, grazing at the edge of a clearing. Head down. Calm. No tension in her posture. She wasn’t listening for him—she didn’t know there was anything to listen for.

  Ethan stayed low in the brush, counting distance.

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  Too far for a knife.

  Too close to retreat without sound.

  He felt the shadow stir—not acting, just present. A familiar pressure at the edge of thought.

  “Not today,” he whispered.

  The pressure eased.

  He waited longer. Shifted position. Let the wind settle. When the moment came, it was clumsy and human and imperfect, but it worked.

  The kill was quick enough.

  The cost came later.

  Butchering was worse.

  He knew what to do in theory. He’d read enough. Studied enough. But knowing didn’t make his hands graceful. His cuts were awkward at first, angles wrong, grip uncertain. He ruined some of the meat before he found a rhythm, fingers slick, jaw clenched.

  Blood soaked into the earth.

  His stomach rolled—not from guilt, not exactly. From proximity. From the intimacy of it.

  “This,” he muttered, “is the part no one romanticizes.”

  By the time he finished, his hands were shaking—not fear, not trauma. Fatigue.

  Still.

  It was meat.

  Real. Heavy. Earned.

  He set up a small fire and cooked carefully, watching the strips hiss and darken. While they worked, he pulled out the book and charcoal.

  The letters still refused him.

  Every time he pushed, the Gu stirred faintly—irritated, restless, useless for this.

  He stopped.

  “Not your job,” he said quietly.

  They settled.

  He worked the cipher instead. Repetition. Patterns. Marks that clustered near prices, near names, near what looked like places. Slow. Frustrating.

  But real.

  The meat burned a little.

  When he finally ate, it was overcooked and tough—but the taste grounded him enough that he closed his eyes after the first bite.

  “Oh,” he breathed. “Yeah. That helps.”

  Later, voices passed nearby.

  Travelers. Brief. Uneventful. They shared the fire for a short while, traded nothing but weather and road talk, and moved on.

  They mentioned goblins once.

  Casually.

  Like pests.

  Ethan remembered it.

  That night, he didn’t go back to the town.

  Not to the road.

  Not even close enough to hear it breathe.

  He turned away from civilization the way you turned away from something that offered too much, too easily.

  At first, he told himself it was temporary. A wide arc around the problem. He would think while he walked. Thinking always worked better when his body was moving.

  But the longer he walked, the less direction mattered.

  Paths appeared, faded, reappeared somewhere else entirely. He followed none of them for long. Every time a trail began to look intentional—too worn, too convenient—he drifted away.

  It wasn’t fear.

  It was refusal.

  He kept seeing the town when he closed his eyes. Not danger. Not violence.

  The normalcy.

  People who belonged. People who didn’t have to think about where they slept. People who trusted the shape of their days.

  He clenched his jaw and kept walking.

  “Think,” he muttered. “Just—think.”

  But he’d already done that.

  An identity wouldn’t save him.

  A name was just a name.

  A trade was just a story.

  A disguise only worked until someone pulled on a loose thread.

  And power—

  Power was worse.

  Power answered too fast. It made bad ideas feel reasonable. It whispered solutions that cost other people instead of him.

  He stopped at a stream and washed his hands, watching water carry blood away.

  “I could do things,” he said quietly. “And get away with them.”

  The shadow stayed close. Quiet. Waiting.

  That was what scared him.

  “I don’t want that,” he said.

  Not yet.

  He walked until the light began to fail and stopped somewhere empty. Sat with his back against a rock and pressed his palms into his eyes.

  “I can survive out here,” he said.

  And he knew it was true.

  That was the problem.

  Survival wasn’t a plan.

  Endurance wasn’t purpose.

  He thought of the road again. Of the casual way people talked about goblins. Orcs. Things that didn’t belong neatly inside fences.

  Things people killed without questions.

  His stomach tightened—not with hunger, but recognition.

  “I don’t belong there,” he said.

  The shadow shifted.

  “No,” he corrected himself. “That’s not the same thing.”

  As night settled, he stayed where he was, staring into the trees, caught between two truths he hadn’t reconciled yet:

  He was done pretending he could be harmless.

  And he was not ready to decide what he would become.

  Tomorrow, he would walk again.

  Not toward a town.

  Not toward a plan.

  Just forward—until the world forced the question.