The road was more root than stone now. The two travelers had left the comforts of the village behind them that morning, and now found themselves traversing a stretch of road that looked like it hadn’t been tended to in some time.

  Maruzan stepped over a twisted branch, glanced back, and reached out his hand. Velthur took it without looking up. The boy’s grip was light, almost absent. He still moved well enough, quick on his feet, never stumbling, but he hadn’t spoken much since they left the river.

  He carried a little sling in his other hand, a trinket from an old maid in the village. He had not used it once, not even to knock down fruit from the trees they passed, but he would not put it away. Maruzan wondered if it gave him comfort, or if he simply didn’t know what else to do with his hands.

  The forest hummed with life. Cicadas sang in the heat. The wind rustled high branches, bringing the faint scent of pine and damp earth. No smoke here. No shouting. Only this long, winding road curling through the trees like a pale snake, soft in its peace.

  The peace felt strange.

  Maruzan had walked quiet paths before, in summers when he hunted deer with his uncle. Back then, quiet meant safety. Quiet meant a world content to keep spinning. This quiet made his stomach twist. It felt like a lull between storms, the kind you only noticed when you had survived one already.

  He thought about Harbinth and what it would look and feel like. If they kept pace, they might reach the city tomorrow evening. Maybe sooner if they found a cart willing to carry them. He pictured the city’s high walls, the sprawl of markets he had only heard of in stories. He tried to picture Rinia there, waving him over, her voice steady and sure like it had always been. But the image blurred before he could hold it.

  A sound broke the stillness.

  Hooves.

  Slow, unhurried, but close.

  Maruzan froze, motioned for Velthur to move off the path. They had practiced this, how to vanish when footsteps came. Velthur obeyed at once, slipping into the brush without a word.

  The rider came into view a moment later. An older man in a faded green cloak and wide straw hat, his back straight on a donkey that plodded steadily along. The donkey’s nose hung low, ears flicking lazily at flies. A bundle of tools jostled on its back: axes, seed sacks, a folded plow. This was a man returning home after trade, maybe from weeks away.

  He was whistling.

  The tune was light, almost cheerful. The kind of whistle that came from habit, from comfort in routine. It sounded strange to Maruzan, like hearing a song from another world.

  Maruzan stepped out onto the road.

  The donkey snorted and halted. The man jerked the reins, startled.

  “Ho there!” the man called. “Thought you were a bandit for a blink. Nearly swallowed my tongue.”

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  He gave a quick laugh. It was a friendly sound, but it faded when he got a proper look at them. His eyes caught on Maruzan’s soot-streaked clothes, the torn tunic, the boy half-hidden in the brush.

  The man’s smile faltered. “Something wrong ahead?”

  Maruzan hesitated. The words stuck in his throat. How did you tell someone their world was gone?

  “Where are you headed?” he asked instead.

  The man raised his brows, cautious now. “Elzibar. My wife’s cousin’s place, near the east watchpost. Been gone near a month. Took the long way through Meren’s Pass on account of the rains. I’m late as it is. Missed the harvest festival. Bet they’re still sore with me over that.”

  He gave another laugh, weaker this time. “Still, better late than not, eh?”

  Maruzan swallowed. “Elzibar’s gone,” knowing no other way to say the truth.

  The forest went still.

  The donkey flicked its ear.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “It burned,” Maruzan said, voice low but steady. “Kobolds came down from the hills. Not a raid. An army. The walls fell. They lit everything. I saw it.”

  The man blinked. He laughed a bit, considering it to be a dark jest. That thought was fleeting. His lips parted, closed, then parted again. “That’s not… There’s no war. There hasn’t been war for...Elzibar’s a farming town. Four hundred souls, maybe. What would kobolds...?”

  “I don’t know why,” Maruzan cut in. “I only know what I saw.”

  The man’s face went pale beneath his hat. His gaze slid past Maruzan, toward the southern trees, as though trying to see the village from here. As though trying to pull it back into existence by sheer will.

  “My family’s there, waiting for me,” he said softly.

  “So was mine.”

  Silence.

  Velthur stepped out of the brush then, as quiet as a shadow. He stood beside Maruzan, eyes fixed on the man. His face gave nothing away. Not fear. Not anger. Just watching, like he was trying to read the man’s soul.

  “There were boats,” Maruzan said at last. “Some made it out. Maybe your kin were on them. Mine were. I think.”

  “You think.”

  “I saw them reach the bay,” Maruzan murmured. “That’s all I know.”

  The man swung his leg over the donkey and dismounted. His knees wobbled when they hit the ground. He pulled off his hat and held it to his chest.

  “Heaven preserve us,” he whispered. Then, again, more broken: “Heaven preserve us all.”

  Maruzan said nothing. He let the man’s grief hang in the air. He had lived in that silence himself for much of the past three days now. It had no bottom.

  Finally, he spoke. “We’re heading for Harbinth. You should come. Maybe someone there knows where the boats landed.”

  The man did not answer. His eyes stayed on the road ahead, the road that led south.

  “It’s not safe,” Maruzan added. “Not with them still in the hills. You don’t want to see what’s left. You think you do, but you don’t.”

  The man’s jaw tightened. He looked older suddenly, worn down by more than years.

  “I have to know,” he said.

  Maruzan nodded. He understood. That was what frightened him most—that he understood.

  He reached out his hand. The man took it, rough fingers squeezing hard.

  “Heaven be with you,” Maruzan said.

  “And you,” the man replied. He glanced at Velthur. “And your boy.”

  He led the donkey forward, toward the darkening southern road.

  Maruzan watched him until the trees swallowed him whole. Then he turned to Velthur.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Velthur nodded once.

  They kept walking, northward, into the green.