Chapter 5 – Return Home

  We left before dawn fully broke.

  The fire was smothered to embers, its smoke trailing low as if reluctant to abandon the clearing. The damned were already dealt with. The strong stood ready. The prisoner was bound tighter, wrists lashed to a long pole carried between two veterans like a hunting prize too dangerous to walk freely.

  Erduin led from the front.

  No horn sounded. No chant marked our departure. We simply moved.

  And when Verak moved through forest, the forest parted.

  We ran at a pace no outsider could sustain — low, controlled, relentless. Feet barely snapped twigs. Bodies wove between trunks as if we had memorized every tree since childhood. Roots were stepped over without looking. Branches were ducked without thought.

  I ran behind Dagon and the Red Goats, breath steady, lungs full.

  The world felt different now.

  The air no longer smelled like just damp earth and pine. I could separate it — moss, sap, distant water, the faint iron tang still clinging to leather and skin from the night before.

  Sounds layered themselves neatly: a woodpecker’s hollow tapping far to the east, the scamper of something small in brush, the subtle rhythm of thirty warriors moving in staggered formation.

  My third eye pulsed faintly with each stride.

  Not painfully.

  Aware.

  Erduin slowed only once, raising a closed fist. The war party condensed slightly around him.

  “We feast when we return,” he called back over his shoulder. “Five headmen. Five hunts. Bring meat worthy of blood.”

  A low murmur of approval rippled through the ranks.

  He gestured sharply.

  The war party split.

  Like a net being cast across the forest.

  Each headman veered into separate lanes of woodland, their assigned warriors peeling off behind them. Despite the separation, we maintained direction — all flowing the same way, just fanned wide to sweep everything living before us.

  Gorvan stopped, turning to the nine beneath him.

  “You know the drill,” he said. “Three by three. Wide but not blind. If you sight something dangerous, signal twice. If it sights you first, don’t be stupid.”

  He looked at me briefly.

  “New eyes,” he said. “Use them.”

  Then he pointed.

  “Dagon. Efran. The orphan. You’re left sweep.”

  ‘Efran’ answered immediately.

  “Aye! Left sweep, best sweep. More marsh that way. Marsh means fat beasts. Fat beasts mean tender cuts.”

  He clapped his hands together once, already moving.

  I blinked.

  He was… large.

  Not soft — no Verak was soft — but broad through the middle, thick arms, thick legs and a thicker neck. His hair was braided with bits of bone and copper wire. Despite the weight, he moved astonishingly fast, bounding over fallen logs with almost playful agility.

  Dagon shot me a sideways glance.

  “Keep up.”

  Then we were running again.

  Efran took the lead without hesitation, veering through thicker undergrowth as if drawn by instinct alone.

  “You smell that?” he called back quietly.

  I inhaled.

  Damp soil. Fern. Old bark.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Exactly!” he said cheerfully. “Too clean. Something’s been feeding through here. Clearing ground. Likely deer. Or boar if we’re lucky. Oh, if it’s boar I call the liver.”

  “You call nothing,” Dagon said flatly.

  Efran ignored him entirely.

  “Liver roasted in its own fat, bit of crushed pine nuts if we find some, dash of berry mash —”

  “We are hunting,” Dagon interrupted.

  “And I am focusing,” Efran replied defensively. “You wound me brother.”

  Efran slowed to a trot, then to a glide. He crouched, pressing his fingers into soil without fully stopping.

  “Ground’s too clean,” he murmured. “Something passed light-footed. Cleared the beetles. See the shift?”

  I squinted at the forest floor.

  It looked like… dirt.

  Dagon crouched beside him.

  “Deer,” he said after a moment. “Two. No, three.”

  Efran nodded approvingly. “Three. Good eyes.”

  Dagon did not question him. That alone told me more than words could.

  They both rose.

  I felt a sting of frustration. My third eye pulsed faintly, but all I sensed was the echo of their certainty.

  We resumed forward shifting direction slightly, angling northeast.

  Efran resumed talking immediately.

  “You know, deer’s fine. Lean though. We’ll need something heavier for proper feast cuts. Moose would be ideal. Moose stew thick enough to stand a spear in. Bone marrow boiled down —”

  “If you do not quiet yourself,” Dagon said calmly, “I will quiet you.”

  Efran glanced back at him.

  “You see?” he said to me conspiratorially. “He’s been like this since youth. No appreciation for culinary vision.”

  I began to understand something.

  Last night, I had been the chatter.

  Tonight, I was witnessing its master.

  Efran leapt across a narrow stream without breaking stride.

  “Imagine,” he continued, “if we find wild goat. We smoke the ribs, slow cook the haunch, render the fat for traveling stores—”

  I drowned him out and focused inward.

  The cool ember between my brows flickered. I tried to extend it, to sense what they seemed to read so naturally. For a heartbeat, I felt something — a faint ripple ahead — but it slipped from me like water through fingers.

  “Left,” I said quietly, uncertain.

  Both of them stopped.

  Efran tilted his head.

  “Why?”

  “I… felt movement.”

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  “Wind,” Dagon said.

  Efran studied me a moment longer, then shook his head.

  “Not wind. But not deer either.” He gestured ahead. “Try again. Don’t chase it. Let it settle.”

  We moved slower now.

  Efran began speaking as if preaching a holy script.

  “The forest breathes,” he said. “If you force your sight, you’ll only see your own breath. Let it move first.”

  Dagon added, “Your eye is open. But not trained.”

  That stung more than it should have.

  We advanced another stretch before Efran suddenly raised a hand.

  There.

  A faint indentation in mud near a shallow stream.

  I saw it this time — barely. A curve where a hoof had pressed.

  But Efran had already shifted course before I registered it fully.

  “Fresh,” he whispered. “Minutes old.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  He tapped his nose.

  “And the flies,” he added. “They haven’t settled yet.”

  Dagon moved ahead slightly, scanning the trees.

  “Downwind,” he murmured.

  I closed my eyes briefly while running.

  The ember pulsed.

  This time, instead of reaching outward, I listened inward — to the rhythm of their breathing, their footfalls, the subtle shifts in posture when they sensed something. I aligned my stride with theirs.

  Then I felt it.

  Not the deer directly.

  But the absence.

  A pocket of stillness in the brush ahead.

  “Center-right,” I said, quieter now.

  Efran froze.

  He studied the treeline, nostrils flaring.

  A slow grin spread across his face.

  “There it is,” he breathed. “That’s better.”

  Dagon did not praise me. He simply adjusted his angle slightly.

  We crept forward.

  Through brush, I finally glimpsed them — three deer grazing in a shallow dip.

  “See?” Efran breathed. “I’m born for this.”

  But even now, he was already calculating.

  “Rear one limps slightly,” he whispered. “Old injury. That’s ours. Drive them left toward the rocks. Don’t overcommit.”

  “I’ll push center,” Dagon said.

  “And you,” Efran glanced at me, “don’t lead. Watch. Cut where we tell you.”

  We burst from cover.

  The deer scattered.

  For a split second, instinct screamed at me to charge the nearest. Instead, I held.

  Dagon’s blade flashed, redirecting the lead buck.

  Efran barreled toward the limping one with terrifying precision, cutting its escape before it fully chose direction.

  “Now!” Dagon barked.

  I moved where the opening appeared — not because I created it, but because they had.

  My strike landed true.

  The deer fell.

  Silence returned in heaving breaths.

  Efran wiped sweat from his brow, laughing softly.

  “You see?” he said to me. “It’s not about seeing first. It’s about seeing right.”

  Dagon cleaned his blade.

  “You felt the stillness,” he said. “That is the beginning.”

  Efran hoisted the carcass across his shoulders.

  “Next time,” he said brightly, “we try something with tusks.”

  Dagon shot him a warning look.

  Efran grinned wider.

  —

  We regrouped near the shallow ravine where the five hunting lines finally converged. Warriors stepped out from the trees in staggered waves, each group bloodied, weary, and proud. The forest floor trembled under the weight of nearly fifty Verak moving as one again.

  I thought we had done well.

  Until I saw what the others carried.

  Two massive men strode past with a stag so enormous its antlers scraped low branches even as it hung slung between their shoulders like a conquered king. Another trio hauled a thick-necked boar the size of a small pony, its legs bound with rawhide, tusks still slick with mud and gore.

  One warrior balanced a pair of mountain goats across his back as if they weighed nothing more than bundles of firewood. Everywhere I looked, the bounty of the highlands spilled across strong Verak shoulders.

  They moved as though the weight meant nothing.

  I adjusted my grip on our own deer, suddenly very aware of the burn in my arms.

  Efran, however, looked like he had died and walked straight into the feasting halls of the sky gods. His eyes were huge. He was actually drooling.

  “By the sky gods and every ancestor who ever swung a blade,” he breathed, voice thick with reverence.

  “Look at that stag. Just look at it! We’ll braise the haunch until the meat falls off the bone. And that boar—oh, that boar will roast slow over coals for hours. Skin crackling, fat dripping into the fire…”

  “You are embarrassing,” Dagon muttered.

  “No,” Efran corrected proudly, “I am inspired. And I officially claim rights to supervise the marrow preparation.”

  “Sure, sure” Dagon replied.

  Efran ignored him completely and launched into a detailed list of preparations that grew more alarming by the second.

  “We salt the hides first. Render the fat before dusk. The liver must not sit too long or it toughens, and don’t even get me started on the heart—”

  I found myself laughing despite the exhaustion that sat heavy in my bones. The sound felt good. Real.

  The regroup lasted only a few heartbeats. Erduin inspected every kill with a single curt nod of approval, then raised his fist. The signal to move.

  We resumed our march.

  The forest thinned gradually as the ground began to climb. The air changed—cooler, sharper, carrying the clean bite of highland wind and ancient stone. Pine and moss gave way to the sharp scent of granite and distant snow. Then the trees parted like a curtain, and the true face of Verak rose before us.

  The mountains.

  They erupted from the earth like the spine of some primordial beast that had chosen to sleep here for ten thousand years. Jagged, immense, eternal. At their heart stood the Great Peak—the living soul of our people.

  Its sheer western face had been carved over countless generations, not by tools alone but by reverence, blood, and time itself.

  Even from this distance the carvings stole my breath.

  Hundreds of towering warrior figures stood frozen mid-strike across the stone—spears raised, axes swinging, shields locked in eternal formation.

  Massive stags with antlers spreading like sacred trees charged beside them. Packs of wolves and great bears roared in silence.

  Serpents coiled around ancient blades, horned giants battled winged horrors, and rivers of carved runes told the sagas of every war our people had ever won.

  The entire mountain was a living chronicle of Verak strength.

  Homes had been hewn straight into the rock itself—deep, defensible halls with timber frames black from centuries of smoke. Narrow stone stairways zigzagged between them like veins of silver.

  Smoke rose from cleverly carved vents, thin gray ribbons twisting into the wind.

  Wooden forts and thick palisades bristled along every ridge and switchback, their spikes gleaming like the teeth of the mountain.

  A deep horn sounded from the highest tower.

  Another answered. Then another. The call rolled across the peaks like thunder.

  Word of our return traveled faster than our feet.

  By the time we reached the lower ascent, the entire mountainside had come alive. Children raced barefoot along the path, laughing and pointing.

  Women stepped from stone doorways, wiping hands on aprons, eyes bright with pride. Elders—some bent with age, others still straight as spears—stood with folded arms, nodding slowly as if measuring the worth of every warrior who passed.

  The cheers began low and built like a gathering storm.

  “Verak!”

  “Blood-bringers!”

  “Strong returns!”

  Warriors lifted their kills high. Antlers thrust toward the sky. The bound Mire prisoner was forced to walk between two veterans so every eye could see our victory.

  Efran hoisted our deer even higher, bellowing, “Make way! Feast comes through!”

  Laughter rolled down the mountain like an avalanche.

  Even Dagon let the faintest smirk crack his stone face.

  Something swelled in my chest so fiercely I could barely breathe. I had once stood on these same paths as a wide-eyed boy, craning my neck to watch returning warbands climb toward the sky, thinking they looked like figures stepped out of legend.

  Now I walked among them—blood on my hands, a kill across my shoulders, the same stone beneath my boots that my father and grandfather had walked before me.

  Someone shouted my name from the crowd—“Alikad!”—and without thinking I lifted my chin and raised my fist high.

  “Verak strikes true!” I roared with the others.

  The mountain answered in a thunderous wave that shook the stone beneath my feet.

  By the time we reached the summit plateau, the entire range felt alive with us.

  The top opened into a vast courtyard carved directly into the living rock. Towering walls ringed it, etched with even older carvings—ancestors whose names were spoken only in the deepest rituals, their stone eyes watching over every generation.

  Torches already burned along the perimeter despite the daylight, flames bending in the fierce highland wind.

  At the far end stood the elders.

  Cloaked in layered furs and dark leathers, hair braided with bone and silver, they waited in solemn silence. Some leaned on carved staffs older than my grandfather. Others stood unbent, eyes sharp as mountain hawks.

  The war party entered as one.

  Boots struck stone in perfect unison.

  The cheering from below had never stopped—half the mountain had followed us up and now crowded the edges of the courtyard, faces glowing with pride.

  Erduin stepped forward.

  The prisoner was forced to his knees.

  The animals were laid out in proud, ordered lines behind us.

  We stood tall and raised our trophies one final time.

  The wind swept across my face, carrying the mingled scents of pine, blood, woodsmoke, and ancient stone—the true breath of Verak.

  I had once watched this moment from far below.

  Now I stood within it.

  And for the first time in my life, I felt the mountain itself recognize me as one of its own.