The mirror gave him two faces.

  The one on the surface: a man in a red Wyre robe, one-armed, bandaged to the ribs, hair refusing discipline. White script turned slowly in his irises like frost trying to remember letters. The cheeks were hollower, the mouth tighter. The scar on his brow had deepened into something permanent.

  Behind that face, reflected in memory, were others.

  Wyre men, shoulders squared in shabby leather. Women with wolves stitched on their sleeves, hands chapped from fields Lydia now owned. Children running between houses that were now lists on a king’s parchment.

  He saw the moment they’d burst through Marrow’s hedge. The officer with the chalk-line scar stepping forward, hand up, voice calm even with fire licking at shutters.

  “Stay back. We don’t want this.”

  That had puzzled him at the time. He’d thought it was performance—nobility, or cowardice dressed as it. Now, with Selloris’s wolf banners hanging outside his window and Wyre laughter rising from the courtyards, it made a different kind of sense.

  They hadn’t wanted this. The war. The raids. The teeth.

  And he’d killed them anyway.

  Clarity offered him the receipts: the exact angle his sword had taken into a man’s side; the flash of an earring at a woman’s throat just before she fell; a boy’s hand curling around a spear before the spear dropped.

  He frowned at himself in the mirror.

  You could stay, he thought, for one dangerous moment. Take the name. Take the work. Let Lydia and Wyre hate each other from a distance while you fix rooftops and find better cuts of cloth. Let the Hound be someone else’s story. Let the Constellations clap for corpses that aren’t yours.

  He could see it too easily: a workshop bench, the weight of tools instead of swords, Jiren barging in late with some half-explained trouble, the city’s breath instead of the sky’s commentary.

  But—

  Eli, walking alone into Lydia, smoke still in his hair. Eli standing in a council chamber full of men who had never seen teeth fall from the sky, trying to explain.

  Eli, who had looked back at Nhilly on that road with betrayal and faith braided in the same expression.

  I told him to run, Nhilly thought. I told him I’d follow.

  He set the mirror down carefully.

  Jiren was watching him from the doorway, doing a very unconvincing impression of someone who just happened to be leaning there.

  Nhilly met his gaze. “Why are you so nice to me?” he asked quietly. “I led an attack that killed your friends. Your town. Your family. I’m the one who brought Lydia to Marrow.”

  The boy’s throat bobbed. Clarity let Nhilly see the exact moment Jiren decided which face to put on.

  “I didn’t like you much at first,” Jiren admitted. “I wanted to stab you in your sleep. A lot.” His mouth twitched. “Still do, sometimes.”

  Nhilly huffed air that might have been a laugh.

  “But…” Jiren pushed off the frame and stepped inside. “I remembered something my father said.” His eyes went distant for a heartbeat. “I asked him once if all soldiers are evil. Because some Wyre came back from the front with stories, and some didn’t come back at all. He said, ‘Most soldiers are pawns. They don’t know better. You judge a man by what he does when he finally knows.’”

  He shrugged, small and stiff. “You didn’t know better. You thought we were just… enemies. Raiders. Names in your king’s mouth. At first, I loathed you. But then I heard what you did when the Hound came. How you kept both sides moving. How you told people to run instead of stopping to look heroic.”

  His jaw set. “How you went back up the cliff alone.”

  Nhilly’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table.

  “Even before that,” Jiren went on, “there were… signs.” He made a face at the word. “When we were marching. I heard how you kept Wyre and Lydia in the same formations. Yelled at both sides the same. Saved idiots from teeth without asking what color banner they liked. When the Hound arrived, you didn’t pick one army. You tried to save everyone.” His voice warmed, despite himself. “I know you don’t want me to call you this, but you really are a her—”

  He stopped, corrected himself. “You really are… Vaen.”

  Nhilly smiled, a small crooked thing that felt less like a mask and more like a bruise stretching. “You’re kind, Jiren.”

  The boy puffed up slightly, then deflated when Nhilly added, gently, “You’re also too young to know better.”

  “Rude,” Jiren said, but there was no heat to it.

  Nhilly took a breath, felt the threads around his heart respond. “About your offer,” he said. “Earlier. Staying. Starting over. I have to refuse.”

  Jiren’s shoulders drew in, fraction by fraction. Clarity showed Nhilly the way his right hand curled against his thigh, nails digging in.

  “Why?” the boy asked. It wasn’t accusation. Just hurt.

  “I have a friend waiting for me in Lydia,” Nhilly said. “At least, I hope he’s waiting. He walked home with teeth still falling behind him because I told him to. There are people there who won’t let me sit in a workshop while they march more boys at the next monster.”

  He shook his head. “When I’m cleared, I’ll leave Selloris. Go back to Lydia. You’ll probably never see me again.”

  Jiren looked away so fast his hair flared. His jaw clenched. Clarity caught the sheen in his eyes before he blinked it back.

  “Figures,” he muttered. “You lot are all the same. Always leaving.”

  Nhilly opened his mouth, closed it, tried again. “But I promise you this much.”

  Jiren glanced back.

  “Wyre will never have to fight Lydia again,” Nhilly said. “I’m going to end this war. One way or another.”

  The boy searched his face for a lie. Clarity let Nhilly feel the inspection. Whatever Jiren saw there—tiredness, stubbornness, something that looked like conviction—made his shoulders sag in a different way.

  “You’d better,” he said thickly. “Or I will find you and stab you myself. One-armed or not.”

  “Deal,” Nhilly said.

  A dry voice cut into the room. “If anyone’s stabbing my patient, they’re getting in line behind me.”

  Healer Rass stood in the doorway, arms folded, satchel hanging from one hand. She eyed them both as if they were equally responsible for the risk of infection.

  “Out,” she told Jiren. “Bandage check. Unless you’d like to watch me peel off half-healed skin.”

  Jiren’s face went slightly green. “I’ll… go warm the stew.”

  “Yes, go harass the stew instead,” she said, stepping past him.

  When the door shut behind him, the room shrank to clearer lines: the healer, the bed, the table, the mirror. Rass set her satchel down with a clink, then nodded at the mattress.

  “Sit,” she ordered. “Try not to fall off this time. The floor’s tired of catching you.”

  Nhilly obeyed.

  Her hands were brisk but not cruel. She unwrapped the bandage from his stump, layer by careful layer. Clarity let him see every turn of the cloth, the way the dried edges tugged free; he had to look away before the image of his own exposed flesh became too detailed to forget.

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  “How long until I’m cleared?” he asked.

  “You planning another suicide appointment with something that has too many teeth?” she said, examining the wound. “Texture is good. No swelling. No heat. You heal disgustingly fast for someone who tried to die at least three times in one afternoon.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  She dabbed salve along the seam, fingers sure. “Eight days,” she said at last. “Maybe ten if you insist on being dramatic. Walk. Eat. Sleep. Don’t open anything I’ve closed. Try not to pick fights with furniture.”

  “After that?”

  “After that,” she said, rewrapping the bandage, “you can shuffle around the city pretending you’re not a hero. You can call yourself Vaen and drink bad ale in worse taverns. You can leave, if your stupid heart drags you that way.” Her eyes flicked up to his. “You will, won’t you?”

  He held her gaze. “Yes.”

  She clicked her tongue. “Figures. The ones who live are always the worst at staying put.”

  “You could stop me,” he suggested. “Tie me down. Tell the High Wolf I’m too precious to lose.”

  Rass snorted. “You? Precious? You’re a walking infection risk with a martyr complex.” She tugged the last knot tight. “But Selloris is not a prison. We’ve had enough of those, thanks. If you walk out the gate, it’ll be your choice. And your stupidity.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she said, gathering her things. At the door she paused, glanced back over her shoulder. “And Vaen?”

  “Yes?”

  “For what it’s worth…” Her mouth thinned, as if the words tasted bad. “Whatever name you wear, if you step between this city and those teeth again, we’ll owe you. Even if most of us never know it’s you.”

  That was the closest thing to a blessing he expected to get from a Wyre healer.

  He inclined his head. “I’ll try not to need stitches next time.”

  “Liar,” she said, and left.

  —

  The next eight days stretched and folded in odd ways.

  Mornings, Healer Rass changed his bandages and swore at him in two languages about overexertion. She made him flex his shoulder, lift his arm-stump against the resistance of her hand, balance on one foot then the other. Clarity turned each exercise into a study: the way muscle fibers contracted, the exact degree of tremor before failure. He learned the borders of his new body in excruciating detail.

  Afternoons, Jiren stole him.

  “Come on,” the boy would say, bursting into the room as if Rass’s threats were a myth. “You can’t stare at walls all day. They’ll start staring back.”

  They wandered.

  The blacksmith on Wolf’s Turn tried to chase them out the first time. “No loitering,” she growled, hammer flashing. “I’m not a show.”

  Nhilly, drawn by the pattern of her work, couldn’t help himself. “You’re tempering too fast,” he said.

  Her head snapped up. “What?”

  He winced inwardly. “The quench. Your third batch. The grain in that steel’s wrong. You’ll get hairline fractures in the blades after a few good swings.” Clarity made the prediction feel like memory; he could see the future crack as clearly as the present glare.

  She stared at him.

  “Show me,” she said.

  He did. Pointed to the faint shift in color along the edges, the way the surface light didn’t quite travel cleanly. Suggested a slightly longer heat, a slower air-cool before the dunk.

  She grumbled, tried it, and when the test blade rang with a cleaner, higher note on the anvil, she squinted at him like he’d cheated.

  “You want a job?” she said. “Good eye. Pay’s shit but you’ll never be cold.”

  “I’m allergic to honest work,” Nhilly said. “Terrible condition.”

  Jiren rolled his eyes. “He’s very important,” he told her solemnly. “He has to go drink watery beer and antagonize people.”

  “Waste,” the smith snorted. But the corner of her mouth turned up when she said it.

  At the tailor’s, it was the same.

  “You pin the seams too shallow,” he murmured, watching the man in his tiny shop. The thread lines didn’t match the way bodies moved; Clarity could see every cloth stress before it happened. “That cape will twist when the wearer raises his arm.”

  “And how would you know?” the tailor snapped, then paused. “Show me.”

  Nhilly adjusted the pins. A fraction here, a slight curve there to align with the shoulder’s natural slope. When the apprentice tried the cape on again, it fell in a clean, straight drape.

  The tailor squinted. “I have apprentices,” he said slowly. “But I wouldn’t mind a foreman. Someone with an eye. Good money, regular meals, no teeth monsters.”

  “Tempting,” Nhilly admitted.

  “So stay,” Jiren muttered later, as they sat on a low wall eating bread stuffed with something spiced and unidentifiable. “You’re good at this.”

  Nhilly tore off a bite. The flavors hit his tongue in sharp, distinct notes: cumin, onion, char. “Too good,” he said. “I’d be bored in a month.”

  “You’re impossible,” Jiren declared.

  Evenings, they found their way to one of the taverns that clung to Selloris’s mid-terraces. There was always one with room for a one-armed stranger and a boy who glared at anyone looking at him too long.

  The air in those places was thick with smoke and stories. Men and women told each other what they’d heard from cousins, from traveling merchants, from priests whose gods had suddenly gone quiet. Clarity sliced through the noise, catching snatches.

  “—say the monster sunk itself back into the earth, like it was bored—”

  “—my cousin swears he saw a white woman walking on the air, hand through soldiers like they were chalk—”

  “—Lydia’s extended the ceasefire. Two more weeks, on top of the ten. King’s grief, they say. Lost his pet heroes.”

  Nhilly’s hand stilled on his cup at that.

  “Heard it from a runner,” someone insisted. “Word from Lydia. Nihilus, Kael, Celeste—no trace. The priests are saying they ascended. Returned to the stars.”

  “Returned to the ground, more like,” another grunted, raising his drink. “I’ll drink to anyone who kept that thing busy long enough for my brother to crawl home.”

  Around them, Wyre who had never seen the Hound cheered the news of an extended peace. There were toasts to the end of the war, to the king’s supposed grief, to Selloris’s survival. Some of the smiles were genuine; others had edges Clarity could see from across the room.

  Jiren watched Nhilly over the lip of his cup.

  “Does it… hurt?” he asked once, when the noise around them had risen enough that the question could hide in it. “Hearing them say you’re dead?”

  “No,” Nhilly lied.

  He spent those nights listening to songs about a man who had died on a cliff. The verses were wrong in all the places that mattered. They made him taller, braver, cleaner. In some, he didn’t lose his arm. In others, Celeste didn’t die. Once, Kael survived and slayed the Hound in a single, glorious leap.

  Nhilly drank watery beer and let the stories pass through him like smoke. He didn’t correct a word.

  Between all that, there were smaller things.

  He helped an old woman carry a crate of stones up three flights of stairs because Clarity could see which steps her knees would fail on. He spent an hour at the wolf shrine watching people come and go, reading grief in the way they placed their offerings. He let a little boy poke the empty sleeve of his robe until the child’s curiosity was satisfied.

  Sometimes, Selloris almost felt like home.

  He knew better than to trust that.

  —

  On the ninth morning, Rass declared him cleared.

  “You’ll tear something if you do anything stupid,” she said, binding his shoulder in fresh cloth. “But you’ll do something stupid regardless, so we might as well make sure you don’t die of bedsores.”

  “High praise,” he said. “Do I get a certificate?”

  He did, in a sense: a folded parchment authorizing one “Vaen” to leave the infirmary and the city without being turned back by guards who valued his thin skin over his nonexistent common sense.

  By midday, a horse waited for him at the small side gate that overlooked the western road.

  It was a sturdy Wyre mount, coat the color of muddy stone, mane cropped short. Clarity let Nhilly see the faint old scars on its flank and the way its left ear twitched a fraction slower than the right. It had the patient look of an animal that had seen too many fools and survived most of them.

  Jiren stood beside it, hands buried in the horse’s mane to hide their shaking.

  “You really going,” he said. Not a question.

  Nhilly adjusted the saddle with his left hand, testing the cinch. Everything felt absurdly normal. The city hummed behind him: clatter of carts, shout of vendors, the far-off ring of a bell marking the hour.

  “I am,” he said.

  He looked at the boy.

  Up close, Jiren seemed both older and younger than he had in the valley. The hollows under his eyes had filled in; the rawness had turned into something more solid. A faint scar cut through his right eyebrow, almost invisible unless you knew to look. Clarity showed Nhilly the tiny calluses that had begun to form where Jiren held a practice spear, or broom, or whatever they trusted him not to break.

  “You’ll be all right,” Nhilly said. “Selloris…” He glanced back at the walls, the terraces, the wolf banners. “Selloris is stubborn.”

  “So am I,” Jiren said.

  “Good.” Nhilly hesitated, then added, “Don’t die for anyone’s story. Not mine. Not your king’s. Not theirs.” He tilted his head toward the sky. “If something wants you dead, make it work for it.”

  Jiren’s mouth twisted. “You’re very bad at goodbye speeches, Vaen.”

  “I used all my good speeches on people I was lying to,” Nhilly said. “You get the honest ones.”

  The boy’s eyes shone. He scowled at the ground to hide it.

  “You said I’ll probably never see you again,” Jiren muttered. “I don’t like probably.”

  “Fine,” Nhilly said. “Then I’ll make you a promise.”

  Jiren looked up.

  “I’ll come back to Selloris,” Nhilly said. “One day. When there isn’t a war on this road. When boys like you are bored because nothing is trying to kill them. I’ll find you, and you can tell me how wrong I got everything.”

  Jiren swallowed. “You’d better,” he said. “Or I will stab you. I meant that.”

  “I know,” Nhilly said. “That’s why I’m taking you seriously.”

  He put his left foot in the stirrup and hauled himself up, awkward but functional. The missing arm changed his balance; the horse compensated with a shift of weight that suggested long practice with incompetent riders.

  Sitting in the saddle, he looked down at Jiren one last time.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He didn’t say it out loud. Not fully. But Clarity showed him the way the boy’s expression shifted, just a fraction, as if he’d heard it anyway.

  “Bring my thanks to everyone who doesn’t throw stones at you when you say my new name,” Nhilly added. “And if anyone starts singing about Vaen the Hero, lie to them.”

  “Already planning to,” Jiren said. He stepped back, out of hoof-range, and squared his shoulders like a much older man. “Safe roads, Vaen.”

  “Safe city,” Nhilly replied.

  He turned the horse toward the horizon.

  The road west ran hard and straight, cutting through the scrub like a scar that had refused to fade. The sky over it was paler than the one he remembered above Lydia’s walls, but the distance felt the same: too far and not far enough.

  He nudged the horse with his heel.

  Selloris’s gate fell away behind him. The city’s sounds thinned, then vanished, replaced by the steady clop of hooves and the soft hiss of wind over stone. The world ahead narrowed to road and dust and whatever waited at the end of it.

  Nhilly—Vaen—fixed his eyes on the line where earth met sky.

  “Eli,” he said, under his breath, the name tasting like iron and promises.

  “Please be alive.”