The black-robed man murmured under his hood, then let the child go, hands loosening like cut cords.

No rescue came from the wings, and no miracle cut in. Adrian watched, eyes cold as frost on iron, with no flicker to intervene, as if this scene were a distant snowfall that couldn’t touch him. He kept his gaze on the black robe until the figure bled into the road he’d walked in on, like smoke taken by the wind.

Weariness rose first, heavy as wet cloth. Adrian let out a long breath that fogged the chill air. “What happened to this town…”

No one answered, only a town smothered under a sick haze, a place trembling on the cliff’s lip. The black robes had rung wrong in his bones, like a sour note in a bell, but there was no better answer here. He shored up his defenses like patching a leaky hull, then slid into his bedroll like a fox into a hollow and chose to rest.

He wanted to track them now, but his body said no, flat as a locked gate. Strength he had, but his frame was a cracked vessel; he knew that forcing it would split half-healed seams like ice breaking under a boot.

First mend the boat if you want to cross the river. He didn’t need anyone to say it. He knew how bad he was. Bones like shattered porcelain, flesh like threads coming loose; if not for a Power pinning the pieces together, he’d already be a pile of scattered meat on the floor.

Push like this again, and even years might not buy him back what’s lost, like sand poured through a broken hourglass.

Once, when Rage lived in his ribs like a coiled fire, he could act without brakes. Even at death’s door, that Rage would yank him back like a hook in the spine. He’d learned to fight that way, but now he had to move like a man walking on eggshells, or his body would come apart like a frayed rope.

Even the most seasoned imperial medics would be stumped, and this age wore leeches as wisdom and kept anatomy behind taboo doors. If they could say his frame was cracked and the cords were frayed, that already counted as insight.

Even he couldn’t tell if the harm came from Solomon’s hand or from this Power lodged in him. In his gut, he knew this Power dwarfed what he’d held before—whether Arcane Power or battle-qi, it felt past the legendary ceiling like thunder caged under a clay roof. Could a mortal body really bear it and not crush itself?

The thought pooled dark, then he let it go with a heavy sigh. He closed his eyes and forced sleep, sinking like a stone into a still pond. The short night passed with no loud knocks from fate, a lid on the kettle at last, and he took the rest it offered.

At dawn, Adrian packed fast, fingers moving like sparrows. He stowed his bundle deep in the cave’s throat, then washed his traces away with a sweep of Arcane Power like wind over sand. He drew a machete, edge a thin crescent of light—unlike the mountain cleavers the black robes had carried, but serviceable.

Daylight was a bright net; it wasn’t the time to walk into town. Adrian drifted to the cave mouth like a shadow lifting, then followed the route the black robes had used, up and down like a thread through cloth. He’d dropped the idea of going straight in the moment he watched their hands work.

The townsfolk had started a quarantine, and those black robes were the uniform of that intent, funeral gauze against a plague. But their methods showed this: after imperial medics blew the main road, the town’s pulse had faltered. The town sat ringed by mountains like a collar of stone; the only safe, easy artery was the one they’d severed. The rest of the paths were goat spines and broken steps. Risk beasts and ravines for a mouthful, or huddle in the shell; most would stay. But long hunger is a cold knife, and knives make people reach for extremes.

As he scouted the ridge, he found fruit trees lanterned with small, hard fruit, and common animals tracing the underbrush, coats clear as clean river stones. He’d collected the prewar headcount before he came, and he ran numbers in his head like an abacus. Even discounting for the sickness, these peaks could feed the survivors for a fair while.

No fields lay visible from here, no terraces like green scales. If there had been, he could read the valley better. He floated closer to mid-slope, where a simple mountain path scarred the hillside—hunter work, practical and rough. The woman from yesterday must’ve used it to climb this steeper spine of rock.

He shifted to examine the path when the brush to his right rustled like a startled bird. A weave of spells folded over him in an instant, and he thinned from sight like mist in sun.

“I didn’t see wrong—I really saw an outsider… right here!?” A ragged little girl burst from the trees, pointing at where he’d been, voice sharp as a snapped twig. She pushed into the clearing and found only empty air, froze, and stared, eyes round as coin in a pond, as if the world had lied to her.

Behind her, a teen girl stepped out, just as ragged. Her dress had been torn into a hunter’s skirt for ease, and she held a sharpened wooden spear, the tip whittled to a pale thorn. Her green eyes, cool as river jade, swept the shadows for threads of a trail.

She yanked the small one behind her and lifted the spear, stance low, coiled to thrust anywhere like a snake ready to strike. Compared to the little one, the girl moved with wariness that wrapped her like a cloak. She didn’t dismiss what she couldn’t see. She kept to the trees, slid along bark and fern, and read ground and brush with fox patience, hunting for any crease that said someone had passed.

She had no chance. Adrian had masked scent and warmth with Arcane Power like snow on tracks, and he’d drifted rather than stepped. Unless the girl had legendary strength, she wouldn’t catch even the tremor of him.

“Ailu, don’t make things up. Are you too tired?” The older girl finished a careful sweep, then, helpless and worried, touched the little one’s forehead, as if a fever could paint ghosts on the air.

“Ailu didn’t lie! I saw him, I really did, but Sister Xier never believes me!” Ailu’s mouth pinched like a sulking sparrow’s beak. She slapped the hand away, anxious heat rising like steam.

She had fainted into the brush by accident, then woke to a man floating in the air—shock sharp as ice water to a child who’d climbed into the hills to hide from people. Fear flared, and in that heartbeat Adrian felt her breath like a plucked string and folded himself away.

“Alright, alright. If you saw someone, then we leave now. Too many mad ones are below.” Xier grabbed Ailu’s hand and pulled her toward the next tier of path like a guide leading a blindfolded friend. She tore a strip from her skirt, bound her palm tight to the wooden spear, and watched the trees the way a cat watches tall grass. Paranoid, no; sharpened by need, yes.

Down below, the two of them had barely slipped the net of a pack of madmen; luck had been a thin bridge over a black gorge. Even up here, their days were lived with a startled deer’s pulse. Especially Xier—thirteen, maybe fourteen—had shed her old self like shed skin overnight.

Hunger bit first, then fatigue, twin wolves at her heels. In those first days, she and Ailu chewed bitter mountain fruit to keep their knees from buckling, the taste like unripe persimmon on the tongue. They moved camp the way shadows move, always before the mad ones drew near, and their worst night was a crawl into brush to sit and be eaten by insects like rain.

Luck threw them a bone: a hunter’s hut under firs, and within it a few tools still worth the rust. The cleavers were too heavy, and most blades were red with age. Only a small knife still had an edge, and with it Xier carved wooden spears, pale and straight, to repel anything that crawled up their door like a bad dream.

After they dug in, she realized the mad ones weren’t swarming the heights, and they nested in the hut like birds under eaves. But the air had turned colder, knives of wind slipping under clothes. The furs were long gone with the hunters, so Xier took Ailu out, hoping to find meat that breathed.

That was why they came this far. Usually she could bag a rabbit or even a mountain deer with a quick, quiet push of her meager battle-qi, a strike like a dart from grass. Today, the forest held its breath. All the animals had withdrawn, deeper into the green, as if the mountains had shut their inner gate. She wouldn’t lead Ailu into that dark. Leaves from thick shrubs would have to do.

“Ailu, hold tight. The path ahead is steep.” Xier tested the earth with her boot, pressed until it held like packed rice, then stepped. She took Ailu’s hand, and together they moved slow, each footfall placed like a careful bead on a string.