After the night of blood, Ashfields did not return to anything that could honestly be called normal.
Normal had always been a fragile illusion there, something assembled out of habit and exhaustion rather than stability. People woke, worked, ate, slept, and convinced themselves that repetition was safety. But after that night, even the illusion thinned. Voices dropped. Laughter came in short bursts and died quickly, as if everyone feared the sound might carry too far. Fires were kept low—not only to avoid drawing eyes from the plains, but because warmth itself had become suspect. Heat reminded people how easily it turned into flame, how quickly flame became loss.
Kael felt the shift before anyone named it.
He felt it in the way eyes lingered on him just a moment too long, in the way conversations paused when he entered a space and resumed only after he left. He noticed how children watched him when they thought he wasn't looking, copying the way he stood, the way he placed his feet, the way his shoulders stayed loose even when still.
He had stepped into something unnamed.
Not adulthood.
Not leadership.
Something worse.
Responsibility without authority.
It was the most dangerous place a person could stand, because everyone expected something from you, and no one had agreed to follow.
His body healed quickly.
Too quickly.
The gash along his arm sealed itself within days, though the scar remained—pale and jagged, cutting across his skin like a reminder carved by a careless hand. Garrin noticed first, because Garrin noticed bodies the way craftsmen noticed tools. Mara noticed second, because she noticed everything eventually.
"You should be stiff for weeks," Garrin muttered one morning as Kael lifted a water barrel one-handed, rolling his shoulder as if testing tension rather than strain.
Kael shrugged, setting the barrel down without effort.
"I was," he said. "Yesterday."
Garrin grunted, dissatisfied, and said nothing more. But from that day on, he watched Kael move the way old soldiers watched new recruits—not looking for strength, but for waste.
And there was less of it every day.
Kael ran farther than the other children. Then farther than most of the adults. He learned how to distribute effort the way experienced runners did—how to let breath and heartbeat fall into alignment, how to let discomfort become information rather than command. Pain still arrived, but it no longer ruled him. It spoke, and he listened, and then he decided.
This was not magic.
Magic demanded permission, or talent, or blood.
This was repetition.
Correction.
Endurance sharpened into something exact.
Under Aerthyra's heavier gravity, those skills mattered more than raw power. Kael's muscles thickened slowly, but his tendons hardened into resilient cords. His balance became unsettlingly precise—not supernatural, not flawless, but constantly recalculated, as if his body never stopped negotiating with the ground beneath him.
He fell less.
And when he did fall, he was already moving by the time others expected him to stay down.
No one officially trained him.
That was another lie people told themselves to stay comfortable.
Everyone trained him.
The scavenger showed him how to walk without leaving obvious tracks, how to step on stone rather than soil, how to let weight settle instead of strike. A former caravan scout taught him how to read wind the way others read faces, how to smell rain days before clouds gathered. A scarred woman who had once fought in pit arenas taught him how to strike with elbows and knees when weapons were lost, how to target joints instead of strength.
They never called it teaching.
They called it survival.
Kael absorbed it all—not greedily, not blindly. He kept what worked. He discarded what didn't. He adjusted techniques until they fit his reach, his timing, his speed.
That adaptation unsettled the adults more than raw talent would have.
It meant Kael wasn't copying.
He was becoming.
Three weeks after the mercenary raid, Garrin found tracks at dawn.
They were too clean. Too deliberate. Too patient.
"These aren't raiders," he said quietly, crouched at the edge of a dried wash. "They're looking for something."
Mara felt the familiar pressure then—the same quiet weight she had sensed years ago when divine auditors passed through Ashfields. Not gods themselves, but the residue they left behind.
Hunters.
The kind paid to erase inconvenience.
Kael listened from the edge of the gathering, his heart steady, his face calm in a way no child's should have been.
"They'll come at night," he said.
Garrin nodded grimly.
"They always do."
Ashfields packed again.
Not everything. Not everyone.
Running was not panic.
Running was planning.
They split into smaller groups, following routes agreed upon long ago—paths that curved and doubled back through scrubland and ravines, routes that broke sightlines and erased certainty. Supplies were redistributed. Fires were extinguished completely.
Kael was assigned to Mara's group.
Not because she asked.
Because no one dared argue.
They moved at dusk, Sol Noctis painting the world in long red shadows that disguised depth and distance. Kael took point—not as a leader, but as a sensor. He felt subtle changes in the air where movement disturbed stillness, noticed how silence bent around approaching shapes.
Human awareness, honed far enough, felt like intuition.
It wasn't.
It was attention sharpened until it cut.
The attack came while they crossed a shallow ravine.
Silent.
Precise.
A bolt took the man behind Kael through the throat before anyone could react. He fell without a sound, shock frozen on his face more than pain.
The group froze.
Kael didn't.
"Move," he hissed, grabbing Mara's wrist and pulling her forward. "Now."
"Wait—" someone whispered.
Another bolt struck the ground where Kael had stood a heartbeat earlier.
The hunters revealed themselves then—three figures in dull, unmarked armor, faces hidden, movements efficient and unhurried.
Professionals.
Kael ran.
Not blindly.
With intent.
He led the group down a path that forced the hunters to spread, using broken terrain and uneven ground to fracture pursuit. He counted breaths. Steps. Heartbeats. He adjusted pace not for speed, but for control.
When a woman stumbled behind him, Kael caught her by the arm and shoved her forward.
"Don't stop," he said quietly. "They want hesitation."
They escaped.
But not cleanly.
Two people didn't make it out.
Kael did not look back.
That was the moment something inside him hardened—not into cruelty, but into clarity. Survival demanded decisions. Hesitation killed more surely than mistakes.
They hid in a limestone cave until dawn.
No fires.
No whispers.
Just breathing and waiting.
Mara watched Kael from across the cave, her healer's eyes missing nothing. Blood streaked his sleeve—not his own this time. His gaze was steady, distant, carrying weight no child should bear.
When the others slept, she crossed the cave and knelt beside him.
"They're not hunting Ashfields," she said softly. "They're hunting you."
Kael nodded.
"I know."
"You didn't before."
"I felt it," he replied. "After the first man died."
Mara closed her eyes.
She had delayed this choice too long.
"There are places," she said carefully, "where even gods hesitate. Routes that scatter attention. People who understand hiding better than fighting."
Kael met her gaze.
"You're saying I should leave."
"I'm saying," she whispered, "that if you stay, everyone who loves you will keep dying."
Kael didn't argue.
He had already done the calculation.
They parted at dawn.
No speeches.
No promises.
Mara pressed a small bundle into Kael's hands—bandages, dried roots, a blade barely long enough to be called a knife. Then she added something else, closing his fingers around it.
A cord bracelet.
Frayed. Repaired countless times.
"So you remember," she said.
"Remember what?" Kael asked.
"That you were loved," she said softly, "before the world decided you were dangerous."
Kael nodded.
He didn't cry.
He turned and ran.
Kael traveled alone.
At first, fear followed him like a shadow. Then hunger. Then cold. Eventually, distance mattered more than any of them. He learned how to move in ways that confused pursuit—walking in streams, doubling back over rock, breaking patterns before they formed. He slept lightly. Woke often. Trusted little.
His body adapted further.
He could run for hours without collapse. Fight through exhaustion without losing precision. Push pain aside—not ignoring it, but shelving it for later.
This was not magic.
This was survival taken seriously.
Behind him, the hunters lost certainty.
Then direction.
Then patience.
The world noticed before the gods did.
Predators avoided him more often than not. Storms broke strangely around him—not diverted, not controlled, but misjudged. Paths opened where none should exist—not guided, but available.
Choice followed him.
Kael didn't know why.
He only knew that running would not be enough forever.
Sooner or later, he would have to stop.
And when he did, the world would finally look at him properly.