Kael learned quickly that the world treated wanderers differently than refugees.
Refugees begged to be ignored. They stayed close to roads, close to walls, close to anything that promised protection, even if that promise had already been broken once. Their eyes were always lifted, searching for permission to exist one more day.
Wanderers were different.
Wanderers were watched.
On Aerthyra, roads were not lines carved into maps or stone. They were agreements—fragile, constantly renegotiated understandings between danger and necessity. A road existed because something powerful allowed it to. A caravan passed because a predator chose not to hunt that day. A village endured because something worse lived farther away and drew the world's attention elsewhere.
Kael stepped into that ecosystem without ceremony.
And the ecosystem noticed.
He did not announce himself as an adventurer. He did not claim titles or display trophies. He walked into settlements quietly, carrying only what he needed, leaving when attention sharpened too much. He listened more than he spoke. He watched how people stood when they talked about problems, how their eyes shifted when they lied, how their voices changed when fear replaced hope.
That was how he learned where work existed.
The first contract came from a place that barely deserved the name.
A farming outpost clinging to the edge of the Glass Plains, where the ground shimmered unnaturally under Sol Aurex and reflected Sol Noctis like a dull, bleeding mirror at night. The soil there was thin but stubborn, and the people matched it. They had lost livestock for weeks—goats dragged away, penned beasts torn open without sound.
Something hunted at night.
Fast.
Clever.
Uninterested in traps.
They had tried fires. They had tried noise. They had tried staying awake until exhaustion dulled their fear into mistakes.
Nothing worked.
When Kael arrived, their offers were already stripped bare. Coin had been promised and rescinded. Food rationed tighter with every loss. What remained was desperation, sharp enough to cut through pride.
Kael listened.
He did not promise success. He did not demand payment upfront. He asked only where the animals were taken and who had seen the creature last.
At dusk, while the villagers argued quietly among themselves, Kael walked the perimeter alone. He studied tracks where others saw only churned dirt. He tested the ground with the butt of his spear, listening for hollow echoes beneath hardened glass-sand. He paid attention to the wind—not where it blew, but where it died abruptly, swallowed by something that bent air around itself.
He did not set traps.
He did not light torches.
Fire announced presence.
Traps assumed stupidity.
Whatever hunted here was neither.
Kael waited.
When Sol Noctis rose, bleeding dull red across the plains, the creature emerged.
It did not charge. It did not stalk openly. It circled first, testing the night the way Kael tested ground. Low to the earth, many-limbed, its body looked like hardened tar threaded with bone. It moved with the confidence of something that had never been challenged and had learned that fear belonged to others.
Kael did not rush it.
He let it come close enough to believe it was in control.
Then he cut it.
Not deeply.
A shallow slice to the hind limb—enough to draw blood and steal certainty. When it turned, startled, he gave it another along the flank. The third cut grazed the neck—not lethal, not yet—but personal.
The creature screamed.
Not in pain.
In offense.
It charged.
Kael stepped aside.
The movement was small, economical, practiced. The creature overcommitted, its wounded limb betraying it by a fraction of a second.
That was all Kael needed.
He drove the spear through the base of its skull and twisted once, ending it before rage could become desperation.
The plains fell silent.
The villagers emerged cautiously, weapons raised, disbelief written across faces lined by sun and dust. They stared at the carcass, then at Kael, as if expecting him to glow or vanish.
"You didn't use magic," one of them said finally, confusion outweighing gratitude.
Kael wiped his spear clean.
"No," he replied.
They paid him in grain and a place to sleep.
By morning, they were telling others.
Not that a hero had come.
But that a quiet boy with a spear had solved a problem without asking the world's permission.
That was how it began.
The work changed as Kael moved farther from settled lands.
Near old trade routes, the contracts were simple—clear roads of beasts that had grown too bold, escort caravans through stretches where something liked to test resolve, recover bodies from ruins where families needed certainty more than hope.
Farther out, the work grew stranger.
He was asked to enter a collapsed watchtower where voices whispered at night and drove animals mad. He discovered not ghosts, but a fungal growth feeding on sound and fear, vibrating through stone. He burned it carefully, not with flame but with controlled collapse, sealing the chamber so it could not spread.
In another place, he tracked a missing child through scrubland where the ground shifted underfoot. He found her alive, hiding in a crevice, too frightened to move after something had followed her footsteps for hours without attacking. Kael did not hunt the thing immediately. He waited until the child slept, then led the predator away from the settlement before ending it where no one would ever know how close it had come.
People began to notice patterns.
Kael did not take contracts that required spectacle. He refused work that demanded cruelty. He never stayed long after a job was done.
And he never spoke of gods.
That alone made some nervous.
Others relieved.
Word spread unevenly, carried by caravans and pilgrims, by traders who preferred quiet solutions to loud ones. Descriptions varied. Some called him thin. Others said he moved like water under strain. A few insisted he had no shadow at certain times of day.
Kael did not correct them.
Letting people believe different things made him harder to track.
He learned the rhythm of wandering.
Where to stop long enough to be remembered.
Where to leave before memory sharpened into curiosity.
Which towns watched newcomers like prey, and which watched them like tools.
He learned that wanderers were tested constantly.
By innkeepers who overcharged to see if you argued.
By guards who asked unnecessary questions to see if you hesitated.
By other fighters who wanted to measure themselves against you.
Kael chose his responses carefully.
Sometimes he paid and left.
Sometimes he answered and stayed.
Sometimes he walked away without a word.
The world adjusted around him.
Predators began to avoid paths he frequented—not fleeing, not afraid, but choosing other routes. Storms broke strangely near him, not diverted, but misjudged, as if the weather itself calculated wrong once in a while. People who traveled with him noticed that ambushes came from predictable angles, that paths opened where none should exist.
Kael noticed too.
He did not ask why.
He knew better than to ask questions the world might answer too loudly.
He was no longer running.
He was moving with intent.
Not toward glory. Not toward destiny.
Toward problems that needed solving and places where someone had to stand between ordinary people and things that believed they were entitled to them.
An adventurer, they would later call him.
Kael never used the word.
To him, it was simpler.
He walked where the world frayed.
And when it bled, he made it stop.