Kael did not notice the change all at once.
It crept into his life the way rot did—quiet, patient, hidden beneath something that still looked solid if you didn't press too hard. He was used to fear. Used to hatred. Used to people hoping he would solve what they could not.
This was different.
This was certainty.
The village of Ressan Ford lay where a river narrowed and slowed, its banks tangled with reeds and the bones of old stone bridges that had collapsed long before Kael was born. It was the kind of place maps forgot on purpose—too small to protect, too inconvenient to conquer, too stubborn to die.
Kael intended to cross the river and keep moving.
He never reached the water.
They were already gathered when he emerged from the treeline. Not armed. Not hiding. Men, women, a few children standing in a loose half-circle, faces turned toward him as if they had been watching the road for hours.
No fear.
No doubt.
A woman stepped forward. Older than most, her back bent from labor rather than age, hands scarred and thickened by years of work. She bowed—not in reverence, not in submission, but with purpose.
"You came," she said.
Kael stopped.
"I'm passing through," he replied.
The word passed through the crowd like a held breath finally released.
Passing.
As if that alone meant survival.
"We lit the fires," a younger man said quickly, eager. "Three nights. Like the trader said."
Kael felt something tighten behind his ribs.
"What fires?" he asked.
The woman turned and gestured toward the riverbank.
Stone cairns stood along the water's edge, evenly spaced, each topped with a small flame burning low and steady against the encroaching dusk. No sigils. No charms. No blood.
Just human fire.
Kael stared at them longer than he should have.
"They said you'd see them," the woman continued softly. "That you'd know."
"Who said?" Kael asked.
"A man from the west," she replied. "He said you stop things. That you don't ask for payment."
Kael swallowed.
That man was either dead now, or had moved on to spread the same poison elsewhere.
"What's wrong?" Kael asked.
The relief that swept through the village was immediate and devastating.
People sagged where they stood. Someone laughed once, sharp and broken. A child began to cry—not from fear, but because the waiting was over.
They led him to the barn first.
That was where they kept the bodies.
Not buried. Not burned. Preserved by cold river air and fear of what might happen if they disturbed them. Five corpses lay inside, laid out on old grain sacks. All adults. All torn open from the inside.
Not claws.
Not blades.
Hands.
Human hands.
The thing had been careful. Surgical. Ribs cracked outward, organs removed while the victims still lived. The faces were frozen in expressions Kael recognized too well—shock, disbelief, the dawning realization that pleading would not help.
"It comes from the water," the woman said. "At night. Always when the fires burn lowest."
Kael crouched beside the nearest body and examined the wounds.
"Did anyone see it?" he asked.
A man nodded. "Once. It wore my brother's face."
That narrowed it down.
Not a god. Not a remnant.
Something worse.
A skin-walker bound to grief and proximity—feeding not just on flesh, but on recognition. It used faces people loved because that made resistance hesitate.
Kael stood slowly.
"Get everyone inside," he said. "Lock doors. Extinguish every fire but the cairns."
"You're staying?" someone asked.
Kael did not answer.
Night fell heavy and fast.
The river grew louder as darkness settled, its surface reflecting Sol Noctis in dull streaks of red. The fires along the bank burned low, wavering as if something unseen passed between them and the wind.
Kael waited in the open.
No hiding.
No traps.
He wanted it to come to him.
It rose from the water without sound—a tall, dripping shape pulling itself onto the bank, skin sagging and reshaping as it moved. Its face shifted as it walked, settling eventually into the woman's husband, dead these three nights now.
"Kael," it said in her voice. "Help me."
Kael did not flinch.
"You don't get to speak," he said.
The thing screamed then—not in pain, but in rage—and lunged.
Kael met it head-on.
The first strike shattered its knee, bending it backward with a wet crack. It fell hard, screeching, hands clawing at the ground. Kael drove his spear through its shoulder and pinned it there, then smashed its face with the butt until bone collapsed inward and the borrowed features dissolved into something slick and wrong.
It fought like a human who refused to die—grabbing, biting, tearing. Its nails raked across Kael's chest, opening deep furrows that burned as if packed with filth.
Kael grabbed its throat.
And squeezed.
Not to kill.
To feel it resist.
"You used their faces," he said, voice low and steady. "You used love."
The thing thrashed harder.
Kael dragged it to the river and forced its head beneath the surface. It screamed underwater, bubbles churning red as blood spilled from its mouth. It clawed at his arms, at his face, at anything it could reach.
Kael held it there.
Until the struggle weakened.
Until the water stilled.
Until whatever made it move gave up.
He did not let go immediately.
When he finally released it, the body floated briefly—then dissolved, skin sloughing away into the river like rotting cloth.
Kael collapsed to one knee, breathing hard, blood dripping into the reeds.
The village did not cheer.
They approached slowly, reverently, as if sudden movement might break whatever fragile agreement held the night together.
The woman knelt beside him.
"It's over?" she asked.
"Yes," Kael said.
She bowed again.
Deeper this time.
"Stay," she said. "Just for tonight."
Kael looked at the fires still burning on the riverbank.
At the way people watched him—not with fear now, not even with gratitude, but with reliance.
He stood.
"No," he said gently. "Take the fires down. Don't light them again."
"But—"
"If something else comes," Kael continued, "it won't be me you're calling. It'll be worse."
Understanding flickered in her eyes.
Not relief.
Responsibility.
Kael turned and walked away before dawn.
Behind him, Ressan Ford dismantled its cairns stone by stone, learning too late what he had already understood.
Hope, when aimed at a single man, was just another kind of violence.
And Kael felt the weight of it follow him down the road—heavier than blood, heavier than gods—because the world had begun to wait for him instead of choosing for itself.
That was how saviors were made.
And how they were destroyed.