Kael destroyed the marker by the river before the sun rose high enough to warm the stones.
He did not do it in anger.
Anger was loud. This was deliberate.
He started with the wood—upright posts split down the grain with controlled strikes, each blow measured, each crack echoing across the water. He wrenched them free and threw the broken lengths into the river where the current caught them immediately, spinning them away as if eager to erase the shape they had tried to hold.
Then the stones.
He lifted them one by one and smashed them together until they fractured, scattering the pieces so no circle could be rebuilt without effort. When smaller stones resisted, he ground them into the dirt with his heel, crushing intent into rubble.
Stone by stone.
Refusal made physical.
The villagers gathered as the sound spread. They stood barefoot in the cold earth, wrapped in shawls and half-armor and fear that had not yet learned its new shape. No one tried to stop him. No one understood him well enough to try.
When the last stone fell into the river, Kael straightened and turned to face them.
"I won't be your answer," he said. His voice carried—not because he raised it, but because silence had made space. "Not now. Not ever."
The words struck differently than they had before.
Not as warning.
As boundary.
A woman sobbed openly, pressing her hands to her mouth as if grief might spill out if she didn't hold it back. An older man shouted that Kael was condemning them, that monsters would return, that the world was cruel and had finally given them something sharp enough to push back with.
Others just stared.
One man stepped forward, shaking so hard the knife in his hand rattled against his palm. He didn't know why he'd drawn it. He looked as frightened of himself as of Kael.
"This is because of you," the man said, voice breaking. "Everything that's happened—it's because you came."
Kael moved.
Not fast enough to look inhuman.
Not slow enough to invite mistake.
He caught the man's wrist, twisted gently, and took the knife without cutting skin or pride. The blade fell into the dirt between them.
Kael didn't throw it away.
He handed it back.
"You're still capable," Kael said quietly. "Don't forget that."
The man stared at the knife, then at his own hands, as if seeing them for the first time.
No one spoke after that.
Kael shouldered his pack and turned away from the river. He walked through the village without hurry, past houses that smelled of smoke and grief, past people who had wanted him to be simpler than he was. Some watched him go with anger. Some with betrayal. Some with something dangerously close to worship still clinging to their eyes.
He did not look back.
He left before dawn fully broke—not because he feared pursuit, but because staying longer would have softened resolve into regret.
No one chased him.
No one followed.
But everything was changed.
Behind him, the village would have to decide what to do when the next sickness came. When the next beast crossed the river. When fear rose and there was no name to speak into the dark.
Ahead of him, Kael felt heavier—not with guilt, not with doubt, but with understanding.
He had made a promise.
Not to them.
To himself.
He would not become an answer people stopped searching past. He would not be a place where responsibility went to die. He would not let gratitude turn into surrender.
And if that meant walking away from people who needed him—
Then that was the price of remaining human.
Kael kept moving, boots striking the road with steady rhythm, carrying with him the knowledge that the hardest violence was not what he inflicted—
But what he refused to become.