Rain found me before the sun did.
It came in thin threads through the trees, cold and persistent, stitching the canopy to the earth one drop at a time. I woke to the sound of it ticking on my pack and the stone ring I'd built around last night's coals. Damp, but not miserable. The kind of weather that hides footsteps and steals scent—good for slipping past things that think they own the forest.
I uncurled, joints reminding me I'm not actually immortal for discomfort, just for dying.
Lovely. The whole world's a wet towel.
I stowed the bedroll, checked bandages, and flexed my hands. The veins under the skin were quieter this morning, pulsing in a lazy, offbeat rhythm instead of the enraged drum from yesterday. Fran's brew had helped. Or the rest had. Or both. I wasn't arguing with the results.
Steel first: I laid the demigod blades across my knees and did a quick inspection. No mana, no awakening, just the old ritual—rag, oil, edge, spine. The weapons didn't hum as they usually do when I feed them, but even at rest they carried a meanness I appreciated. Balanced perfectly. Too honest to deceive about their purpose.
I strapped two long blades at my hips, the short curved pair across my lower back, and the long knife along my thigh. The pistols stayed in the robust case for now. Firing in forest fog is a good way to ring your ears and warn everyone from here to the coast. Besides, I wanted to hear the world today.
Walk it. Don't sprint it.
I kicked dirt over the last embers, shouldered my pack, and climbed out of the hollow. The rain threaded my braid and ran cold into my collar. I squinted up into the gray dawn smeared behind thick clouds like a bruise. The ridge path bent south, then knifed into trees so old they'd decided sunlight was a rumor.
I took the rumor anyway and started moving.
[2 hours later]
The forest changed under rain. The smell was big—wet bark, iron soil, and the faint chemical bite of old cleansing fires. Every few minutes the wind turned and brought me that metallic tang from yesterday, residual church wards cooked into the ground during some purge that half-worked and half-didn't.
I found the scar line twenty minutes in: a shallow trench running east-west, swallowed by roots but still straight as a ruler. You don't get lines like that in a place where plants are made. Humans did it. Or angels pretending to be.
Three paces north of the trench, the glass charm on my wrist pressed cold against the skin—just weight, no light. I glanced at it and kept going, placing feet where stone showed through the mud, avoiding patches that glistened too cleanly.
Tracks started showing up as the light improved, a slow parade of things that had come to drink last night. Three-toed prints with a drag mark: crawler. Hoof chips with scalloped edges: forest hog, not corrupted. Crisp, fresh human heel prints overlay both the three-toed prints and hoof chips in the new mud.
I crouched to read the human ones closely. The pressure on the ball, the depth of the toe, the stride.
"Healer," I murmured to myself, tasting the glass like a memory.
I followed them until the trench bent away and the squad's trail broke into wider paths across the fern beds. Standard practice: never let pursuers have one clean line to trace. They'd split, loop, and come back together. The rain did half the work of erasing. Time did the rest.
I could've cut it shorter. There were fractures in the ridge, and if I let my mind go soft, I could feel where they thinned the air—where a step could become a skip if I asked it right.
I didn't ask. Fran's voice still lived under my ribs: no mana. I wasn't about to pop a vein just to save ten minutes.
The forest let me pass anyway.
A berry bush bowed under the weight of water as I slid by. A rabbit shot out from under it and punished my shins for existing. I hopped backward, swore softly, and continued through ferns that seemed specifically designed to slap you in the eye at the least dignified height.
I missed this, apparently. God help me.
[Two hours later]
Something started trailing me about an hour after full light—a patience in the trees, a hush that wasn't raining. I felt it the way you have eyes on the back of your head in a room you thought you locked. Not pressure. Not hunger. Curiosity with teeth.
I took the next rise slowly, kept my profile low, and drifted right off the trail into a stand of thin pines where the needles swallowed sound. Beyond the rise, the ground dipped into a small bowl filled with bracken. Perfect place for something to think it had found a trap that looked like a refuge.
I made it look like I'd chosen the bowl by mistake: straight path, no checking corners, shoulders loose. Then I stopped behind a fallen trunk and bent like I was tying a boot.
The thing in the trees committed.
A ripple where rain didn't fall became a shape peeling itself from the shadows—a hunter, cat-shaped but too long, with too many joints. Fur clung in wet strings, blackening at the edges as if the world had burned it and decided to keep going.
It took the last meter quietly, then sprang. No roar. Good hunter. Bad choice.
I pivoted off the trunk, let it take empty air, and my right-hand blade flashed up and kissed its belly on the way past. Steel bit. The creature landed crooked and spun with a hiss from a mouth I didn't recognize. Its face: no eyes. A plate of pale bone like a mask, cracked and pulsing with dull, stubborn light.
I met it halfway—short steps, close range, no flourish. The fight stayed fast, ugly, and brief. When it finally stopped moving, rain filled the quiet again. My pulse steadied; the veins flared once and settled. I wiped the blade, scanned for company, found none, and moved on.
The rain softened toward noon. The wind shifted and brought me a new smell: oil, leather, and the faint sour ghost of powder burned in a hurry. Humans. Recent. And not from the direction of my squad.
I crouched behind a split boulder and listened. Beneath the drip, hiss, creak, chirp, and far thunder came a smaller rhythm—metal against metal, habitual, precise. A magazine is seated. A safety click. A sling buckled.
They passed twenty seconds later on the trail below, three men and a woman in Federation field gray, ponchos up, rifles cased against the rain. Not a regular patrol. Faces are too hard. Eyes calculating exits. Black-ops scavengers, maybe a cleanup crew.
They didn't see me.
I waited until the last one passed, then moved. A clean angle, a clear line, rain hiding the sound. The daggers left my hands one after another, four glints through gray. None missed. They dropped without a word.
I climbed down and checked each body. No movement. Among their gear I found a reinforced field bag humming faintly—dimensional tech, but mechanical, no mana draw. I slung it over my shoulder and stripped their weapons and ammunition into it. The veins in my arms complained at the weight, not the act.
"They'll be useful later," I muttered, and left the corpses in the forest.
The ridge broke into a low cliff, and a ravine cut the world in half. An old stone bridge used to span it; now it spanned about a third. The rest hung in broken teeth over empty air, vines stitched between them like a cruel joke.
I edged along a narrow lip on the left wall, half-eroded but passable if you liked making dumb choices carefully. I did. The rock betrayed me once—boot slid, hip hit, veins burned like oil. I froze, breathed through it, rolled out the tension, and kept moving until the far ledge accepted me.
Rain eased. The world went gray-green. "Bridge crossed," I said under my breath. "Zero angels explaining morals. Progress."
[Afternoon—The Low Pines]
The trees shifted from oak to pine, low and stubborn, turning rain into mist. The ground went soft and spongy, the kind of soil that forgets you once you lift a boot.
The squad's sign reappeared near a game trail: Sirone's even steps, Brenda's heavy precision, and Rin's ghost prints. Brit's inward-set heels, Olivia's long measured stride. Ava's tidy repair work on a white cloth snagged on a thorn. Soap, oil, faint sweetness. Their pattern was deliberate and familiar.
It was my squad.
The prints bunched and overlapped ahead—lead slowing, tail closing, standard drill. The rain ended; sound sharpened.
Then the boars decided to make undesirable choices together.
A mother and two grown offspring burst from the right, pushed by something larger up trail. They charged blindly through the ferns. I stepped into their path.
The fight was short, wet, and predictable. Two went down hard; one learned manners and fled. I cleaned the blades, dragged the carcasses aside, stacked branches for scavengers, and rolled out the tension from my shoulders. The veins under the skin murmured their disapproval and quieted.
The forest resumed breathing. I moved on.
[Late Afternoon—The Cutbank]
The trees parted and opened onto a cutbank overlooking a long, shallow valley—a ribbon gnawed through the earth. Wide flats of sand, tall grass, scattered rock. Track heaven or ambush heaven, depending on who believes faster.
Twelve sets of disciplined prints crossed the flats, stride and spacing unmistakable. Brenda's lead, Sirone's echo, and the rest falling into rhythm. They'd carried weight between them—Brenda and Sirone sharing the load.
I slid down the bank on my heels, crossed the flats at an angle so I wouldn't erase what I might need later, and entered the brush on the far side. Birds lifted ahead in pairs—forest gossip saying company uptrail.
By the time the valley narrowed into young trees, the rain was gone and light leaked gold through the canopy. My body moved like it remembered. The ache in my veins stayed a passenger, tapping the glass now and then.
[Evening—The Last Rise]
The climb was gradual but deceptive. Each bend promised a summit and lied. The prints grew fresher—minutes old.
At the crest, I went to ground behind a low juniper and waited.
At first only light and leaves moved. Then the rhythm changed: birds silenced in sequence, leaves shivering without wind, and silhouettes sliding between trunks.
Twelve of them. No banners. No lamps. The kind of silence that said trained.
They moved the way we used to. Because they were mine.
Brenda led, head low, iron in her posture. Sirone, half a pace right. Rin flanking left, Brit nearer center, Olivia steady behind. Toma and Sarian guarding the arc. Chinada in the middle, calm as cut stone. Mia is close to Ava, pretending duty. Nekro and Apricot are separated by distance and history.
Between Brenda and Sirone, the twin strap lines told the rest—they were carrying someone, bound, unhappy, with the weight shared perfectly.
My chest tightened. Not because of the prisoner. Because they still moved like us, even with me missing.
I stayed in shadow, watching for limps, tight shoulders, and scars new and old. Ava's ponytail is shorter. Mia's cheek was marked. Sarian's new knife. Toma's boots are finally broken in. None of them looked up.
Good. No theatrics. Not yet.
They reached the hollow's middle. Brenda raised two fingers; the line halted, spread, and melted into cover. No panic. No hurry. Discipline.
I slid back from the rock lip, lungs quiet. They were here. I'd found them.
The old instincts stirred, rolling their necks, eager. I pressed the cold charm on my wrist until it bit—a reminder, not an activation.
Not yet.
When the last pair disappeared west, I counted to sixty and stood. The forest whispered their trail ahead. I followed, slow and steady, until the wind brought their voices—Brenda's orders, Olivia's pen scratching against her waterproof board, and a laugh that started as Rin's and softened away.
My shoulders rolled once, remembering how to be part of something.
Then I stepped out of the trees and went to meet my squad.