The companions followed a narrow deer trail that wound its way through a thicket of withered trees. The air smelled faintly of ash, but here, in the quiet between wars, the world felt almost alive again.
Darius walked at the rear, his heavy boots crunching through dry leaves, while Seliora moved like a whisper, her staff brushing branches aside. Aric stayed near Kael, his eyes darting often toward the older warrior as if trying to study every movement, every decision.
It was Seliora who broke the silence first. "You've been quieter than usual, Aric."
The boy glanced up, startled. "Just… thinking."
"Dangerous habit," Darius rumbled, though there was no bite in his voice.
Kael didn't turn, but his words carried back with a calm certainty. "Thinking is what makes a blade more than steel."
Aric frowned thoughtfully. "Is that why you always seem… ahead? Like you know what's coming?"
Kael's crimson eyes flickered over his shoulder, and for a moment, the weight of centuries seemed to hang in his gaze. "Knowing comes at a cost. You'll pay it soon enough."
The boy wanted to ask more, but Seliora interjected with a sudden laugh. "If you keep answering his questions like that, Kael, he'll end up brooding more than you."
"Not possible," Darius muttered.
That earned a ripple of laughter through the group—small, but genuine.
Later, as they paused by a creek to refill waterskins, Aric tried again, this time more direct. "Kael… how do you carry it? All of it—the weight, the blood, the memories?"
The older warrior crouched by the water, rinsing his hands. For a long moment he said nothing, watching the current pull away the ripples of crimson left behind from a half-healed cut on his palm. Finally, he spoke.
"I don't carry it," he said softly. "It carries me. Every scar, every voice that fell silent. They walk with me. Sometimes behind, sometimes ahead. But always there."
Seliora, listening from the opposite bank, lowered her gaze. Even Darius looked unsettled, shifting his stance uncomfortably.
But Aric didn't look away. "Then… maybe that's what I'll do too. Let it carry me, instead of letting it drown me."
Kael's eyes softened. Not approval, not pity—something deeper. "Then you'll walk further than most."
The group moved on as dusk approached, the trees thinning into open plains again. Camp came easily that night: Darius set the stones for the fire, Seliora wove faint wards to keep beasts at bay, and Aric fumbled through sharpening his blade under Kael's watchful gaze.
For once, there was no talk of the Sovereign. No mention of death or duty. Instead, they traded small pieces of themselves.
Seliora told of her childhood under the shadow of towers where mages whispered of things too dangerous to speak. Darius spoke of his brother, lost to war long before the Sovereign rose. Aric shared stories of his village—small, unremarkable—yet his voice cracked with fondness.
When it was Kael's turn, he was silent for so long that Aric thought he wouldn't answer at all. But then, in the firelight, Kael spoke one name.
"Rivenhart."
It was all he said, yet the name lingered in the smoke like a ghost. None pressed further, but they understood.
The night settled around them, heavy but not suffocating. And as Aric drifted toward sleep, he realized something profound:
They weren't just surviving anymore.
They were becoming.