The jungle did not push him away.
It let him stay.
Midarion learned early that this was worse.
The first weeks were a blur of damp air and aching muscle, of mornings that began before light and nights that refused to fully darken. The canopy swallowed the sky so completely that time lost its edges. Days passed without markers. Hunger arrived without warning. Sleep came shallow and uneasy.
He stopped counting how long he had been gone.
He counted instead what remained.
His hands were the first thing he checked each morning. At twelve, they were already roughened beyond their years. Old cuts had sealed into thin white seams, crossing his knuckles and palms like poorly drawn maps. Some mornings his fingers refused to close all the way until he forced them, breath tight, jaw clenched.
He learned not to curse when that happened.
Sound carried too far.
Keel slept lighter now. The small dragon no longer curled in careless comfort, wings slack and loose. He kept one eye half-open even in rest, head angled toward the open jungle as if listening for something Midarion could not yet hear.
"Good," Midarion whispered once, though he wasn't sure why.
The jungle answered with nothing.
Rain came in sheets during the first season. It soaked through leaves and skin alike, found every weakness in shelter and flame. His fire died more often than it lived. The ground softened until every step threatened to give way, roots shifting underfoot like something breathing.
Twice, his shelter collapsed.
The second time, he did not rebuild it the same way.
He stopped trying to make the jungle comfortable.
Instead, he learned how not to offend it.
Failures came quietly. They did not announce themselves as lessons. They arrived as missed strikes, as prey that vanished after days of tracking, as sudden stillness where sound should have been. Once, he climbed too high chasing a scent that did not belong to what he thought it did, and the branch beneath him cracked.
He caught himself before falling.
His arms shook for a long time afterward.
That night, crouched low in mud with Keel pressed flat against his chest, he smelled something heavy pass nearby—iron, damp fur, old blood. Massive footsteps vibrated through the earth. Keel did not chirp. Did not move.
Neither did Midarion.
When the presence passed, he stayed frozen until his limbs burned.
After that, he stopped assuming the jungle would forgive mistakes.
Pain became something else.
At first, it was loud. Demanding. Something to fight through.
Later, it grew more precise.
Pain told him when to stop pushing. When to slow his breathing. When to stay still and let the world move past him instead. He learned to listen without resentment, to obey without feeling weak.
There were still days he broke skin. Still nights he bled.
He just no longer thought that meant he was losing.
Obsession arrived without spectacle.
It lived in repetition. In the way he woke before dawn without deciding to. In the way he returned to the same stretches of jungle not because they were safe, but because they were not. In the way silence no longer unsettled him.
Some days passed without him speaking at all.
Keel adapted alongside him. The dragon grew leaner, more alert. Less playful. He no longer chased insects for amusement. He watched shadows instead. When Midarion stopped, Keel stopped. When Midarion waited, Keel waited.
They hunted together without signal.
Timing replaced urgency.
There were days Midarion did not hunt.
On those days, he climbed.
The higher ridges offered no safety, only perspective. From there, the jungle spread endlessly, layers of green broken only by rivers cutting through it like old scars. Astraelis lay somewhere beyond that horizon, distant enough to feel unreal.
He did not picture it clearly anymore.
Instead, he knelt when the canopy thinned and stars broke through.
Sometimes he spoke to them. Sometimes he simply bowed his head.
There were nights he prayed without asking for anything.
Elhyra arrived as quietly as breath.
The jungle always noticed before Midarion did. Sound softened. The air felt held, like the moment before rain. He would look up from whatever he was doing and find her standing nearby, robes untouched by mud or leaf.
"You're counting wrong," she said once, watching him arrange stones into careful rows.
Midarion frowned. "No, I'm not."
She crouched beside him, fingers brushing the ground. "You are. You rush the tens."
He stared, then sighed. "I don't like them."
"That doesn't change them," Elhyra replied.
He scowled. "You sound like Selina."
For a moment, Elhyra didn't answer.
The jungle hummed softly around them.
"She would never intentionally hurt you," Elhyra said at last.
That startled him. "Oh, I doubt that."
Elhyra's gaze remained on the stones. "What do you mean?"
Midarion hesitated. The wolf's presence pressed at his awareness. Keel shifted beside him.
"I would rather not talk about it," he said finally. "You should ask her."
Silence stretched.
Elhyra rose slowly. "I mostly come when Theomar is gone because I can," she said, tone steady but no longer gentle. "And because you need more than strength."
She met his eyes. "You will."
Their lessons were uncomfortable in ways training was not. Letters carved into stone with charcoal. Numbers arranged and rearranged until they stopped blurring together. Words that felt stiff in his mouth, rules that did not bend no matter how hard he pressed them.
Once, in frustration, Midarion slammed his palm into the dirt. "This doesn't help me survive."
Elhyra's tone sharpened, just slightly. "It helps you leave."
Before he could respond, a sudden shriek cut through the jungle—sharp, unfamiliar. Keel lifted his head instantly, wings flaring.
Elhyra rose. "Enough for today."
She vanished moments later, leaving Midarion unsettled in a way pain never managed.
Theomar came rarely.
When he did, it was brief, almost accidental.
Once, Midarion returned to his camp to find him standing there, gaze sweeping the area with quiet intensity.
"You're going deeper," Theomar said.
Midarion nodded. "Yes."
"That path doesn't lead where you think."
"I know."
Theomar studied him for a long moment. "Strength gained too early breaks people."
Midarion's jaw tightened. "So does waiting."
Theomar opened his mouth—as if to say more—then closed it.
"Survive," he said instead. "That's all."
Another time, Theomar only remarked, "You're quieter."
Midarion blinked. "Is that bad?"
"No," Theomar replied. "It means you're starting to hear."
Before leaving, Theomar knelt.
Midarion slowed without being told. He recognized the signs—the deliberate clearing of earth, the precise angles drawn into the soil. The symbols were always the same. They never blurred.
Theomar pressed his thumb into his palm. A single drop of blood fell into the center of the formation.
He recited the formula in a low voice. Midarion had never been able to repeat the words. They slipped from memory the moment they were spoken, as if they refused to be owned.
The air tightened.
Grey emerged from the trees.
The wolf did not acknowledge Theomar. His attention fixed on Midarion alone.
"You know the rules," Theomar said, already rising. "He watches. He intervenes only if death comes too close."
Midarion nodded. He had heard it before.
Then he was gone.
The jungle thickened as Midarion pushed farther in. Trees grew wider, older. Some bled sap the color of dusk. Others bore scars deeper than his own. Tracks changed—larger impressions, fewer signs, longer stretches of nothing at all.
When he failed now, the cost was higher.
Recovery took longer. Mistakes lingered. The stronger he became, the less forgiving the world seemed.
That angered him.
Then it humbled him.
He stopped measuring progress in victories.
He measured it in restraint.
In knowing when to turn back—and when not to.
Some nights, exhaustion pressed so heavy on his chest that he wondered if this was all he would ever be: a boy alone in a place that would erase him without hesitation.
On those nights, he watched Keel sleep.
Still breathing. Still warm.
Enough.
By the end of the second year, the jungle no longer reacted to him as an intruder.
It reacted as if weighing him.
Fog rolled thick one evening, muffling sound and sight alike. Midarion slowed, every sense sharp. Keel suddenly shifted, placing himself slightly in front of Midarion's chest, wings tensed.
Midarion froze.
The feeling came without warning.
Not fear.
Attention.
Somewhere deeper within the trees, something moved—not loudly, not aggressively. Just enough to be known.
Keel made a choice.
He hissed once—low, controlled—and nudged Midarion backward.
Midarion obeyed.
As they retreated, careful and slow, Midarion kept his eyes on the darkness between the massive trunks, on the places light refused to settle.
He did not see it.
But he knew.
Something was watching him now.
And this time, it was not the jungle.