They left Lorenfell in the gray chill of morning, breath fogging in the air as they stepped out from the guest house with packs cinched tight and cloaks drawn close.
The city felt different now that they were leaving it—less like a maze of stone and power, more like a place they had passed through on the way to something else. Carts rattled over cobbles, street vendors called half-heartedly to early customers, and the palace spires caught the first touch of sun far above the narrower streets where they walked.
"Supply wagon's at the north gate," Garran said, adjusting the strap of his pack. "We stick close, we get a smoother road for half the distance."
Lysa yawned. "You say that like you're not going to spend the whole time glaring at the driver's technique."
"If he hits every rut between here and the border, I reserve the right to criticize," Garran replied.
Naera walked quietly between them, staff tapping a steady rhythm on the stones. Trin took up the rear, glancing back once at the city they were leaving behind. Lorenfell's silhouette rose in tiers of stone and glass and banners, the great cathedral's spire still visible over the rooftops.
He offered it a silent farewell, then turned his back and followed the others toward the gate.
They stopped only briefly near the outer market to pick up last-minute supplies.
Lysa haggled over the price of arrowheads with a wiry smith who swore his work was "good enough to kill a dragon, if you can reach it." Garran bought dried meat, hard cheese, and extra oil for armor hinges. Naera picked up a new packet of ink and a small bundle of waxed paper to keep her notes dry.
Trin considered the stalls with a different eye.
He bought an extra hatchet, a coil of sturdy rope, a handful of long nails, and a small metal square better suited to measuring boards than repairing armor. The stall owner looked at his collection, then at him.
"Building something?" the man asked.
"Maybe," Trin said.
By the time they reached the north gate, the supply wagon was already there, horses stamping and snorting in the cold. The driver, a broad-shouldered woman with a scar along her jaw, gave Garran a curt nod and a grunt that passed for greeting.
They climbed aboard, found what space they could among crates and barrels, and settled in as the city walls began to roll slowly past.
The road beyond Lorenfell was familiar and yet lighter this time.
No dragon shadowed their steps. No urgent summons pressed them forward. The air held the ordinary scents of winter fields and distant smoke, the rhythm of wheels and hooves and quiet conversation.
They made good time.
The first day passed with little more trouble than a stubborn wheel rut and Lysa's muttering about frozen toes. They camped near a copse of leafless trees, sharing a fire with the wagon crew, stories drifting lazily between them with the smoke.
On the second day they left the wagon behind where it turned toward another route, continuing on foot along the branch that led toward the border.
Garran set a steady pace. Naera walked beside him, occasionally jotting a note or sketching a quick map line when the landscape shifted. Lysa ranged ahead and to the sides, bow unstrung but never far from hand. Trin brought up the rear, listening to the rise and fall of their voices, the crunch of frost-hardened ground under their boots.
On the third day the land began to look more familiar.
The particular slant of the hills. The shape of a stand of trees near a bend in the road. The stretch of open ground where they had once watched dark shapes move against the sky.
By midafternoon the border town's palisade rose ahead, smoke curling from chimneys, the sentry post at the gate outlined against the pale sky.
"Home again," Lysa said, exhaling.
"Until someone decides we need to go somewhere worse," Garran replied.
The guards at the gate recognized them and waved them through with a mixture of respect and wariness that hadn't been there before the dragon. Garran peeled off almost immediately toward the command post.
"I'll report in," he said. "You two get settled at the barracks. Trin—"
"I'll find you later," Trin said. "I have something I want to do first."
Garran eyed him for a heartbeat, reading more than Trin said out loud, then nodded. "Don't get yourself killed by a falling tree," he said.
"I will endeavor to avoid it."
Naera and Lysa headed toward the barracks, their figures disappearing between buildings. Trin watched them go, then turned his steps in the same direction—but only for a moment.
The barracks yard smelled of sweat, leather, and oiled wood. Familiar shouts drifted from a training ring where a pair of recruits worked through basic drills under the eye of a bored sergeant.
Trin found what he needed near the storage shed.
"An axe?" the quartermaster asked, eyebrows raised as Trin hefted one of the better-kept tools.
"Just borrowing it," Trin said. "Some work outside the wall. I'll bring it back in good condition."
The quartermaster snorted. "If you break it, you're fixing it. Or buying me a new one."
"Fair enough."
A few minutes later Trin stepped out through the gate again, this time without companions or armor, only a cloak, the axe, and his pack.
The land outside the wall rolled gently away, dotted with scrub and a few stands of trees that had been left alone when the town grew. He walked until the palisade was still close enough to see clearly, but far enough that the constant noise of town life softened into a low background murmur.
Here, the ground was firm and slightly elevated, with a line of trees that had grown tall and straight over the years.
It would do.
He stood for a while, simply feeling the space.
A cabin. A workshop. A place that was his, but close enough to run if alarms sounded. A place where he could…stay, at least for a while.
The thought settled into him with surprising warmth.
He chose a tree with a straight trunk and enough clearance around it, tested the weight of the axe in his hands, and began to work.
The first bite of steel into wood rang in the cold air.
It was steady, satisfying work.
Swing, impact, the small shower of bark and wood chips, the deepening notch. His breath fell into rhythm with the motion. Muscles remembered patterns practiced for very different reasons—strikes meant to break shields and armor repurposed to cut into something that did not bleed.
By the time the first tree creaked and began to lean, his arms burned in a way that felt clean. He stepped back, judged the fall, and guided it with a few last angled blows.
The tree toppled with a thundering rustle, shaking the ground briefly as it hit.
Trin stood, chest heaving, and smiled.
He trimmed branches, cut the trunk into manageable lengths, and stacked the wood in a rough line where the cabin's walls would eventually stand. The sharp, green scent of fresh-cut wood filled the air, pushing back the lingering chill. Sawdust clung to his boots.
He worked until the light began to thin and the first hints of evening crept across the sky.
By then he had felled several trees, stripped them, and roughly squared a few logs, marking out with stakes and rope where he imagined the cabin's footprint: two rooms, side by side. One for living and sleeping. One for tools, work, whatever came next.
Not a barracks bunk, shared with the snores and muttering of a dozen soldiers. Not a temple cell, with its echoing stone and ritual hours. Just…a small place, his own.
When his shoulders protested each swing and his stomach growled loud enough to compete with the distant sounds from the town, he shouldered the axe and headed back.
The inn near the center of town welcomed him with warm light, thick stew, and a room key traded for a few coins. The bed was lumpy, the walls thin, but sleep took him quickly.
The next days settled into a rhythm.
Mornings outside the wall, axe and borrowed saw in hand, turning trees into logs, logs into shaped timbers. He dug shallow foundation trenches, set stones where he could, and began stacking the first courses of the walls. The work soaked up his attention in a way few things had since the dragon—each small problem presenting a straightforward solution.
In the afternoons he sometimes returned to the barracks to help with repairs.
Winter had been hard on the training yard's fencing. A section of roof on the far end of the building had started to leak. The armory door stuck more than it should.
Trin hammered loose nails back into place, planed swollen wood, and reset beams that had shifted under heavy snow. He patched, reinforced, and tightened until the quartermaster grudgingly admitted that "if you're going to run off to be a carpenter, at least you're a useful one."
Evenings found him at the inn, eating, listening to the low murmur of local gossip, occasionally sharing a quiet drink with Garran or Naera when their paths crossed.
Naera asked once, "You're really building a cabin?"
"Yes," Trin said.
"Why?"
He considered the question, then answered honestly. "Because I want to see what I can build when no one tells me how it is supposed to look."
She studied him, then nodded, accepting that.
The days blurred.
He raised the walls course by course, fitting logs together with notched joints, making small adjustments when something didn't sit quite right. He framed a roof, set beams, and covered them with rough-cut planks and a layer of thatch and tar. A simple stone hearth took shape along one wall, smoke guided out through a short chimney he stacked with more care than beauty.
Calluses toughened further on his hands.
His shoulders ached in ways a healer could have eased with a touch, but he let the aches sit. They were real, earned, and they anchored him to each day's progress.
Snow fell once in a brief, half-hearted flurry, dusting the unfinished roof and the piles of wood before melting away. He wiped damp from the beams and kept working.
Within two weeks, the cabin stood.
Two rooms, just as he'd imagined. The outer door opened into a space large enough for a workbench along one wall, shelves for tools, maybe a small table. A doorway without a door yet led into the inner room, where he had left space for a bed, a chest, and not much else.
The walls were solid. The roof didn't leak, at least under a bucket test. The hearth drew smoke well enough once he'd fussed with the chimney's top stones and added a simple hood.
He stood outside in the pale afternoon light, looking at it.
It was not elegant.
The lines were a bit uneven in places. The thatch would need replacing in a few years. The door still creaked and needed a better latch.
But it was his.
He stepped inside, boots thudding softly on the newly laid floorboards. The space smelled of fresh wood, mortar, and the faint tang of smoke from testing the hearth. Light slanted in through the simple shuttered window he'd cut into the wall, falling across the bare interior.
Bare.
He turned slowly.
No bed, just floor. No table, no chairs. No shelves yet, no pegs for cloaks, no small things that made a space lived-in. The "workshop" room held only a few tools and a couple of leftover planks stacked against the wall.
He huffed out a quiet breath that was not quite a laugh.
"I built a box," he murmured to himself. "A very sturdy, very empty box."
The satisfaction of completed walls and a fitted roof settled next to a new, simpler realization.
He had somewhere to live now.
He just had nothing to live with.