Edrin did not sleep that night.
After Halvern left, he remained on the forest road until the light faded completely and the sounds of night took over. Only when the cold became unbearable did he move again. He traveled deeper into the forest, choosing uneven ground and winding paths, making it harder for anyone to follow him easily.
The man's words replayed in his mind.
You're not the only one who's noticed anymore.
Edrin understood what that meant. It did not matter whether Halvern was friend or enemy. Curiosity alone was dangerous. Once people began paying attention, patterns followed, and patterns led to conclusions.
And conclusions never stayed quiet.
He made camp in a shallow depression between roots and rocks, using natural cover instead of building anything that could be noticed. There was no fire. He wrapped himself in his cloak and leaned against a tree, listening.
The forest was alive with small movements. Branches creaked. Animals shifted through undergrowth. Wind whispered through bare leaves.
Edrin focused on his breathing.
Slow. Steady. Controlled.
He was alive. That fact no longer brought comfort.
Instead, it felt like a responsibility he had never agreed to shoulder.
He closed his eyes and tried to rest.
Sleep did not come easily.
When it did, it was shallow and broken, filled with brief flashes of cold, water, and silence.
He woke before dawn.
The first thing he did was check his body.
Still stiff. Still sore. Still intact.
He exhaled quietly and stood.
If being noticed was the cost of surviving, then he needed to learn how to exist with that burden without drawing more attention than necessary.
That meant rules.
He had learned, through pain and fear, that death did not complete on him. But he had also learned that pain still mattered. Damage still accumulated. Recovery, while inevitable, was not pleasant.
That was important.
It meant he could still be stopped.
Which meant others could stop him too.
Edrin resumed traveling south, keeping away from roads whenever possible. He avoided settlements larger than a handful of homes. When he needed food, he traded labor quietly and left as soon as he could.
Days passed.
Nothing dramatic happened, which unsettled him more than danger would have.
He began to notice how people looked at him.
Not with fear. Not yet.
With uncertainty.
It was subtle. A pause before answering his questions. A second glance when he turned away. A hesitation when he lingered too long.
These were not accusations.
They were assessments.
Edrin understood those looks. He had worn them himself once, long ago, when he had been on the other side of normality.
In a small farming village near the borderlands, he stayed for three days repairing fences and clearing debris left by winter storms. The villagers were polite. They fed him. They did not ask many questions.
On the second night, while sharing a meal in a modest hall, a young boy stared at him openly.
"You don't blink much," the boy said.
The table fell silent.
Edrin looked at the child, then deliberately blinked several times.
"I do," he said evenly. "Just not when I'm thinking."
The boy frowned. "About what?"
Edrin considered the question carefully.
"About when to leave," he answered.
The adults laughed softly and scolded the child. Conversation resumed.
But the boy kept watching him.
Edrin left the village the next morning.
He did not wait for suspicion to grow roots.
Further south, the land changed. Forests thinned. Hills gave way to open plains dotted with old watchtowers and ruins from forgotten conflicts. Travelers passed more frequently here, and with them came stories.
Edrin listened.
He heard about strange cult activity near the coast. About a priest who refused to conduct a burial because the body felt wrong. About a woman who claimed her husband returned home three days after drowning.
Most of these stories were exaggerations.
Some were not.
Edrin felt a faint, uncomfortable pull whenever he passed near places tied to such rumors. A pressure behind his eyes. A subtle tightening in his chest.
He did not understand it yet, but he noted it carefully.
Patterns, Halvern had said.
He was becoming one.
One evening, while sheltering in the remains of an abandoned watchtower, Edrin tested something new.
Not his body.
His presence.
He focused on the discomfort he felt when near certain places, allowing it to surface fully instead of suppressing it. The sensation sharpened, becoming clearer.
He realized then that it was not pain.
It was awareness.
He could sense places where death had not settled properly. Not visually. Not audibly.
It was more like standing near a storm before it arrived. A wrongness in the air that made his skin prickle.
Edrin backed away immediately.
That frightened him more than any injury.
Because he had not asked for this.
And because he had not chosen it.
The next town he entered was larger, with stone buildings and a proper registry office. Edrin intended to pass through quickly, but fate, or something resembling it, interfered.
At the gate, a clerk stopped him.
"Name and origin," the man said, quill poised.
"Edrin," he replied. "No fixed residence."
The clerk frowned slightly. "We need a place of record."
"I move for work," Edrin said calmly.
The clerk hesitated, then wrote something down.
Edrin watched the ink settle on the page.
For a brief moment, he felt that same pressure behind his eyes.
The clerk blinked, shook his head, and frowned at the paper.
"That's odd," he muttered.
Edrin's heartbeat slowed deliberately.
"What is?" he asked.
"I thought I wrote your name," the clerk said. "But the ink smeared."
He dipped the quill again and rewrote it.
This time, the ink stayed.
The clerk handed Edrin a stamped pass and waved him through.
Edrin walked away without looking back.
He understood something crucial then.
Records mattered.
Not just to people.
To the world itself.
That night, he dreamed of ledgers stretching endlessly into darkness, pages turning on their own, names appearing and vanishing without sound.
He woke with his heart racing.
The following days confirmed his fears.
More people noticed inconsistencies around him. Small things. Nothing that could be pointed to with certainty.
A wound that closed too neatly. A fever that passed too quickly. A fall that should have crippled him but did not.
Edrin began avoiding unnecessary risks entirely.
Not because he feared pain.
Because he feared repetition.
He understood now that the world tolerated anomalies only when they were rare. Patterns drew attention. Attention invited intervention.
And intervention, from the wrong source, could be worse than death.
Far away, in a modest archive attached to a regional temple, Halvern flipped through old records.
He compared dates. Names. Reports.
He did not smile.
Instead, he sighed and closed the book.
"This is going to cause problems," he murmured to no one.
He reached for another ledger.
Somewhere else, a priest erased a line and rewrote it twice, never quite satisfied with the result.
Somewhere else, a scholar marked a margin with a question he would not ask aloud.
None of them knew Edrin personally.
None of them were enemies.
Yet.
Edrin continued moving south, unaware of how many quiet decisions were being made around the shape of his absence.
He only knew this.
Surviving was no longer the hardest part.
Remaining unnoticed was.
And that was becoming impossible.