Mud City wasn't a city. It was a weeping sore on the side of the road.
It huddled under the shadow of a broken aqueduct, a sprawling mess of grey tents, rotted canvas, and misery. The ground was ankle-deep sludge that smelled of latrines and sickness.
Kael rode behind Elric—he had his own horse now, a mare named Cinder that Elric had "liberated" from the dead merchant's supply. He felt exposed up here. Too high. Too visible.
As they rode into the camp, the noise hit them. Not shouting. Whimpering. Coughing. The low, dull hum of people waiting to die.
Faces peeked out from the flaps of tents. Hollow eyes. Sunken cheeks. They looked at the horses with hunger, and at the swords with fear.
"Don't stop," Elric murmured. "If you stop, they swarm."
"They're starving," Kael said. He felt a familiar ache in his own gut, a ghost of the hunger he'd felt in the woods.
"They are. And we have nothing to give them."
Kael gripped his reins tighter. He saw a woman clutching a bundle of rags that might have been a baby. He saw an old man staring blankly at a fire made of wet twigs.
This was his people. This was Hollow Creek, if they had run instead of died.
He should feel pity. He should feel kinship.
Instead, he felt... distance.
A man stepped into the mud path, blocking Elric's horse. He was gaunt, his clothes more mud than fabric. He held up a shaking hand.
"Ser... please. My daughter... the fever..."
Elric didn't stop. He just steered the horse around the man. "Move."
"Ser, have mercy!" The man grabbed at Elric's stirrup.
Elric kicked the hand away. Not hard enough to break bone, but hard enough to send the man sprawling into the muck.
"I said move."
Kael felt a flash of anger. "You didn't have to kick him."
"Did I?" Elric kept riding. "If I stop, ten more come. Then fifty. Then they pull us down and eat the horses. Mercy without power is just suicide, Kael."
Kael looked back. The man was on his knees, weeping.
Kael stopped Cinder.
"Boy, keep moving," Elric barked.
Kael ignored him. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a packet of the merchant's dried meat. He tossed it to the man in the mud.
"Take it," Kael said.
The man scrambled for the pack, tearing it open with desperate fingers. Others saw. Heads turned. A dozen people started moving toward Kael, hands outstretched, voices rising in a chorus of begging.
"Please!""Me too!""Food!"
Their eyes.
That's what stopped Kael.
They didn't look at him like a savior. They looked at him like he was a resource. A thing to be consumed. There was no fight in them. No anger. Just a bottomless, terrified need.
They were sheep. And the wolves were coming.
Kael felt a sudden, cold revulsion. It wasn't hatred—he knew their pain. But he couldn't *be* them anymore. He had killed a Wolf-kin two days ago. He had felt the hot blood on his hands. He had chosen to be the thing that bites back.
Looking at them now, huddled and shaking, he realized that survival wasn't enough. Surviving just meant you lived long enough to starve in the mud.
"Back!" Kael shouted.
He didn't sound like a boy from the Ashlands. He sounded like Elric.
He put his hand on his sword hilt. The noise of the crowd died instantly. The begging stopped. The fear returned—sharp and immediate.
They scrambled back, melting into the shadows of the tents.
Kael sat there, his heart pounding. He had threatened them. His own people. And they had obeyed, not because they respected him, but because they feared the steel.
"Lesson learned?" Elric asked quietly. He had stopped ten paces ahead, watching.
Kael looked at the man eating the meat in the mud. The man didn't look up. He was just chewing, eyes darting around like a rat.
"Yes," Kael whispered.
"You can't save them with bread, Kael. You save them by killing the thing that put them here."
Kael turned Cinder's head. He didn't look at the refugees again. He looked at Elric's back, at the rusted plate armor that separated the Knight from the world.
He understood the armor now. It didn't just keep the swords out. It kept the pity out.
"Let's go," Kael said.
They rode out of Mud City, leaving the weeping sore behind. Kael didn't look back. The Ashlands were grey, and the world was cold, but the weight of the sword at his hip felt like the only warm thing left.