The rain started three hours before dusk, and by the time Doran reached the high road, it had become the kind of storm that made men pray.
He didn't pray. He'd stopped years ago, after watching too many prayers go unanswered. Instead he walked, head down, hood pulled tight, one foot in front of the other like always. The road had turned to mud an hour back. His boots were ruined. His pack was soaked through. The letter inside—sealed in wax, wrapped in oilcloth, destined for someone in a city three days east—was probably still dry. That was what mattered. The letter wasn't his, but it was his responsibility.
That was the arrangement. He carried what others couldn't or wouldn't. In exchange, they gave him coin and, more importantly, distance. A new road every week. New faces every day. Never long enough in one place for the weight to settle.
The weight. He didn't have another word for it. The accumulated mass of everything he'd seen, everything he couldn't stop seeing. Other people forgot. Other people let moments pass into the soft haze of memory, where details blurred and edges softened and eventually most of it just... faded.
Doran didn't fade.
He remembered the exact angle of his grandmother's head when she died. The way her hand had relaxed, suddenly, as if someone had caught it from beneath. He remembered the bird's heartbeat against his palm, slowing, stopping, and how the warmth had lingered after the beatings ceased. He remembered the girl in the river—her face when she understood, the way her mouth opened but no sound came, because she was already under, already gone.
He remembered everything.
Not like a story. Like a wound.
The storm worsened. Wind tore across the road, driving rain sideways into his face. He'd been hoping to reach the waystation before full dark, but the light was failing fast and the road was dissolving beneath him. He needed shelter. Even just an hour to catch his breath, wring out his clothes, let the shaking in his legs subside.
He found it in the tree.
It stood alone in a clearing just off the road, massive and ancient and somehow wrong. An oak, he thought, though its trunk was darker than any oak he'd seen, almost black in the failing light. Its branches spread wide but bore few leaves, as if it had given up on pretending to be alive. The trunk was split near the base—a wound from some long-ago lightning strike, healed over but never closed. The opening was just large enough for a man to crawl inside.
Doran hesitated. The tree felt strange. Not dangerous, exactly. Just... present. As if it was paying attention.
He crawled inside anyway. The storm left him no choice.
The hollow was larger than it had appeared, a dry chamber of rotting wood and old leaves that smelled of earth and time. Enough room to sit, to stretch his legs, to lean back against the curved wall and close his eyes. He did. Just for a moment. Just to feel what it was like to be still.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the words.
They were carved into the wood across from him—not recently, but not anciently either. Somewhere in between. The cuts were clean, deliberate, made by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. They formed a sentence, four words, in a language he didn't recognize but somehow understood:
Your name is Witness.
He stared at them for a long time.
The storm howled outside. The tree creaked around him. Rain dripped through gaps in the bark above, landing on his shoulder, his hand, the corner of his mouth. He didn't move.
Your name is Witness.
He'd never been given a name like that. His parents had named him Doran, after his grandfather, and that name had served well enough. It was on no one's lips but his own. He was a courier, not a lord. Names didn't matter.
But this one did.
He felt it settle into him as he read it, the way a key settles into a lock. Something clicked. Something opened. Not in the world—in him. A door he hadn't known existed, swinging inward on silent hinges.
Your name is Witness.
He whispered it aloud, just to feel it in his mouth. "Witness."
The tree responded.
Not with movement or sound—with attention. He felt it suddenly, unmistakably: the tree was aware of him. Not alive in the way animals were alive, but present in a way wood and bark shouldn't be. It had been waiting. For how long, he couldn't guess. But it had been waiting for someone to read those words.
And now someone had.
The rain continued. The wind continued. The night continued. But something had changed, and Doran—no, Witness—sat in the hollow of an ancient tree and understood, for the first time in his life, that he wasn't just running from the weight.
He was running toward something.
He just didn't know what yet.
Outside, the storm began to ease.
Inside, a man who had never had a true name finally knew his.
He stayed in the tree until morning.