Morning came gray and cold, a fine mist hanging over the camp like wet linen.
Grog hadn't slept.
He'd stayed under the oak with Aldric until the boy finally yawned and stumbled back to his tent, none the wiser about the red eyes in the darkness. Then Grog had returned to his own bedroll and lain there, staring at the canvas, listening for whispers that never came again.
By the time the first cookfire smoke rose, he was already dressed and sitting outside his tent, sharpening his training axe with slow, deliberate strokes.
The motion was familiar. Comforting. His hands knew it even if his body didn't.
Forty-one years, he thought again. Forty-one years of swinging axes, and now I have to learn all over again.
His arms ached from the previous day's walk. His shoulders were stiff. His back complained when he bent forward. This body had never marched twenty miles with a full pack, never fought through a three-day siege, never carried wounded friends off a battlefield. It was soft. Untested.
It would have to become hard.
"Up early."
Grog looked up.
Lira stood a few feet away, arms crossed, her straw-colored hair even messier than yesterday. She hadn't slept well either, if the shadows under her eyes meant anything.
"You too," he said.
She shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. Someone kept me up late worrying about his brain-damaged friend."
Grog's hand paused on the axe. "I'm not brain-damaged."
"Debatable." She sat beside him on the damp ground, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. "Aldric came back to our tent around midnight. Said you two had a nice chat under the oak. Very philosophical." She glanced at him sideways. "That doesn't sound like you."
"People change."
"Do they? Overnight? After a knock on the head?"
Grog didn't answer. He went back to sharpening.
Lira watched him for a long moment. Then, quietly: "I talked to the healer yesterday. While you were staring at nothing and crying into your stew."
Grog's jaw tightened.
"She said head injuries can do strange things. Memory loss. Personality changes. Seeing things that aren't there." Lira's voice was careful, measured. "She also said most of those symptoms show up right away. Not half a day later."
Silence.
"Grog." Lira shifted, turning to face him fully. "I've known you for two years. Since we were both stupid kids who thought joining the border scouts would be exciting. You're not clever—no offense—but you're steady. Reliable. You laugh at stupid jokes and you eat like a starving wolf and you never, ever think about anything more complicated than what's for dinner."
She paused.
"You haven't laughed once since you woke up. You barely touched your stew. And you keep looking at people like you're at a funeral."
Grog set the axe down.
Lira was watching him with those sharp eyes—the same eyes that had spotted a Vargr ambush from half a mile away, the same eyes that had tracked a fleeing scout through dense forest at dusk. She saw everything. Missed nothing.
She'd always been too smart for her own good.
"I'm not crazy," he said quietly.
"I didn't say you were."
"The healer—"
"The healer doesn't know you. I do." Lira leaned closer. "So I'll ask one more time. And if you lie again, I'll walk away and pretend you're a stranger. Because I don't have the energy to drag secrets out of someone who should trust me."
Grog looked at her.
Alive. Suspicious. Loyal. The same Lira who'd stayed with him when he was wounded, who'd sat by his bedroll and talked to herself because she was too stubborn to leave. The same Lira who'd died reaching for one more arrow.
He opened his mouth.
And from across the camp, a scream cut through the morning.
---
They ran.
Grog's legs burned within seconds—too weak, too slow—but he pushed anyway, following Lira toward the sound. Soldiers emerged from tents around them, grabbing weapons, shouting questions. No one had answers.
The scream came again. High. Terrified. Young.
Aldric's tent.
Grog's blood turned to ice.
He burst through the flap ahead of Lira, axe raised, ready for—he didn't know what. Red eyes. Ancient evil. The end of everything.
Inside, three boys huddled against the far wall, pale and shaking. And in the center, Aldric thrashed on his bedroll, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, his mouth stretched in a silent scream.
"Aldric!" Grog dropped to his knees beside him. "Aldric, wake up!"
The boy didn't respond. His body arched, muscles rigid, veins standing out on his neck. His lips moved—forming words, over and over—but the sound wouldn't come.
"What's wrong with him?" One of the other boys—Grog remembered him, barely, a scout named Ren—pressed against the tent wall. "He just—he started screaming in his sleep and he won't stop—"
Lira pushed past Grog. Slapped Aldric across the face.
Nothing.
Again. Harder.
Aldric's head snapped to the side. His eyes—still open, still unseeing—flickered.
And then he screamed.
Not a word. Just sound. Raw and terrible and old, like something that had been waiting centuries to be heard.
The tent flap tore open. Captain Voren stormed in, gray hair wild, sword drawn. "What in the nine hells—"
Aldric went limp.
Silence.
Grog stared at the boy's face. Pale. Sweating. But peaceful now, like nothing had happened.
Then Aldric's eyes opened.
Brown. Normal. Human.
He blinked up at the faces surrounding him. Confused. Scared.
"What—" His voice cracked. "What happened? Why is everyone—" He saw the captain's sword. Flinched. "Captain? I—did I do something wrong?"
Voren lowered his blade slowly. His eyes swept the tent—the terrified boys, Lira's tense stance, Grog's white-knuckled grip on his axe.
"Everyone out," he said quietly. "Now. Ren, fetch the healer. Lira, stay."
The boys scrambled. Grog didn't move.
Voren looked at him. "I said out, boy."
"He's not leaving." Lira's voice was calm. Final.
Voren's eyebrow rose. But he said nothing.
The healer arrived minutes later—Marta, her gray braids swinging, her hands already reaching for Aldric's face. She checked his eyes, his pulse, his temperature. Asked questions he couldn't answer. Listened to his heart.
Finally, she sat back.
"Night terrors," she said. "Bad ones. I've seen it before. Some soldiers get them after battle. The mind relives the fight, over and over, until it finds a way to let go." She patted Aldric's hand. "You'll be fine, boy. Rest today. No duties."
Aldric nodded weakly. He looked small again. Younger than seventeen.
Marta stood, gathering her supplies. "Keep an eye on him. If it happens again, send for me." She paused at the tent flap, looking back. "And someone stay with him tonight. These are worse alone."
She left.
Voren studied Aldric for a long moment, then nodded curtly. "Rest." He followed the healer out.
And then it was just the three of them—Grog, Lira, and Aldric—in the quiet tent.
Aldric's hands shook as he pulled his blanket higher. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to—I don't even remember—"
"It's fine." Lira's voice was softer than Grog had ever heard it. "You're fine. Just rest."
Aldric looked at Grog. Those brown eyes, scared and confused and so terribly young.
"Grog? You're still here."
Grog nodded. Couldn't speak.
Aldric managed a weak smile. "Good. That's—that's good."
He closed his eyes. Within minutes, his breathing evened out. Asleep.
Lira waited until she was sure, then grabbed Grog's arm and pulled him outside.
---
The mist had burned off. Morning sunlight filtered through the trees, warm and ordinary.
Lira dragged Grog away from the tent, past the cookfire, past the supply wagons, to a small clearing hidden behind a fallen log. She shoved him onto the log and stood over him, arms crossed.
"Tell me," she said.
Grog looked at his hands.
"He didn't have night terrors," he said slowly. "Not in the—" He stopped.
"In the what?"
Grog was quiet for a long moment.
Then, because she'd asked, because she'd stayed, because she was Lira and he was so tired of carrying this alone:
"In the future," he said. "He didn't have night terrors in the future."
Lira blinked. "The future."
"Yes."
"Future future. Like—tomorrow future? Next week?"
"Twenty-five years future."
Silence.
Lira stared at him. Her expression didn't change—no disbelief, no laughter, no anger. Just that sharp, assessing gaze.
"Twenty-five years," she repeated.
"Yes."
"And you know this how?"
Grog met her eyes. "Because I lived them. And then I died. And then I woke up yesterday with a mace to my head and you sitting on my chest."
The words hung in the air between them.
Lira didn't speak for a long time. A bird sang somewhere nearby. Wind rustled the leaves. The camp went about its business, oblivious.
Finally, very quietly: "Prove it."
Grog frowned. "How?"
"Tell me something you couldn't know. Something from before yesterday. Something—" She thought. "Something about me. That I've never told anyone."
Grog considered.
Then: "You have a scar on your left thigh. From when you were nine. You fell out of a tree trying to steal honey from a bee's nest. You told me about it twelve years from now, when we were both drunk after a battle, and you made me swear never to tell anyone because your mother still thinks you got it from Vargr raiders."
Lira's face went very still.
"That's—" She stopped. Started again. "That's not something you could guess."
"No."
"You'd have to know."
"Yes."
"Someone could have told you. Aldric, maybe. He knew me as a kid."
"Aldric didn't know you as a kid. You met him the same year you met me. Remember? Border recruitment. You lied about your age. He believed you."
Lira's lips pressed together.
Another long silence.
Then, quietly: "What else?"
Grog told her.
He told her about the skirmishes they'd survive and the ones they wouldn't. About the Siege of Ashford, six years from now, where Sergeant Borin would die covering their retreat. About the winter they'd spend trapped in a mountain pass, eating their own boots, and how Finn the One-Ear would tell stories every night to keep them sane.
He told her about the party—their party—formed ten years from now, when Aldric would finally gather them together. About the adventures they'd have, the battles they'd win, the way they'd become something like family.
He told her about the Spire.
About the final boss—a thing of shadow and teeth that should have been unbeatable but wasn't, because Aldric had found something inside himself, some power, that turned the tide.
About the victory celebration, and the moment Aldric's eyes turned red.
About Mirena, dying mid-spell.
About Theron, twenty feet from help.
About Lira, face-down with an arrow in her back.
About the sword through his own guts, and the thing wearing Aldric's face smiling down at him, and the last thing he saw being her hand, reaching, not quite close enough.
When he finished, his face was wet again.
Lira hadn't moved.
Her face was pale. Her hands, clenched in her lap, shook slightly.
"That's—" She stopped. Swallowed. "That's a lot."
"I know."
"A lot a lot. Like—I don't even know what to do with that a lot."
"I know."
She was quiet for another long moment. Then, suddenly, she laughed.
It wasn't a happy laugh. It was sharp and broken and a little hysterical.
"I fell out of a tree," she said. "Stealing honey. My mother still thinks it was Vargr." She looked at Grog, and her eyes were bright. "You couldn't know that. No one could know that."
Grog waited.
Lira took a breath. Let it out. Took another.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Let's say I believe you. Let's say all of this is real. What now? What do we do?"
Grog looked toward the camp. Toward the tent where Aldric slept, dreaming dreams he wouldn't remember.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I've been trying to figure that out since I woke up. Kill him? Save him? Warn him? Nothing feels right."
Lira followed his gaze. "He's just a kid."
"I know."
"A good kid. Annoying, but good."
"I know."
She was quiet for a moment. Then, softly: "I died first."
Grog's chest tightened. "Yes."
"How?"
"Arrow. Your own arrow. He threw it back at you while you were nocking another."
Lira absorbed that. Nodded slowly.
"Fast, at least," she said. "I'd want it fast."
"You were reaching for another shot. You didn't even see it coming."
"Better. Quicker." She looked at him. "You saw it?"
"Last thing I saw. Your hand." His voice cracked. "Reaching. Not quite—" He couldn't finish.
Lira reached over and took his hand.
Her grip was warm. Strong. Alive.
"I'm here now," she said. "See? Right here. Alive. Annoying you."
Grog looked down at their hands. Then up at her face.
"You believe me?"
"I believe you're telling the truth as you know it. Whether you're crazy or magic or touched by the gods—" She shrugged. "Doesn't matter. You're still Grog. You're still my friend. And if there's even a chance you're right—" Her grip tightened. "Then we figure it out. Together."
Grog's throat was too tight to speak.
He nodded.
Lira nodded back.
They sat like that for a while, holding hands in a clearing, while the camp went about its business and Aldric slept and somewhere in the shadows, something with red eyes watched and waited.