By dawn, the stranger had a name.
And with it, the first true crack formed in the walls that hid Kael from the world.
The man awoke with a fever, thrashing weakly against the furs they had wrapped him in. His mouth worked soundlessly, chasing half-formed words.
Kael pressed a cool cloth to his brow.
The stranger's skin burned like iron left too long in flame.
From the corner of the hut, Maerin muttered ancient words — old healing prayers half-lost to time — while Jorren stood by the door, hand on the hilt of his sword, distrust carved deep into every line of him.
The stranger's eyes fluttered open at last — wild, bloodshot, lucid only for a moment.
"My name…" he gasped. "…is Corren."
Maerin leaned closer. "Corren of where, boy?"
The man shuddered, voice rasping dry as dead leaves. "Of Greywater… Squire to Lord Dareth…"
Jorren stiffened at the name. His knuckles whitened on the hilt.
Maerin paled.
Kael, too young to understand the full meaning, still felt the change in the room — the sudden charge, like the air before a storm.
Greywater.
One of the old river lords.
Sworn to the Eastern King.
Enemies, in all but name.
"How did you come here, Corren?" Maerin asked, voice deceptively gentle.
The squire's breath rattled. His eyes fluttered.
He would not last much longer without better healing.
But he answered, in snatches, torn and broken like his body:
"Ambush.
Bandits.
No—"
He coughed blood.
"Not bandits. Soldiers. Masks. Blackthorn sigil."
Jorren's mouth tightened into a grim line.
Seric Blackthorn.
A name spoken only in curses beyond the safety of court walls.
A kingmaker. A butcher. A man who wore crowns as others wore cloaks, easily discarded once soiled.
If Blackthorn's men were moving openly, striking lords on the Eastern marches…
Then the Reckoning had begun.
Later, after they coaxed Corren into a fevered sleep, Jorren took Kael aside, far from the hut's thin walls.
The woods loomed heavy around them, branches clawing at the sky.
"You should have killed him," Jorren said quietly. Not in anger. In sorrow.
Kael met his gaze, unflinching. "He's no threat. He's broken."
Jorren studied him — not like a knight studying a pupil, but like a mason studying a stone, wondering what shape it might take if he struck here, or here.
"You think mercy is simple," Jorren said at last. "But every life you spare changes the road beneath your feet."
Kael said nothing.
"You saved him," Jorren continued. "Now he will carry your face, your kindness, your existence back into the world."
"Good," Kael said, surprising himself with the force of it.
Jorren's mouth twisted — not quite a smile, not quite a grimace.
"You think kindness is a shield, boy. It is not. It is a weapon. One sharper, and heavier, than any sword."
He stepped closer, voice low.
"Remember: every mercy you give, you owe a debt. One day, the world will come to collect."
Without waiting for a response, he turned and stalked back toward the hut, leaving Kael alone beneath the skeletal pines.
The mist was lifting now, burned away by a pale, merciless sun.
The world stretched out before him — not a road, not a path, but a thousand tangled choices.
Already, Kael could feel it:
The beginning of the end of hiding.
The slow, inevitable pulling of fate's unseen strings.
The name Corren of Greywater would soon find other ears. Ears eager for war. Eyes eager for crowns.
And Kael — boy of the woods, son of a forgotten queen — would not remain hidden much longer.
That night, as Kael sat carving a simple wooden figure by the fire (a hawk, wings half-unfurled), Maerin settled beside him.
"You know," the old scribe said softly, "in the old songs, mercy is the first step toward both greatness… and ruin."
Kael turned the figure in his hand, watching the firelight dance along the unfinished wings.
"Then let it be both," he said.
Maerin smiled — a slow, weary thing — and said no more.
Outside, in the dark woods, a wolf howled — long and low and mournful.
The world was waking.
And it was hungry.