“Ok old man, thank you for saving my life. I’ll return the favor somehow, but I can get home on my own.”

  Riven pushed himself up. His legs shook under him, but pride held them straight for the first few steps. Joseph watched without a word, sitting on the crate with the weary patience of someone who already knew how the next moments would unfold.

  Riven pressed one hand against the wall and began to walk, dragging himself along the rough stone. Every step sent a sharp pulse through his hip. After only a few paces he felt something warm trickle down his leg. The wound had opened again. Another step tore at his shoulder, and the bandage there darkened as fresh blood soaked through from rubbing against the wall.

  Damn it, he thought, teeth clenched. Why am I so weak. And why did that old man have to be right.

  He hated the truth of it more than the pain. He had come into the city thinking himself clever, thinking he had a plan, thinking he could stand alone as his father once did. Now he was wounded, drained, limping along like a child lost in a storm. None of his ideas had played out the way he imagined. His pride throbbed worse than any cut on his body.

  He stopped and drew a sharp breath. Fine. He needed help. He would call the old man over, demand help if he must. He turned around to shout.

  He stopped dead.

  Joseph stood inches from him, silent as a drifting shadow. Their faces almost touched, and Riven jerked backward so quickly he nearly fell. His voice cracked out of him in a startled shout.

  “What in the flames. What are you doing. You nearly kissed me.”

  The thought struck him so fast he nearly choked on it. Why was he even thinking about that.

  Joseph raised a thin brow and tapped Riven lightly on the chest with one knobby finger. “Need help, do we.”

  Riven swallowed his pride along with his embarrassment. His face warmed despite the cold tunnel air.

  “I... yes. Maybe. A little.”

  Joseph nodded once, slow and knowing, like a man watching a stubborn colt finally admit the bit was too heavy for its jaws.

  “Good”, he said. “Come along then. We will get you home before this place fills with soldiers.”

  Riven let out a long breath he had been holding for far too long, and for the first time since Torvil’s death he felt the faintest thread of safety tug at him, unexpected and strange.

  Perhaps he had found more than a rescuer in these tunnels. Perhaps he had stumbled into something meant to be.

  Joseph was a frail old man, thin as a sapling after winter, his back bent and his steps uneven. Riven leaned against him as they made their slow way through the tunnel, yet the question gnawed at him with every breath. How had a man like this killed four soldiers.

  The brutality of it. Why crush their skulls when the old man could have taken the sword and ended them quickly. A clean strike through the heart would have done it for the paralyzed ones. Instead the work had been savage, frightening in a way Riven could not shake.

  Something is wrong here, he thought, though for now the old man had only helped him. Until he had a clearer picture he pushed the suspicion down.

  Joseph supported him as best he could, one arm around Riven’s waist, the other gripping the wall or a root whenever he stumbled. They reached the hidden opening and climbed out into the night. The cool air washed over Riven like a blessing. He looked up and saw the moon high above the fields, pale and steady. He had been in the tunnels longer than he thought. How long had he been unconscious.

  He drew a deep breath. The night felt clean after the damp stale dark below. Joseph’s breath came ragged beside him, the strain clearly heavy on the old man’s thin frame. Riven watched him with narrowed eyes. Could he truly trust him. Joseph had saved his life, that was true, but he had killed without hesitation. Without remorse. That was something a simple beggar rarely did.

  Still, the man was frail. If Riven healed even a little he could break free if he needed to. The thought eased his mind enough to keep walking.

  The fields stretched before them, silvered by moonlight. The two figures moved slowly through the grass, Joseph leaning into Riven as much as Riven leaned into him. The world seemed quiet, almost gentle, as if the horrors of the tunnels belonged to some other life.

  They walked until the tall shapes of the grove rose ahead, dark branches reaching like silent guardians toward the stars. The familiar scent of pine and damp earth greeted Riven. His heart eased at the sight of it.

  He had made it. He still lived. And though he did not know who Joseph truly was, or what he had drawn into his life by crossing paths with this strange old man, for now he was safe beneath the trees Torvil once called home.

  The next days passed as if wrapped in a soft fog. Riven slept, healed, ached, then healed again. Joseph handled everything else, gathering firewood with slow careful steps, cooking what little food he could scavenge, sweeping the small cabin with a kind of pride that startled Riven.

  “It has been a long time since I had a roof over my head”, Joseph said more than once. ”I’ll make it as welcoming as I can.”

  Riven healed faster than any normal boy should have, even without medicine. Cuts closed. Bruises faded. He owed it to his blood, to the legacy Torvil had given him. By the end of the week he was already walking with only a mild limp and sitting at the table with his father’s books spread open like silent judges. His disappointment grew with every page. The symbols meant little to him. The older runes twisted together with meanings he did not know. Strange plants were named and described in ways he barely understood.

  At least I know how they are meant to be mixed, he muttered. That is a beginning, I suppose.

  He turned another page and saw Joseph watching him from the corner of his eye. That had happened often in these last days. The old man trying not to stare, then failing. Riven closed the book and looked at him fully.

  “Joseph. Something has bothered me since the tunnels.” He straightened, shoulders still sore but carrying his weight. “The way you killed those soldiers. The way you never flinched. The way you followed me here, the way you look at this grove and at my father’s books. If we are allies, maybe even friends, then tell me the truth. Who are you really.”

  Joseph’s gaze dropped to the floor. He drew a long breath, the rise of his shoulders slight, then released it.

  “Well, lad”, he said softly, “I wanted to speak on this sooner. I just did not know how to start. I am no villain. I am simply very unlucky.”

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  Riven’s eyebrow rose. “What do you mean by that?”

  Joseph rubbed his hands together, the sound dry and soft. “Let us begin at the beginning. I was born of a druid father and a human mother. That was the end of my blessings. I was healthy, yes, but my blood bore none of the druid marks. No spark. No power. My mother died young, taken by a strange disease, or so my father claimed. He took me to the forest, tried to teach me. He tried to make the magic take root in me, but nothing ever stirred. His grief grew heavy with each failure and one day I woke up and he was gone, I presumed to his druid clan but I never learned. He left me behind.”

  Riven felt his chest tighten a little. That kind of abandonment left deep scars.

  Joseph continued, his eyes far away. “It took me years to accept it. Years in which anger filled every corner of me. I wanted to prove I was worthy of the old man, worthy of being a druid, worthy of anything at all. But I failed every time and I lashed out at those around me. In the end I finally understood the truth. I was a nobody and no one wanted me.”

  His voice grew rougher, though his face remained calm.

  “I took small jobs, carried heavy loads, lived from coin to coin. Yet trouble always found me. Thieves beat me, robbed me, worse things too. Bitterness grew like rot in my heart. I wanted to strike back. I wanted to cleanse the roads of every brute who preyed upon the weak. So I did.”

  He looked at his hands as if expecting to see blood there.

  “It felt good at first. Righteous even. But that road never stays clean. The army eventually caught me. They threw me into the dungeons and there I rotted for many years. Then they gave me a choice. Fight in the front lines or die in that cell. I chose to fight. I thought perhaps I would redeem something in myself.”

  Joseph’s voice faltered for the first time.

  “But when I saw the war, the power of the druids, the bodies scattered on the field, I ran. I ran like a frightened animal. Since then I lived as a beggar, careful, silent, keeping to the alleys and avoiding every eye trying to outrun the world. I tried to harm no one unless I had to. I wished only to be forgotten.”

  He lifted his head and met Riven’s eyes.

  “Then one day I saw a small boy jump through a crack in the earth. Curious as a fox. Brave as a fool. I followed. And you know the rest.”

  Riven studied him, the truth settling slowly in his mind. A man born from druid blood but denied the gift. A man who had been beaten by life until kindness became rare and violence became simple. A man who helped him anyway, for reasons he barely understood himself.

  Joseph gave a small shrug.

  “I am unlucky, lad. That is the truth of it. But I am not your enemy.”

  Riven let out a slow breath. He felt the weight of Joseph’s story settle beside his own grief, not matching it, but sitting near enough that he understood.

  He nodded once, steady and firm.

  “Then let us see what luck we can make together.”

  “About that”, Joseph said, rubbing his palms together as if warming up to the words, ‘I have been watching you wrestle with those books. I did not want to speak up then, but now that the truth is out in the open… I can help you with some of the symbols.”

  Riven’s head snapped up. An inquisitive smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Really.”

  “Yes lad.” Joseph leaned back a little, the chair creaking beneath him. “As I said, my father tried to teach me. I had no gift to wield the power, but my mind worked well enough. I remember the runes, the plants, the mixing methods. Every lesson he gave, every word he spoke… I still carry them. I just could never use them.”

  Riven’s smile widened into something bright and genuine. “Guess I am the lucky one in this equation then.”

  Joseph chuckled softly. “Someone has to be, I suppose. That is how the world likes to balance itself. “

  Riven shifted the books toward them, a spark of excitement cutting through the exhaustion of the past days. From now on he decided there would be no secrets between them. Joseph had saved his life, told his story, and offered knowledge Riven desperately needed.

  Fine, he said. Then we begin here.

  From that point forward they worked together. Day after day the cabin filled with the murmur of their voices. The scratch of quill on parchment, the rustle of leaves as they searched the grove for plants Riven had never seen before. Joseph translated the old symbols, explaining the curving lines of each rune and the meaning locked within its shape. Riven practiced drawing them until his hand steadied.

  They ground roots into powders, mixed resins until they glistened like amber, tried chants again and again until the air grew warm or cold or cracked with sparks. It was not easy work. Some days the runes refused to answer. Some days their mixtures exploded into harmless smoke. Some days fatigue weighed on Riven until he could barely lift his arms.

  But they had time, and they had the will to push forward.

  Two unlikely companions, an unlucky man with no magic and a wounded boy with too much grief, sitting together at a wooden table beneath a quiet grove.

  And step by step, page by page, they began to unlock Torvil’s secrets.

  Riven often slipped away from the grove during the cool mornings or the quiet hush before dusk. He would walk the familiar trail until the trees thinned and the hill rose before him. Torvil’s grave waited there, hidden beneath brush and scattered stone, a lonely mound under the open sky. He would sit beside it, knees drawn up, fingers brushing the earth as if he could still feel his father’s warmth beneath it.

  He spoke softly, sometimes barely louder than the wind itself. Stories of what he had learned, what he hoped to achieve, what fears gnawed at him in the dark hours. He asked questions he knew would never be answered. He told his father everything, because some part of him believed the forest carried his words to the dead.

  Back in the grove Joseph remained busy. The old man repaired broken shelves, split firewood, polished the table, or simply rearranged the cabin as if shaping it into a place that belonged to him. Perhaps after so many years sleeping in filth, chased by soldiers and thieves, the simple comfort of a roof and walls felt like a blessing he dared not lose. He never wandered far from the cabin. Not even once.

  Riven’s thoughts also drifted to Brann and Lysa. And Kett, back in Westmere’s Tip. He imagined what they were doing now, how far they’d traveled, and if they still looked for him. Some days guilt pressed heavily on him. Maybe he had been too cruel, too selfish in leaving without a word. He considered sending a message somehow, but in the end dismissed it. If they knew where he was, they would come for him. They would try to stop him.

  And he could not allow that. Not yet.

  Days bled together as he and Joseph worked. The pile of identified runes grew. Strange ingredients filled the shelves. And slowly the scattered pieces of druidic knowledge took shape in Riven’s mind. They were nearly ready for the greatest step of all.

  Trying to make a summoning circle, to create a golem.

  The word alone stirred something fierce and determined in his chest. Torvil had said that when shaping a golem you had to pour purpose into it. Purpose was everything. A tool with no clarity of purpose was a danger to its maker.

  So Riven lay awake many nights, wondering what purpose his creation should bear and how he should channel it. He had only one chance. The pot of dark moss and strange fluids still rested on the table, precious and irreplaceable. If he failed, that was the end of it.

  In the end he chose a purpose not born of vengeance, but survival and tracking.

  A scout was what he needed to point him in the right direction.

  He was still just a boy. He knew he could not win a proper fight against the kind of evil that hunted his father. But if he could see what others could not, if he could sense danger before it struck, if he could plan, prepare and trap, then he had a chance.

  A scout could give him that advantage.

  He imagined it as a chimera of sorts, combining the sharpest senses he knew. Eyes like an eagle or an owl, able to pierce the dark and spot danger from afar. The keen sense of smell of a bloodhound, able to trace an enemy’s path…Perhaps wings for a better view of the battlefield. Perhaps claws for gripping stone and bark alike, swift, light and silent.

  But imagining was easy. Making it was not.

  Still, he gathered everything he needed. Blood from the beasts whose traits he wished to weave together. Bark from the sturdiest tree in the grove. Carefully carved runes Joseph had helped him copy. Stones that pulsed with faint life that they had prepared, and the fragment he’d taken from the creature that killed Torvil.

  It waited now, in a bowl set on the wooden table, surrounded by ingredients and runes.

  All that remained was to mold it into its proper shape… and breathe purpose into the silent vessel.