Ezra woke to the sound of horses.
For a moment he didn't remember where he was. He lay very still, cheek pressed against the rough leather of his pack, breathing in the smell of cold earth and smoke. No stone ceiling. No nursery. The world above him was a pale grey that meant dawn was still thinking about it.
Then a man's laugh cut across the camp, followed by the jangle of tack and the low snort of a restless horse, and it all came rushing back.
Right. Irriton. Deimos. The split.
Freedom.
His heart kicked once, hard.
He rolled onto his stomach and slid deeper into the tangle of roots and brush where he'd hidden himself before sleep, cloak pulled tight and hood low. From there he could see the camp through narrow gaps in the undergrowth.
Men moved like shadows between tents, stowing gear, stamping out the last of the fire. One of the regular soldiers cursed at a mule. A knight tightened a strap on his breastplate and rotated his shoulder experimentally.
The two groups were already forming.
Closer to the road, the wagon and the regulars lined up, their banner furled, the driver half-dozing with the reins in his hands. Farther south, Deimos and the five knights gathered around the map one last time, then swung into their saddles.
Ezra watched.
He sent mana to his ears, enough to catch voices clearly at this distance without lighting himself up like a bonfire. He sharpened his sight until the faint lines of the map in Deimos's hand were crisp, the tiniest movements of the horses' ears visible.
"Remember your route," Deimos said to the wagon driver. "Anticourt, then wait. If we fail to rendezvous in ten days, ride back to Bren and report."
The man swallowed and nodded.
The sun finally broke the horizon, washing the trees in pale gold.
On some unspoken cue, the column split.
The wagon and soldiers turned south-west, wheels already rumbling as they headed along the broad, packed Trade Road. Deimos and the knights angled their horses south, toward the darker, narrower track that led into the Grove.
Ezra's muscles tensed.
This was it.
He waited until the regulars had gone far enough that no one would casually glance back, then slid out of his hiding place, keeping low. He cut across the churned ground and reached the edge of the trees just as Deimos's party disappeared into the first ranks of trunks.
He took a breath, pumped mana into his legs, and ran.
The knights were not going flat out. Even so, they were fast.
On Earth, he'd read that a decent horse could sprint at forty to fifty kilometers an hour, but not for long. These horses were different. They held something close to that for a disturbingly long time—and their riders weren't even asking for a full sprint yet.
Even the horses here are built different.
Ezra kept well back, far enough that if one of them glanced over a shoulder they would see only trees and road and morning mist.
He let his body fall into a rhythm.
Run, breathe, watch.
Mana flowed from his core into his thighs and calves in careful pulses.
He threaded mana into himself and targeted reinforcement along key muscle groups, into tendons, into joints. He minimized the lactic buildup the way he'd learned to, pushing oxygen uptake, forcing blood flow, relieving his limbs in microbursts so the fatigue never got to settle.
It was work—but it was the kind of work he understood.
Two years of experiments had turned his own body into a project.
In his room, long before he'd ever dared to run after knights through open land, he'd built a makeshift treadmill out of wood and rope and stubbornness, then ran until his legs should've failed. He'd measured the mana consumption. Timed his depletion. Tweaked and retested until the numbers in his head stopped being guesses and became reliable.
Even so, the old ache crept in after a while. A burn in his lungs. A tightness along his shins. The kind of discomfort that said you're working rather than you're dying.
Good. That means I'm still paying attention.
He nudged a bit more mana to the worst spots, dulling the edge of the burn, not erasing it.
He remembered the makeshift "treadmill" he'd built in his room: a narrow board balanced on rollers scavenged from a broken cart wheel and a discarded pulley, lashed together with rope. It had looked ridiculous. It had worked.
Evan had walked in on him once, panting and red-faced, legs blurring as he ran in place while the board squealed.
The knight had just stared for a long moment.
"…Milord," Evan had said eventually, "may I ask what you're doing?"
"Testing," Ezra had replied between breaths.
"What, exactly?"
"How long I can run while using magic to cover for my body," Ezra had said, because he'd been too exhausted and too bored of lying to bother with a plausible excuse. "I want numbers. Time to depletion, mana per minute, and how fast my legs fail once I cut the reinforcement. If I can measure it, I'll know what's training and what's just mana pretending."
Evan had blinked, then, to Ezra's surprise, nodded slowly.
"That's… not entirely foolish," he'd admitted. "Endurance is important. This contraption is unsafe, but the idea is sound."
Instead of dragging him off the board, Evan had fetched a sandglass and started timing him, watching his form.
Later, he'd started using the thing himself, armor stripped down, sweat darkening his shirt.
"You're putting all your weight on the wrong edge," Ezra had muttered the first time, before he could stop himself.
Evan had glanced down, adjusted a fraction, and said, dry as dust, "Good. Then watch it. Tell me when I do it again."
Remembering that now, Ezra almost smiled despite the strain.
If Evan could see him, he would probably have a heart attack.
He kept on.
Two hours bled past in long, steady strides. The landscape on either side of the road changed from open fields and scrub to thicker stands of trees. Here and there, Ezra caught glimpses of white trunks—birches, if this world had anything like them—and broad-leafed giants with smooth grey bark he didn't recognize.
By the time the forest truly thickened ahead, the knights had slowed.
The road narrowed to a dirt track, little more than a scar between the trees. The first ranks of Irriton Grove loomed, trunks crowding close, branches knitting overhead. The light dimmed as if someone had quietly turned the world down.
Ezra veered off the road before the knights vanished into the green, cutting into the undergrowth and using mana to fling himself up the first sturdy trunk he could reach. Bark scraped his palms. He found a branch, then another, then pulled himself into the canopy where the leaves were dense enough to hide him.
He paused, pressed flat along a limb, and watched through the leaves as Deimos and his party passed beneath.
The forest swallowed them.
Ezra's gut tightened.
In the open, it had been easy to tail them. Here, the trees ate sound, swallowed shape. The road twisted and curved. It would be simple to lose them if he misjudged a turn.
He resisted the urge to send his magic out in a probing wave.
He'd felt enough knights react to his aura over the last year to know better.
He had to stay dull and quiet. Just another tiny creature scrabbling in the branches.
He gripped his dagger in one hand, more for comfort than use, and began to move.
Irriton Grove was alive.
The moment Ezra was among the trees, his senses drowned in it. The air was thick with damp earth, leaf mold, and something green and sharp he didn't have a name for. Birds called in sharp bursts and mournful trills. Insects buzzed. Somewhere deeper in, something large moved through undergrowth with a crash and a grunt.
Sunlight pushed through where it could, but most of it died on the canopy. Down here it was all shifting shadow and stray beams that turned dust motes into glittering ghosts.
Ezra felt oddly… calm.
The city had always felt too loud in the wrong ways—voices, carts, hammers. The castle was worse, all stone and echo. Here, the noise was different. Layered, yes, but organic. Nothing clanged unless something made it.
He kept pace with the knights as they picked their way along the track, leaping from branch to branch above and a little to the side of their line. The occasional clatter of a hoof against stone guided him when the trees hid them.
He let his senses stretch again, careful not to push them into the realm of the unnatural.
Vision first. He bled a little magic into his eyes, teasing more detail out of the dim light, pulling color from the shadows. The world snapped into sharper focus—ridge of bark, frayed edge of Deimos's cloak, the way the knights' shoulders had all hiked up a fraction.
They were alert.
That did nothing to soothe his nerves.
"Rycharde. Evered. Beside me," Deimos called.
His voice carried just enough for Ezra to hear.
Rycharde nudged his mount to Deimos's right with calm economy. Tall in the saddle, athletic rather than hulking, he didn't look like a man who should be able to do anything with the absurd war hammer strapped to his back—until he moved. Even at a walk there was a steadiness to him, like he was already bracing for an impact that hadn't happened yet.
Evered took the left. A lance was lashed along his saddle, the length of it bobbing subtly with the horse's gait, but the weapon in his hand was a mace—close, ugly practicality for a forest that hated long lines.
"Galwell," Deimos went on. "Hold the middle. Bow ready."
Galwell rode back a few paces and settled into the center of their loose column.
Ezra blinked, momentarily wrong-footed by the sight of him.
Galwell was huge—built like a bodybuilder, shoulders thick enough to make his cloak sit wrong, forearms roped with dense muscle. He looked like he belonged behind a hammer or a pike.
Instead he raised a bow.
Not a hunting bow. A war bow built wrong on purpose—limbs thick as sprung beams, string like braided cord, the grip wrapped so heavily it looked more like a handle than a stave. The kind of bow a normal man would fear to string.
Galwell nocked an arrow and drew an inch, just enough to test the tension.
The bow complained—wood and cord under a load that would have shredded an unreinforced shoulder.
Galwell didn't shake.
A faint, disciplined reinforcement ran through his draw arm—so subtle it didn't flare, just settled his joints into alignment. Years of training like that, day after day, would build a man into something like this: mass laid down by thousands of draws against a weapon that fought back.
Then, almost imperceptibly, Galwell's eyes changed. Not glowing. Not bright. Just a tightening of focus—pupils adjusting too quickly, a stillness in his stare like a man turning a lens.
Mana in the eyes, Ezra realized, and felt a flicker of interest.
"Oswyn. Dynham," Deimos said. "Flank Rycharde and Evered. If something comes from the side, I want steel in its face before it reaches us. Galwell, eyes up. You're our early warning."
Oswyn slid into position without fuss, polearm balanced across his saddle like an extension of his arms. Dynham mirrored him on the other side, sword hand loose, posture relaxed in a way that said he expected the fight to get close and ugly.
Dynham's gaze lifted once toward the canopy, then he muttered, low and rough, half to himself.
"Dead calm," he said. "Don't fancy it."
"Yes, sir," the five knights answered as one.
Their formation shifted smoothly into a triangle: Deimos at the point, Rycharde and Evered forming the base, Oswyn and Dynham bracing the sides, Galwell in the middle like a nerve.
Ezra's fingers tightened on his dagger hilt.
They weren't being cautious for nothing.
He pushed more mana to his hearing, the forest sounds sharpening until he could almost pick out which twig snapped under which hoof. It was too much, almost—every rustle, every wingbeat a potential threat—but he'd rather be overwhelmed than surprised.
Half an hour bled past like that: slow progress, measured breathing, the constant creak of leather and jingle of metal below, his own soft footfalls above.
The light dimmed further.
Here, the trees were old. Their trunks were thick and twisted, roots like gnarled muscles ripping through the soil. Moss crawled over almost everything. The air felt… heavy. Not malicious, exactly. Just full.
He was still adjusting to that sensation when the forest shattered.
A roar ripped through the trees.
It wasn't just loud. It was big—a sound that shoved at the inside of Ezra's chest, rattling his ribs.
Ezra froze on his branch, heart hammering in his throat.
AMP snapped into place almost on its own. Golden lines ghosted across his vision, sketching rough arcs from the road ahead, from the horses, from Deimos.
Below, the column checked.
Not in panic—on command.
Reins tightened. Hooves shortened their stride. The horses tossed their heads and huffed, nerves flashing, but they held their line. War-trained mounts, reminded who was in charge.
Deimos swung off his horse in one smooth motion.
"Hold," he snapped, throwing a hand back without looking.
The knights obeyed instantly.
Galwell had an arrow on the string before Ezra finished blinking. He didn't draw fully—just enough that the bow's limbs flexed and stayed there, pressure waiting. His eyes were unnaturally sharp, tracking shadow gaps between trunks with small, exact movements.
Oswyn slid his polearm from its rest and angled the point toward the tree line, careful not to cross Deimos. Dynham's sword came free with a soft hiss, his stance loose but ready, like a door on
hinges.
Rycharde's hand closed around his hammer's shaft. He didn't lift it yet. He set his feet, shoulders square, and let a faint reinforcement settle through his arms—the kind that didn't flare, just aligned bone and joint.
Evered shifted his mace in its loop and touched the lance strap once, an efficient check. No wasted motion. No show.
The roar came again, closer.
Branches parted in front of the road like someone pushing aside curtains.
The bear that stepped out onto the track was enormous.
Ezra had seen bears before—on screens, in books. This thing made those look like toys. Scarred fur, dull yellow eyes, mass that shouldn't have been able to move that smoothly.
AMP flickered along its outline, suggesting weight, impact. Ezra shoved the numbers aside. If that hit you, you stopped being a problem and started being a stain.
It sniffed once and locked onto Deimos as if nothing else existed.
"Galwell—" Oswyn began, already reading the line.
Deimos flicked his fingers.
"Hold," he said again, calm as a ledger entry.
Galwell's jaw tightened, but he didn't loose. Discipline over instinct.
The bear dropped its head and charged.
Despite its size, it covered ground fast. Ezra's brain automatically started counting—one, two, three—and it was already halfway there. AMP painted a thin line from claws to Deimos's chest, a flashing warning at the edge of his sight.
More than enough to turn a man into paste.
Deimos didn't move until the last instant.
Then he tucked and rolled, the bear's paw passing a breath behind his boots. As he came up, his hand flashed—one dagger spinning end over end into the bear's right shoulder.
The beast shrieked, skidded, and turned with terrifying speed for its bulk.
It charged again.
Galwell's bow rose a fraction—
—and stopped, because Deimos's hand snapped back, palm open. A wordless order.
Galwell held. The arrow stayed married to the string, ready, not wasted.
Under his breath, too soft to carry, he muttered, "Aye. Your dance."
Ezra watched, unwillingly impressed.
You're showing off, he thought. For them. For me, if you know I'm here.
The fight turned into a rhythm: whip crack, shoulder strike, Deimos always just out of reach. Ezra's AMP caught timing offsets, weight shifts, the faint prediction of motion before motion happened.
Rycharde didn't move in. Neither did Oswyn. Neither did Evered.
But none of them relaxed, either.
They tracked, adjusted, and stayed ready to intervene if Deimos's dance faltered.
When the bear surged and drove its skull into Deimos's chest, Evered's shoulders twitched—one instinctive half-step that stopped because he trusted the command.
Deimos hit the ground, rolled, came up on one knee.
Injured, but not broken.
He fired the hand crossbow. The bolt punched into the bear's left eye.
The beast reared, screaming, thrashing, turning blind-rage sloppy.
Deimos slipped to the bear's blind side. The whip snapped—not striking now, but looping around the dagger's hilt.
He planted. Braced his ribs. Pulled.
The dagger tore sideways through muscle and tendon with a sound that made Ezra's stomach tighten. AMP threw up stress-lines through flesh and bone.
The bear tried to charge and failed. Its front leg buckled; it collapsed, choking on weight and blood and its own failing structure.
Deimos held until the thrashing turned to weak movement, then stillness.
Silence fell.
Not peace—just the grove taking a breath.
Deimos tugged twice. The dagger came free with a wet schlup and flew neatly into his hand. He wiped it on fur and sheathed it.
"Looks like we're having bear meat tonight," he said, baring his teeth in something that was almost a grin.
This time the knights' response wasn't shaky laughter. It was release.
A collective exhale. Shoulders lowering a fraction. The kind of calm you earned.
Evered, deadpan, said, "I'll still be needing a new pair of trousers."
Galwell huffed once, eyes still on the trees. "Add it to the tally."
Rycharde's expression didn't soften much—but the corner of his mouth moved, faint as a crack in stone.
Oswyn didn't joke. He checked lanes and spacing, polearm still up, as if the grove might decide to send a second problem.
Dynham's sword stayed out. He looked into the canopy and muttered, almost conversational, "Dead calm after a kill. That's when it bites."
Ezra exhaled, realizing only then that he'd been holding his breath.
AMP dimmed at the edges of his vision as the immediate threat ebbed. His heartbeat stayed high anyway.
He was still grinning at the absurdity of Deimos casually declaring dinner when the air behind him went wrong.
It started as a prickle along the back of his neck, hairs lifting as if someone had opened a door to a colder room.
Ezra frowned and shifted, glancing over his shoulder.
AMP flared back to life without being asked, narrowing his focus behind him. A single golden arrow dropped into his field of view, pointing straight down through the canopy, a tiny timer in the corner beginning to tick in fractions of a heartbeat.
A rush of wind hit him, strong enough to bow the leaves around him.
He turned.
A huge hawk slammed out of the canopy toward him—wings spanning four meters, talons forward, beak open, charging straight at him.