Hearthgrave woke to a hard light. The kind that made frost look like ground glass and turned the sea into a single sheet of hammered steel. Someone had dragged the last of the bodies farther down the beach in the night. The tide had done the rest. What remained were black stains in the sand and a silence that sat heavy on the square.
Jalen's shack stood with its door open to the cold. He moved through it like a shadow, packing without sound.
The cloak first, the one Mira had mended with crooked stitches. A coil of line and a small bone hook. Flint and a steel striker. A knife for fish, a second for men. The fox carving she'd left months ago—he picked it up, set it down, picked it up again, and tucked it deep into his pack. The cord she'd knotted to keep her hands from shaking—he wound it around his wrist, then unwound it and coiled it flat, sliding it into an inner pocket.
His sword leaned against the doorframe. He didn't sheathe it yet.
Outside, the village pretended not to look. Eyes flashed and slid away. The word Kael didn't pass anyone's lips. Not even the children spoke.
Mira came when the light was stronger. Her hair was pulled back, her cloak tight, the child tucked under it like a small heartbeat. She stopped in the doorway and watched him checking straps he'd already checked twice.
"You've decided," she said.
He tied the last knot. "Everlock's dogs will keep coming. If I stay, they'll bleed you to reach me."
She nodded, jaw set hard enough to crack. "Then go west."
He had expected an argument. He hadn't realized how much he'd wanted one until it didn't come.
She stepped around him, laid the baby on the bedroll, and began to fold his spare tunic as if it mattered that it be neat. The shack smelled like smoke and salt and the faint sweetness of the balm she used for the child's cough.
"You'll need food for three days," she said, practical. "After that, the river road forks. Hunters keep a cache beneath the split stone. Take only what you must."
He watched her hands. "You don't have to pretend this is easy."
"I'm not." She didn't look up. "I'm choosing not to make it harder."
The baby—John, because some names insisted on being simple—stirred and blinked wide sea-glass eyes at Jalen. Jalen crouched, the boards creaking under his weight, and held out a finger. Small hands closed around it, warm and insistent.
"You're going to be heavy one day," Jalen murmured. "Tire every man who tries to keep up." He glanced up at Mira. "Keep him from the shore when the black snow falls."
"I will."
He lifted John and the child made a soft sound that wasn't quite a laugh, pressing a damp palm against Jalen's cheek as if to memorize him by touch. Jalen's throat tightened. He breathed through it and handed the child back.
She wrapped John close again, then stood very still, as if listening for something inside herself.
"What?" Jalen asked.
"Nothing." Her eyes flicked away, then returned. "Maybe nothing." A beat. "I'm late."
The word hung between them like a drawn string. She didn't blush or drop her gaze. If anything, she steadied.
"I don't know," she said plainly. "It could be the winter. It could be the storms. It could be… not nothing."
Jalen's breath left him in a low, rough exhale. He hadn't prepared for an enemy he couldn't meet with steel.
"If it is something," he said slowly, "I will come back."
"You said that to your sister last night," she replied, not unkindly.
"I meant it then." He met her eyes. "I mean it more now."
Mira's mouth twitched, almost a smile, breaking and mending in the same breath. "Then go prove the word freedom isn't just a sound men die for. Bring it back into your hands."
He nodded. There was nothing else to say that wouldn't make leaving harder.
They stepped outside together. Frost cracked under their boots. The villagers drew back a step as if the cold itself had teeth. An elder took off his cap. A woman crossed herself in the way of her mothers. No one barred the path.
At the edge of the square, Jalen turned. "I apologize for the trouble I have caused, for hiding who I am from you." His eyes turned a golden violet. "I am the god of freedom. Your kindness will not go unnoticed. This village will forever be under my protection, and your economy will be in surplus."
"And if Everlock sends more—"
"They'll find a village that remembers what you did," Mira said. "And a woman who learned to hide sharp things in plain sight."
He almost laughed. It came out like a tired breath.
"Keep the door braced when the wind turns," he said. "And oil the latch. It sticks."
"I know." She held his gaze a moment longer, then reached out and took his wrist, pressing his palm to the place above her heart. Her pulse was quick and steady. "Don't die trying to be a god, Jalen. Be a man who keeps his promises."
He closed his fingers around hers, once, as if staking something wordless in the space between them, then let go.
He angled down the beach alone.
Rhea's marker wore its frost like a veil. He knelt, set the sword across his lap, and rested his hand flat against the carved name. His blood from last night had dried into a dark thumbprint in the R.
"They came in the night," he said softly. "Traders with iron under rags. I answered."
The sea hissed, as it always did, like a long breath in a long body.
"The old man was at my soul tree again," he went on. "The fruit was rotting. Branches black as stormglass. I wanted to pretend I didn't know what it meant." He shook his head. "I do."
A small wave ran up and wet his knees, icy through wool. He didn't move.
"It looks like I'm going after all," he said, voice low but steady. "But I promise I'll come back. I know I said that yesterday too, but it's only because I don't know when that'll be."
The promise felt less like sound and more like something hammered into the bones of the world. He sat there until the cold climbed his thighs and the light shifted higher, until the tide took the last clean edge off the print of his hand on the stone.
When he rose, the gold-violet pulse under his skin answered the morning like a second heartbeat. He slid the sword home, shouldered the pack, and turned west. The gulls still hadn't returned. The road out was a pale scar through scrub and frost, vanishing into low hills where Everlock's shadow thinned.
At the shack, Mira stood in the doorway with John tucked close, one hand braced against the frame he had rebuilt. She didn't wave. She didn't need to. He felt the weight of her watching until the dunes took him from her sight.
Jalen did not look back. The wind at his back smelled like iron and pine and a storm he hadn't met yet. He walked into it.