Doran finally looked at me, eyes glinting with something sharp but strangely warm.
"That depends." He leaned back, arms folding across his chest. "If you keep grinning like an idiot every time you scrape progress, you'll be a corpse before winter ends. But…" His mouth curved upward again. "If you learn when to shut up and when to strike, you'll leave a name that'll make even the Guild grind their teeth."
I chuckled. "High praise, coming from you."
"Don't get used to it." He closed his eyes, settling deeper into his cloak. "Tomorrow, I'm going to break that ego of yours all over again."
"Looking forward to it."
He didn't reply this time. The only sound was his steady breathing as he drifted toward sleep, and the low hiss of the fire.
But even in that quiet, my chest burned—not from exhaustion, but from the weight of his words.
A legend, huh?
Maybe I'd carve out more than just a rumor after all.
While becoming a legend is good and all of that.
