The merchant's memories had proven more useful than I'd expected. Three days after leaving the memorial garden, I found myself following trade routes that existed more in absorbed knowledge than on any map. The paths wound through hills and valleys that felt familiar despite being completely foreign, guided by a dead man's lifetime of commercial travel.
It was the smell that reached me first. Not the clean scent of wilderness I'd grown accustomed to, but something else. Smoke, yes, but wrong somehow. Too thin, too desperate. The kind that came from people burning furniture because they'd run out of proper firewood.
I crested a low hill and saw Millbrook spread out below me like a wound in the landscape.
Once, it might have been prosperous. The merchant's memories whispered of a thriving village that served as a waystation between kingdoms, where traders could rest and resupply before tackling the more dangerous mountain passes. But the settlement I saw now was dying.
Half the buildings stood empty, their shutters hanging loose like broken wings. Gardens that should have been heavy with autumn harvest showed only withered stalks and bare earth. Even from a distance, I could see people moving with the careful, conserved motion of those who didn't have energy to spare.
"Bandits hit the trade routes hard last spring," the merchant's memories supplied. "Heard Millbrook was having trouble, but business is business. Couldn't afford to get involved."
Couldn't afford to get involved. The dead man's practical callousness sat bitter in my mouth, but I understood it. Getting involved had cost me everything once already.
I was about to skirt around the village when I heard the footsteps behind me.
"Wait," a voice called, breathless with exertion. "Please, just... wait."
I turned to find a young woman emerging from the tree line, her dark hair tied back with a strip of leather, a hunting bow slung across her shoulder. She was lean in the way that spoke of missed meals rather than natural build, but she moved with the quiet confidence of someone who knew these woods intimately.
"You're him," she said, not a question but a statement heavy with certainty and fear. "The one who made the garden."
My hand moved instinctively toward the dimensional pocket where I'd stored the archmage's staff. "I don't know what you mean."
"The memorial garden," she pressed, taking a step closer despite the obvious terror in her eyes. "Where the battlefield used to be. I saw it appear overnight. One day, there was nothing but corpses and carrion, the next..." She swallowed hard. "The next, there were flowers and graves and peace."
I studied her face, searching for deception or a trap. Instead, I found only desperate hope warring with justified fear. "What's your name?"
"Lyra," she replied. "Lyra Thornwick. I'm... I was the village scout. Before things got bad."
"And why are you following me, Lyra Thornwick?"
The question broke something inside her. She dropped to her knees right there on the hillside, her hands clasped in front of her like a prayer. "Because my people are dying, and you're the only one with power enough to help them."
"I don't help people," I said, the words coming out harsher than I'd intended. "I can't."
"Please." Tears cut tracks through the dirt on her cheeks. "I know what you are. I know you're something... not human. But I also know you buried those soldiers with honor, even the ones who'd killed each other. You showed them mercy." Her voice cracked. "We need that mercy. We need you."
Every instinct I'd developed over the past weeks screamed at me to walk away. To disappear into the wilderness and let the village die in peace. Getting involved meant exposure, meant risk, meant the possibility of losing control again.
But as I looked down at Lyra's desperate face, I heard Mira's voice echoing from memory: "Magic comes from the heart, Kael. Perhaps yours simply beats to a different rhythm."
"Tell me what's happening," I said quietly.
The relief that flooded her features was painful to watch. "Bandits," she said, climbing back to her feet. "They came in the spring, right after the war started getting serious. At first, it was just raids. Hit the trade caravans, steal what they could carry, disappear back into the hills."
"But it escalated," I guessed, the absorbed soldier's memories filling in the tactical progression.
"They started demanding tribute. Food, money, supplies. Said they were 'protecting' us from worse bandits." Her laugh was bitter. "Then the tribute got bigger. And bigger. Now they take half of everything we produce, and half of nothing is still nothing."
The picture she painted was grimly familiar. I'd seen similar tactics in the absorbed memories of the Alfaraz soldiers. Systematic pressure designed to break a population's will to resist.
"How many of them?" I asked.
"Thirty, maybe forty. They've got a camp in the old mine workings about five miles north of the village." Lyra hesitated, then added, "Their leader... there's something wrong about him. He talks like a soldier, not a brigand. And some of the others, they've got military gear. Real military gear, not just stolen scraps."
The pieces were starting to form a pattern, one that made my absorbed memories stir uneasily. "Show me the village," I said.
Lyra's eyes widened. "You'll help?"
"I'll look," I corrected. "That's all I'm promising."
She led me down paths that were game trails that wound through the underbrush like secrets. As we got closer to Millbrook, the signs of systematic starvation became impossible to ignore. Gardens stripped bare, not just of produce but of the plants themselves, eaten roots and all. Chicken coops stood empty, their wire walls cut open and doors hanging loose.
"We ate the seed grain two weeks ago," Lyra said quietly, following my gaze. "There won't be a spring planting."
"Unless the bandits are stopped," I said.
"Even then." She shook her head. "Too many people have died already. We don't have enough hands left to work the fields, even if we had seed to plant."
We reached the village's edge as the sun was setting, painting the dying settlement in shades of amber and shadow. I could see people moving between the buildings, but their movements were wrong. Too slow, too careful, like they were afraid that sudden motion might break something vital.
"The children stopped playing three months ago," Lyra said, noticing my attention. "Hard to run and laugh when you're always hungry."
I closed my eyes and reached out with the spatial magic, feeling the edges of dimensional space around the village. It was a technique the archmage had used for reconnaissance, sensing the flow of life energy through an area. What I felt made my stomach clench.
Sickness. Despair. The slow, grinding weight of people giving up hope one day at a time.
"I need somewhere to observe from," I said. "Somewhere I won't be seen."
Lyra nodded toward a cluster of abandoned buildings on the village's far side. "Miller's Row. Been empty since the bandits killed the families that lived there. You can see most of the village from the grain tower."
As we made our way through the shadows toward the empty district, I made a decision that I knew I'd probably regret. Opening a small dimensional pocket, I withdrew some of the preserved food I'd been carrying. Not much, just enough for a few meals, but it was more than these people had seen in weeks.
"Take this," I said, pressing the bundle into Lyra's hands. "Distribute it quietly. Don't let anyone see where it came from."
She stared at the food like it was made of gold. "I... thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," I muttered, already regretting the decision. "Just make sure it gets to the ones who need it most."
The grain tower was exactly what I needed. Three stories of stone and timber that gave me a clear view of the entire village while keeping me hidden in its shadows. I settled in to watch and wait, trying to understand the situation before deciding how to proceed.
What I saw over the next three days broke something inside me that I'd thought was already beyond breaking.
The bandits came every morning like a plague. Not all of them, just enough to remind the villagers who was in control. They'd swagger through the streets, taking what they wanted, treating the people like cattle to be managed rather than humans to be respected.
I watched them drag an old man from his home for the crime of hiding a small bag of grain. Watched them beat him in the village square while his family pleaded for mercy. Watched them leave him broken and bleeding as an example to others.
I watched them corner young women in dark alleys, their intentions clear even from my distant perch. Watched the girls' families look the other way because fighting back meant death for everyone they loved.
I watched children grow thinner by the day, their eyes losing the spark that should have been their birthright.
And through it all, I did nothing. I told myself I was gathering intelligence, learning the patterns, preparing for action. But the truth was simpler and more shameful: I was afraid. Afraid of losing control, afraid of revealing myself, afraid of the consequences that would follow.
Instead, I helped in small ways. Anonymous deliveries of food appeared on doorsteps in the dead of night. Medicine materialized in the healer's hut when supplies ran low. I used spatial magic to repair broken tools and patch holes in roofs, always working in darkness, always staying hidden.
It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.
On the fourth night, as I sat in my tower watching the village sleep fitfully below, the absorbed memories began to whisper more insistently. The soldiers I'd killed had known things, seen things, and now their knowledge was connecting patterns I wished I couldn't see.
The bandit leader's name was Marcus Korven, and according to the dead captain's memories, he'd been a sergeant in the Alfaraz Third Battalion until six months ago. Officially discharged for "disciplinary issues." Unofficially, reassigned to special operations.
The "bandits" weren't bandits at all. They were soldiers operating without insignia, part of a coordinated campaign to destabilize the border regions. Millbrook wasn't suffering random brigandage. It was being systematically destroyed as part of a larger strategic plan.
"Control the trade routes, control the war," the captain's memories whispered. "Cut off enemy supply lines, establish forward positions, maintain plausible deniability. Standard proxy operations."
Both kingdoms were doing it. Alfaraz in Penomes territory, Penomes in Alfaraz lands. Ghost soldiers pretending to be criminals, waging a shadow war while their governments maintained diplomatic fiction.
The people of Millbrook were dying not because of random criminal greed, but because they were inconvenient obstacles to military strategy.
I was still processing this revelation when the screaming started.
It came from the village square, raw and desperate in the pre-dawn darkness. I was moving before I'd fully registered the sound, spatial magic carrying me through dimensional folds until I stood on a rooftop overlooking the central plaza.
What I saw there ignited every trauma I'd thought I'd learned to control.
Two figures knelt in the square's center, their wrists bound behind their backs. An elderly couple, gray-haired and frail, wearing the simple clothes of farmers. Around them stood a dozen bandits, their weapons drawn, their faces hard with professional brutality.
Marcus Korven stood before the prisoners, his voice carrying clearly in the still air. "Let this be a lesson to all of you," he called to the villagers who'd been dragged from their homes to witness. "This is what happens when you hold back tribute. When you think you can hide grain while soldiers go hungry."
"Please," the old woman sobbed. "We gave you everything. There's nothing left."
"Everything?" Korven's laugh was cold. "We found the hidden cache, grandmother. Three whole bags of seed grain, buried like treasure. Did you think we wouldn't notice?"
"It was for planting," the old man said, his voice steady despite the fear in his eyes. "Without seed, there's no future harvest. Everyone starves."
"Everyone starves anyway," Korven replied. "But at least this way, you get to serve as an example."
He drew his sword.
Time stopped.
In that frozen moment, I saw not Marcus Korven raising his blade, but the Alfaraz captain who'd killed Gareth. I saw not two random villagers about to die, but Mira and Gareth kneeling in our forest clearing, their eyes wide with confused terror.
I saw the moment when everything I loved had been taken from me, and I felt that same helpless rage building in my chest like a physical pressure.
But I wasn't helpless anymore.
Reality tore like wet paper as I ripped through the dimensional fabric, stepping through space itself to emerge directly behind Korven. The spatial rift crackled with displaced energy, and the first thing to emerge from the dimensional tear was my hand, wreathed in flames so intense they bent light around them.
Korven's head didn't just burn. It melted like wax, the fire magic consuming flesh and bone in an instant of perfect, silent horror. The headless corpse stood for a heartbeat before collapsing, and I stepped fully through the dimensional tear, my eyes blazing with absorbed power and absolute fury.
The bandits had no time to react, no time to understand what was happening to them. I abandoned all subtlety, all control, all pretense of restraint.
Earth spikes erupted from beneath three of them before they could even scream, the stone shards punching through armor and flesh with casual violence. Fire torrents reduced two others to ash in seconds, their weapons clattering to the ground as their wielders simply ceased to exist.
For the ones who tried to run, I folded space around them, crushing their bodies into impossibly small points before letting them snap back to normal size. The result was less explosion than implosion, reality briefly forgetting what shape they were supposed to hold.
The last few died to gravitational manipulation, their weapons turned into projectiles that moved with the force of falling stars. Swords became meteors, axes became hammers of crushing force, and the men who'd wielded them were reduced to broken things that had once been human.
It was over in less than thirty seconds. Twelve professional killers were obliterated before they could surrender, explain, or even understand what was killing them.
As each one died, I absorbed them.
Their memories flooded into me like a torrent of dirty water. Marcus Korven's strategic knowledge, his network of contacts, and his understanding of the proxy war's scope. The other soldiers' training, their mission parameters, and their knowledge of similar operations across the borderlands.
What I learned made my blood run cold.
Millbrook was just one target among dozens. Both kingdoms were systematically destroying border settlements, using ghost soldiers to eliminate witnesses and strategic positions while maintaining political deniability. The proxy war was vast, coordinated, and utterly without mercy for the civilians caught in its path.
When the absorption finished, I stood alone in the square surrounded by the evidence of my fury. Where twelve armed men had stood, there was now only ash and stains and the twisted remains of weapons that had been turned against their owners.
I turned toward the elderly couple, expecting to see gratitude or relief.
Instead, I saw absolute terror.
They were still kneeling, still bound, but now they stared at me with the same horror they'd shown their would-be executioners. Around the square, the villagers who'd been forced to watch were backing away, some making warding signs, others simply fleeing into the darkness.
"Monster," someone whispered.
"Demon," came another voice.
I looked down at my hands and saw them covered in blood that wasn't mine, wreathed in residual flames that cast dancing shadows on the ground. My reflection in a puddle of rainwater showed eyes that now held flecks of green and silver from the absorbed bandits, swirling with the gold and brown I'd carried before.
I was becoming something that no longer looked entirely human.
"Please," the old woman whimpered. "Please don't hurt us."
The words hit me like physical blows. These people, the ones I'd tried to save, were more afraid of me than they'd been of their tormentors. And perhaps they were right to be.
"I won't hurt you," I said quietly, my voice carrying harmonics that hadn't been there before. Multiple absorbed voices speaking in unison, creating something that sounded less like speech than like a chorus of the dead.
I reached toward them to cut their bonds, and they both flinched away.
"Stay back!" the old man gasped. "We... we won't tell anyone. Just please, leave us alone."
I dropped my hands and stepped away, the weight of their fear settling on my shoulders like lead. Around the square, shutters were slamming closed, doors barricading, people hiding from the monster who'd saved them.
"The bandits are dead," I announced to the empty air, knowing the villagers were listening from behind their walls. "All of them. You're safe now."
But even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. The absorbed memories had shown me too much. This operation was just one branch of a vast tree, and cutting off a single limb wouldn't kill the whole plant. Within weeks, maybe days, both kingdoms would send investigators to learn what had happened here. When they found evidence of the kind of power I'd displayed, they'd send armies.
I'd saved Millbrook from bandits only to mark it for destruction by something far worse.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the cowering villagers. Then, louder: "I'm sorry."
I opened a dimensional rift and stepped through, emerging on the hillside where Lyra had first approached me. She was there, crouched behind a fallen log, her face pale with shock.
"You saw," I said. It wasn't a question.
She nodded slowly. "I saw." Her voice was barely a whisper. "What... what are you?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "Something that shouldn't exist. Something that destroys everything it tries to save."
"You saved them," she protested weakly.
"Did I?" I gestured toward the village below, where people were still hiding in their homes. "Look at them, Lyra. They're more afraid of me than they were of the bandits. And they should be. Because what I did tonight... It's just going to bring worse things down on their heads."
I turned away from her, from the village, from the mess I'd made of trying to help. "There are more operations like this. Dozens of them. Both kingdoms are using ghost soldiers to destroy border settlements. Millbrook was just one target."
"Then stop them," she said, climbing to her feet. "You have the power. You could end all of it."
"With what?" I laughed bitterly. "More death? More absorption? More terror?" I looked back at her, seeing the fear still lurking in her eyes despite her brave words. "I'm not a hero, Lyra. I'm a collection of the dead, wearing the shape of something that used to be human. Every time I use this power, I become less of what I was and more of what I've killed."
"But if you don't act, more people will die."
"And if I do act, I become something that makes death look merciful." I opened another dimensional rift, preparing to disappear into the wilderness where I couldn't hurt anyone else. "Tell them to run. Tell them to abandon the village and scatter to the four winds. It's the only way they'll survive what's coming."
"Wait," she called after me. "Where will you go?"
I paused at the threshold of the rift, considering the question. The absorbed memories were already showing me possibilities. Military installations I could strike, proxy operations I could unravel, kingdoms I could topple if I was willing to become the monster they were all afraid I already was.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But I know I can't stay near people. Not anymore."
I stepped through the rift and let it close behind me, leaving Lyra alone on the hillside with the knowledge of what I truly was. The first living person to witness my true nature and survive.
But as I emerged in a forest clearing fifty miles away, I carried with me more than just guilt and self-recrimination. I carried the complete tactical knowledge of a proxy war that spanned two kingdoms, and the power to do something about it.
The question was whether I was strong enough to resist the temptation to become the very monster that could end it all.