The trees had teeth.
Not literal ones—though some of their twisted limbs curled like fangs—but there was something in the way they rose from the earth, brittle and sharp, as if the forest itself had once devoured something whole and never quite let go. Their bark peeled like old skin, pale beneath the moss, and the wind didn't pass through them so much as it whispered, like it feared waking something asleep beneath the roots.
The boy stepped carefully.
His boots—damp, salt-stiff, half-torn—made no sound on the loam, but each step felt like trespass. The soil here was dark and soft, almost too soft. Dead leaves clung wetly to his calves. Mist moved low to the ground, sliding between trees like it remembered the shape of wolves.
Behind him, the sea was a distant hush, barely audible now. The wreckage of the storm—ship parts, bodies, blood—lay forgotten on the beach, half-buried in sand and silence. He hadn't looked back since morning. He wouldn't. There was nothing behind him now but ghosts and salt.
He held the sword low in his grip. Not drawn in challenge—drawn in readiness. The dagger at his side. The axe looped on his hip. Three weights. Three tools. None of them made him feel safe.
The Bonewood didn't care that he was armed.
It hadn't been named—not aloud—but the moment he stepped beneath its gnarled canopy, he'd known. This place had a name, and it wasn't one you gave it. It gave itself.
He'd spent the better part of the day moving through it. No path. No signs. Just the dull ache of hunger and the constant pull to keep going. He didn't know where he was going. He only knew he couldn't stop.
The forest didn't repeat itself. No tree looked the same twice. Every glance backward felt wrong, like the branches had moved when he wasn't looking. He marked a trunk with his dagger once—just a thin slash of steel across the bark—and passed it again hours later. Only the cut was gone. He didn't try again.
At some point, he began to see them.
Eyes. Glimpses. Flickers of fur, too fast to track. A hush of paws brushing leaves. No growls. No snarls. Just the same patient stillness he remembered from the beach.
They were watching.
They'd followed him into the forest, but they hadn't approached. Not yet. Wolves, he was certain. Not just animals. Not just beasts. There was something else in the way they moved.
Old.
That evening, when the sun was little more than a faint smear of gold behind the clouds, he found a clearing. Half-rotted stumps surrounded a hollow, and a stream trickled faintly through the far side. He knelt by the water, cupped it in his hands. It was cold enough to burn. He drank anyway.
He found shelter before night fully claimed the forest.
A shallow cave, half-covered by brambles, hidden behind a cluster of sagging trees whose limbs curled downward like claws. Inside, the stone was cold but dry. The roof sloped low and deep. It would do.
Afterward, he gathered branches and fallen bark. Much of it was wet. The kindling wouldn't catch. He tried the flint, the steel. Sparks fell like fireflies and died just as fast. His hands were shaking now—not from fear, but from the bone-deep fatigue of too many days walking without rest, too many nights with barely a mouthful of food.
He sat cross-legged beside the pile and stared at it.
Matteo's voice came back to him: "Don't force it. Ask it."
But he didn't speak. He just let himself feel—everything. The ache in his ribs. The sting of the wind on his face. The slow, creeping pressure in his skull. The cold.
And then, deeper still, the warmth that curled like breath beneath his skin.
He placed one hand on the wood.
The fire did not answer.
Nothing came. Not a spark, not the faintest coil of warmth. Just the hollow ache of expectation unmet. Why now, when it had answered before? Was it hunger, fear, or simply that he was not enough to draw it forth? His father had said a blade dulled if it was left uncared for—was fire the same, slipping away because he could not hold it steady? The thought soured in him, and after a long silence he let out a sharp breath. "Fine," he muttered, shoving to his feet. Outside, the forest waited, damp and cold. He searched until he found what would serve—dry moss beneath a cedar, thin branches sheltered from the last rain. Back in the cave, he worked flint to stone, showering sparks until one caught, feeding it with patience and breath until a thin flame licked to life. Not magic. Not Elementum. Just stubborn work and stone. It burned all the same.
Night crept in like a sickness. The firelight gave him a small circle of safety, but the trees leaned in close at the edge of it. Mist coiled low, clinging to the ground like old breath.
He sat with his back to a stump and laid the sword across his knees.
It wasn't the weight of the weapon that comforted him, but the shape of it—the way it fit in his hands, the way the light curled across the spine like it had done so many times before in another's grip.
He ran a finger along the flat of the blade. It was warm from the fire. Solid. Real.
He thought of his father then. Not just the way he fought, but the way he moved. The space between each step. The stillness before each strike.
The boy rose, ignoring the dull pull of his muscles, and stepped into the clearing.
He took his stance.
Grip. Breathe. Turn. Step. Cut.
Again.
He moved slowly at first, then faster, until the air around him seemed to shift in rhythm with his limbs. He wasn't trying to fight anything. He was trying to remember. Trying to become. His breath burned in his lungs, and his vision blurred at the edges. Still, he moved.
He envisioned his father on the beach—how he'd moved like tidewater over stone. Silent. Inevitable. There had been no wasted motion, no panic. Just precision. Resolve shaped into flesh.
He gripped the blade and moved through the first form—not perfect, not even close. But the rhythm steadied him. A step, a pivot, a diagonal strike. Again. Again. His muscles burned, but that only sharpened his focus.
Strike. Step. Breathe.
His father's voice echoed faintly in the hollow behind his ribs:
"A blade isn't swung. It's spoken. Every motion should say something your enemy cannot answer."
The sword sliced through the silence. His body followed.
When he finally stopped, the world felt quieter than before. The fire still crackled. The trees still watched. But something in him had shifted.
Rain came the next day.
It wasn't heavy. Just persistent. The kind that soaked everything without hurry. He found a hollow beneath a leaning tree and built a rough shelter of branches and his tattered cloak.
The hunger was worse now. He hadn't eaten since the squirrel. A handful of bitter roots kept the ache from becoming agony, but barely.
He tried to hunt. Set crude snares. Watched the stream for fish. Nothing.
At dusk, he found mushrooms beneath a dead log. He remembered Matteo's voice again—"These will kill you. These won't." He chose the ones that didn't smell like rot. He hoped memory was enough.
He roasted them low over the fire and ate slowly.
That night, the cold pressed against him harder. His fire was small and shy, and he curled close to it like a dog to a dying ember.
Still, the wolves did not come close.
But they were there.
Always on the edge of sight. In the bend of branches. In the silence that followed his footsteps. They did not growl. Did not threaten. But they did not leave.
They were waiting.
On the seventh night—he thought it was the seventh, though time had lost its teeth—he saw one clearly.
It stood just beyond the edge of firelight.
Tall. Pale. Gray-streaked. Its coat clung with damp. Amber eyes watched him without blinking.
The boy didn't move. He didn't reach for the sword. He didn't need to.
The wolf didn't move either.
They stared at each other across the flame. The mist between them curled and twisted like smoke caught in thought. There was no sound but the quiet popping of embers.
He wondered if it was the same one from the storm. If it remembered him.
He wondered what it saw now.
He didn't speak. Didn't dare.
After a long moment, the wolf turned, slow as moonrise, and vanished into the trees.
That night, he dreamed of running.
Not fleeing. Not chasing.
Running.
Through trees that blurred into rivers of bark and shadow. Across earth that moved with him. Wind on his teeth. Fire in his chest. He did not carry the sword. He was the sword—sharpened by hunger, tempered by memory.
And the wolves were there. Not behind. Not ahead.
Beside him.
Not guiding. Not guarding.
Running.