He left the overhang before the light could fail. Distance was its own kind of shelter, and he wanted more of it between himself and the place where the bear drank. He moved along the contour, not climbing, not descending, letting the slope tell him where it preferred a body to pass. He kept his steps thoughtful. He made his breath quiet. He practiced not thinking beyond what came next.
Bare rock gave way to needles again. He welcomed the whisper underfoot. The trees on this side of the gorge were spruce and fir in close company, their trunks straight as posts, their lower limbs dead and brittle where light never reached. He threaded through them and found, by luck or by something like it, a small clearing where the last storm had brought a giant down and laid its crown across two neighbors. The fallen trunk made a wall. The lifted roots made another. He had a corner to call his own.
The fire no longer came when he reached for it. Once, it had answered like a whisper at the edge of thought—an ember catching on the breath of his will. Now it slipped from him, skittish and unwilling, as if the more he needed it, the further it recoiled. Matteo had warned him: fire bends to truth, not hunger. But what truth was he lacking? Each attempt left him colder, more uncertain, and with the bitter taste that his gift was slipping away rather than sharpening.
He clenched his fists, heat rising in his chest though none answered in his palms. Was he weakening? Was he too tired, too tangled in doubt? The memory of flame lacing his blade felt almost like a lie now, some trick of desperation he could never repeat. The silence where the fire should have been was worse than failure—it was abandonment.
At last he spat out a curse and turned to what he hated most: he'd strike flint and steel like anyone else, because coaxing flame from his own hands was never guaranteed, and failure in the cold could cost him more than pride.
He went to work without flair. A bed of boughs. A curl of shaved wood. A wedge of bark to keep the ember off the damp. He gave the ember life with flint and patient breath, then kept the flame stingy and red, a coal bed rather than a beacon. He cooked the rest of the fish, because raw strength had its limits and he'd met them.
He ate without speaking. When he finished, he set the sword across his lap and wiped the blade again and again, though there was little point to it. Habit was a kind of prayer. He let it calm the part of him that still heard river in his ears and felt eyes on his skin.
The wolves kept their distance. Once, much later, he thought he saw a flicker of pale eyes beyond the weave of branches. He didn't test the sight with a second look. He let it be what it was: information without demand.
He lay back on the bed of boughs with the scabbard between him and the ground. The sky above was a thin cut of dark where the trees had not yet closed their ranks. A star found that opening and balanced there as if deciding whether to fall.
He talked then, because the quiet seemed to wait for it.
"All right," he said to the space where his family should have been. "You were right about water, Mother. Wet kills faster than teeth. I listened. I'm listening now." He shifted, the sword grip nudging the bone of his wrist. "Father, your edge is back. Not perfect, but it will do. Don't haunt me over it." He breathed out a laugh that made no sound. "Sister, sorry—if you could stop laughing every time I fall, that would be grand."
A movement in the trees made him stop. He held his breath without meaning to. He let it go when the night did not change shape.
"I'll be fine," he said, and was surprised to hear the words like a thing he'd rather believe than knew. "I'll be fine if I keep moving and don't start thinking I'm bigger than the place I'm walking."
Wind worked the high needles until they spoke like dry rain. Somewhere down in the gorge, water hammered at a rock that had done nothing but be in the way.
He woke twice in the night to small sounds that might have been nothing and might have been everything: a soft crunch, a shift of weight, the crisp snap of a twig too thin to bother a bear. Both times he let the hand that wasn't the sword hand find the scabbard and hold there until the rest of him could join it. Both times the sounds turned to night again and left him with his breath and the small heat of his hidden coals.
Dawn came late to that part of the slope. When it found him, it found him ready to leave. He stamped out the rest of the heat and scattered the coals to cold. He stretched until the places in his back complained in a language he understood, then shoulder-slung the satchel and checked the sword's hang.
He took the longer way down to the river because the shorter ways had too many opinions. The water showed itself in strips between trunks, bright where the sky found it, dark where it shouldered shadow. He angled toward a place where the bank climbed in clean shelves and looked across.
There, on the far side and far downstream—just a dark stitch worked into the seam of trees—something moved. Too far to threaten. Far enough to matter. He told himself it might be a boar, but the truth arrived before the lie could settle. The shape unspooled, rising to its full height, black against the thin wash of light. Shoulders like moving stone. Fur heavy with the green scent of the forest. Even at that distance, the tilt of its head pinned him in place. The gaze was not hostile, but it carried weight, the kind that made the air between them feel measured.
No malice. No hurry. A note held on a single pitch.
"Understood," he said without raising his voice. "I'll take the long way around."
He stood there a time he could not count and then he didn't. He turned upslope and found a path that wasn't a path, and he took it. The river kept talking behind him. The bear disappeared into the green work of trees. The wolves—if they were near—stayed in the grammar of the place, commas and pauses and spaces he learned to respect.
By midday he'd put hours between himself and the drinking place. The forest here smelled different, warmer, as if noon had more say than morning. He crossed a shallow draw and found the first blueberry bush he'd seen since the sea — small, dusty-skinned fruit, more promise than meal. He knelt and picked without greed, rolling each berry between finger and thumb to test for give. The taste was faint, almost shy, but it carried a memory of summers when his sister would come home with her palms stained purple, grinning like she'd stolen treasure. He ate until his mouth matched hers in color, and the ache in his stomach eased to something he could pretend was satisfaction.
He stood and cleaned his hands on the grass. A breeze came up the draw and turned his head the way a voice does when you think someone has spoken your name. Nothing stood there but distance.
All right, he thought. We share the woods. You keep your sides, I'll keep mine. I will learn where the lines are drawn without anyone having to bleed them for me.
He moved on, not hurrying, not lingering. The day bent itself into afternoon and then unbent. He found a ridge with a view worth the climb and sat with his legs dangling over a drop he had no intention of measuring. The river showed in the distance as a white seam stitched between dark folds. He watched it a while, not because he feared it, and not because he didn't.
"Some boundaries aren't marked in stone," he said softly. "Some you just learn to feel."
The wind carried the words away and did nothing foolish with them.
He shouldered his pack again and let the ridge lead him where it wanted.
The ridge bent into a darker quarter of the forest, where the canopy knitted so tight the air felt cooler by degrees. Here, the light broke in shards instead of sheets, falling at strange angles as if it had traveled farther than it should to reach the ground. His steps slowed, not out of fatigue, but because the place asked it of him.
Once, a flicker of motion caught the edge of his sight — pale against the dark weave of trunks. He stopped, pretending to study a lichen-covered stone. Nothing moved. When he walked on, the feeling returned, not as eyes on his back but as the steady press of a presence choosing its distance. Wolf or not, he let it stay in the grammar of the place.
The ground here changed underfoot — softer than moss, not quite earth, as if years of fallen needles had become their own quiet floor. It yielded slightly when he stepped, and for the first time since Matteo's lessons, he thought about what it meant to move with the ground rather than on it. He adjusted without thinking — knees looser, weight spread, each footfall a quiet agreement rather than a demand.
A wind came through, not strong enough to shake the branches, but enough to carry a scent ahead of him — wet earth and something sharper, metallic. He thought of rain before it came, and for a moment, wasn't sure if the knowing had been guesswork or something else entirely.
By the time he noticed the sky between the trees, it was the wrong color. The day's blue had been traded for a leaden cast, the kind that pressed low and made birds hold their tongues. He scanned the ridgeline and decided the next clearing had to be his before the weather turned. Storms here could come from nothing, and he was in no mood to gamble with shelter.
A single howl braided itself through the trees — not the sharp note of alarm, not the clipped bark of command, but something long and low, testing how far sound could carry before the wind took it. It threaded through the branches and seemed to hang there, a question without an answer.
He stopped, listening, measuring the space between the last note and the stillness that followed.
"All right," he murmured. "We'll see who reaches the clearing first."
The ridge kept its secrets. He kept moving.