Two weeks of this—moving when the wolves moved, resting when the ground told him to, waking to the same scent patterns stitched into the wind.
It was long enough for the rhythm to take root in him. He no longer rose because he'd decided to, but because the cold air thinned and the scents shifted, the same way dawn arrived for a wolf. His feet found steady places without argument. His knees bent and straightened at the right moments without command. When a jay burst from cover, he no longer flinched—just turned his head to follow the arc of its flight and measure the silence it left behind.
Some mornings he caught the wolves in sight: pale and mottled shapes threading the high ridges, crossing open ground with the kind of ease that made him aware of every sound his own steps made. They were rarely in a hurry, yet never seemed to linger. He had begun to notice the way their pace shifted with the wind—how they slid wide of hollows when the air pushed scent downhill, how they curved around thickets with their eyes already on the ground beyond.
Other days, they were ghosts. Only the proof of their passing remained—prints pressed deep into soft earth, a tuft of hair caught on bark, a single claw mark scoring a trunk just above his head. They never came closer than they meant to, but they never left him behind, either.
Fire had been slower to learn him. In camp after camp, he cupped his hands and breathed the way Matteo had shown him—steady in, steady out. The best he'd coaxed was a faint heat or the thin ghost of smoke. The moment his focus slipped, it was gone, as if it had only been humoring him. Hunger tightened his jaw; frustration broke his stillness. Matteo's warning had proven itself: fire didn't answer to need, only to truth. And truth was harder to hold than a coal in the wind.
This morning the spruce around his camp kept the air still. The needles were dry, the ground soft with old duff. In the pale light, he found two sets of wolf tracks in the basin where he'd slept. They had passed while his fire still held its glow, their paths curving just enough to skirt the reach of his scent. He crouched there longer than he needed to, tracing the lines with his eyes as if the shape of their step might offer a reason for the distance. Then he shouldered his satchel and followed the slope upward.
The day's path was a patchwork—stone shelves split by seams of soil. On stone, he moved light, spreading his weight so the rock gave no complaint. On soil, he placed his heels soft, reading the grain before committing to each step. His knees knew the difference between steady ground and a trick before his mind caught up.
Halfway up the slope, the wind brought something heavier than wolf scent—low, sour musk with a rank edge that settled on his tongue. He slowed, breathing it in again, then scanned the edges of the trail. A leaning pine bore four long claw marks, deep enough to hold fresh splinters. He touched one with his fingertips. The wood was damp from sap, not from time.
He crouched lower. The earth here was bruised—pressed down by something heavy, then torn where it shifted weight. The impression was broad, the edges still springing slightly under his touch. He could follow it downhill, but the trail ran opposite to the wolves' path. His gaze tilted uphill instead, and the thought came without words: If I were them, I'd keep the high ground between me and that.
By midday he reached a bend in a narrow stream where the water had carved a shallow pocket into stone. He drank until his breath slowed, then set his satchel aside and built a small nest of dry grass and shredded bark.
He sat cross-legged, cupped his hands above it, and closed his eyes.
Breath in. Breath out. Not thinking of flame—thinking of the stillness flame liked. Heat began to bloom in his palms, faint at first, then sharper, as if the air leaned toward him. The bark's edge curled under the warmth; a wisp of smoke rose. He coaxed it higher, but a droplet from his wrist fell onto the nest, and the smoke vanished as if swallowed.
He rubbed his palms together, feeling the last trace of heat fade. Fire didn't answer to need. He used what little warmth remained to dry the bark before packing it away for later.
He remembered the night on the shore, when the wolves closed in and fire had leapt to his blade without asking. That hadn't been skill—it had been something deeper. His will stripped bare. No room for hesitation. No other breath but the one he was in. Fire had answered because he'd left it no choice—because in that heartbeat he was the thing it wanted him to be: certain, sharp, and unafraid of what it might burn. But a man couldn't live in that place. The edge always asked for a price.
A flicker of movement on the far bank drew his eye. The wolves were high on the ridge, trotting along the spine of the slope. Even at this distance, he could see how they traded the lead without breaking rhythm—one slipping forward while the other paused to read the land, then switching as if the choice had been spoken.
Clouds knotted over the afternoon sky, flattening the light. The wind crowded him rather than passing through. That musk returned, stronger now.
Not far ahead, he found what had drawn the scent—a half-eaten carcass just off the trail. Goat, maybe deer. The bite marks were too wide for wolf, the tearing uneven, almost clumsy. The flies had only just begun their work. Blood still clung dark and wet in the dirt.
The wolves' tracks pulled away uphill again, their line angling from his. Whether toward safer ground or simply away from the thing that fed here, he couldn't tell. But it was the second time in as many days he'd seen them make that choice with him in sight.
By evening, he reached a shallow rock shelf that looked down over the slope. He cleared a space for his bed, then knelt to lay out his tinder and kindling. This time he didn't call for Elementum. He struck flint against steel until the sparks bit into the curls of bark and began to breathe. He built it slow and low—no higher than his hand, just enough to warm his fingers and keep the damp from creeping in.
While the light held, he tried again. Not for the campfire, but for himself. Palms together. Breath steady. The heat came faintly, ghostlike. He leaned into it, but it slid away the moment he reached for more. He sat back, letting the night cool his skin.
The first howl came as the light thinned—close, but not close enough to reach him. Another answered from farther down the slope. He listened as their voices rose and fell in turns, making a shape between them. Not the hunt-call. Not the warning. Something else. He couldn't name it, but he knew they had placed him inside it.
Between their voices came another sound: slow, deliberate, heavy. Not paws. Not hooves. Weight settling over stone, breaking twigs without care. The musk slid through the wind again, thick as oil, and the fire at his side seemed smaller for it.
He set the sword across his knees and leaned forward, letting the night speak.
If I were them, he thought, I'd keep the thing in the middle of our voices until morning.
The thought didn't feel like strategy. It felt like instinct. And in that, there was a strange kind of comfort.