Eliakim woke to the smell of herbs and smoke.The hut was dim, the fire reduced to embers, and the steady hiss of rain still whispered beyond the warped wooden walls.
The stranger was there again — but now, in the dim light, Eliakim realized something that jarred him.The figure was not a man.He was a boy.
No more than eleven.Yet he moved with the composure of someone who had lived far longer, his small hands sure as they rinsed blood from linen and tied careful knots over wounds that would have made most grown soldiers gag.
Eliakim kept still, feigning deeper sleep.The Codex of Imreth hummed faintly at the edge of his thoughts, flickering with partial readings of the boy's presence — something sealed, something heavy. But every time the Codex pushed further, it was as if a wall of black stone slammed down, shutting him out.
"Water," Eliakim rasped suddenly, cracking one eye open.
The boy glanced at him without surprise — as if he'd known Eliakim was awake all along. He brought a cup, steady-handed.
Eliakim took it, letting his fingers brush the boy's. They were calloused, yes — but covered in faint, uneven burns, the kind left by fire that bites not from outside, but from within.
"You found us?" Eliakim asked.
The boy said nothing.He simply adjusted the bandage on Eliakim's shoulder, his expression unreadable, like someone mending a damaged tool rather than tending a living person.
"You're not from here," Eliakim pressed, his tone low, measured. "And you're no ordinary healer."
A flicker — not of emotion, but of… resistance. Like Eliakim had pressed against the edge of something locked tight.
Finally, the boy spoke — voice even, tone flat, yet carrying a weight that made the air feel smaller."Names are not important right now. Wounds are."
"Maybe not to you," Eliakim said, letting his gaze harden, "but they are to me."
The boy paused, his hands stilling. For the first time, his eyes lifted to meet Eliakim's fully — ash-gray, ringed with a faint red that might have been sleeplessness… or something far older.
"My name," he said quietly, "is Malachi Vesper."
The words felt like an invocation.The Codex shivered in Eliakim's mind — as if that name had been written somewhere in its pages long before they met.
Malachi's gaze didn't waver."I pulled you from the river because leaving you would have been… inefficient." His eyes flicked to the others. "But don't mistake me for an ally. I mend wounds. I don't choose sides."
With that, he stood and crossed the hut, his shadow stretching unnaturally long in the firelight. Eliakim watched him go, mind racing, unease gnawing at the edges of his relief.
Because there was something in the way the boy moved, in the way his presence filled the room, that told Eliakim one truth beyond doubt —Malachi Vesper was not here by chance.