Dawn did not come gently.
The clouds were heavy, dragging across the pale sky like bruises that never healed. Mist clung to the crooked rooftops and curled through the muddy lanes, swallowing fences, well buckets, and sleeping dogs. The whole village seemed to wait. The air carried no birdsong, no laughter, only the faint creak of shutters pulled shut a moment too late.
Then the bell rang.
It was not the crisp, quick toll of morning work. This one was slower, deeper, each swing of the iron tongue echoing across the valley like the groan of a giant. It was the sound of judgment.
Aruto stood at the far end of the square. His body ached from training, ribs bound tightly beneath his tunic, but he had forced himself out of bed before the rest. He had felt it—the weight in the air, the hum in the chains inside his chest. They had stirred all night, vibrating against each other like teeth of a saw. He had not slept.
And then he saw the rider.
A shape in the mist at first, horse and man together, moving with a slow inevitability. The horse was black as river stone, its mane tied with strips of crimson cloth that snapped in the breeze like bloodied banners. The rider sat tall in the saddle, wrapped in a cloak the color of ash. When the mist broke, steel caught the light. Armor, blackened and engraved with symbols Aruto did not know, hugged his frame as if the metal itself had been grown from his flesh.
The villagers froze where they stood. A woman yanked her child behind her door. A farmer pulled his cap low and bent double, pretending to adjust his boots. Hunters, men who had once faced wolves barehanded, stepped back with downcast eyes.
The rider entered the square and dismounted. He moved as if the weight of his armor was nothing, boots sinking into mud without a sound. His horse exhaled a plume of steam and stamped once, but he gave it no glance. He didn't need to.
The priest hurried forward, robes dragging through the slush. His forehead nearly touched the earth as he bent. "Blessed Inquisitor," he said, his voice shaking but eager, as though he had waited years for this moment. "The village welcomes your judgment."
The Inquisitor lifted his head. His helm had no crest, no faceplate, only a narrow slit. Behind it, two eyes gleamed faintly gold, predatory and cold. They swept the square once, and the world seemed to shrink under their gaze.
When he spoke, his voice was low and resonant, the kind of voice that carried not because it was loud, but because silence obeyed it.
"This village harbors a curse."
The words were not a question. They were truth already decided.
The priest bent lower, mud splattering across his robes. "Yes, Lord Inquisitor. The boy—the Chainbearer—is here. We have tolerated his presence only for lack of guidance, but… he grows dangerous. His birth brought storms, his life brings discord. He must be cleansed."
Every head turned.
Aruto felt the eyes on him before he heard the whispers. Chainspawn. Vessel of ruin. Demon child.
His fists tightened at his sides. His chest burned, not only from bruises but from the chains that hummed faintly inside, restless, almost mocking.
The Inquisitor's gaze found him. The golden slits fixed on him as if nothing else existed. Aruto had endured many stares—fearful, hateful, disgusted—but this was different. This was not the look of a man seeing a boy. This was the look of a man measuring a rope for a gallows.
Aruto's throat dried. His ribs screamed as he drew a deep breath, but he lifted his chin. "I'm not cursed," he said. His voice was rough but steady, loud enough for all to hear.
The square rippled with gasps. The priest's head snapped up, eyes wide with fury.
The Inquisitor tilted his head slightly, like a hawk regarding prey. "Chains lie. Vessels deny. But the weight of truth does not change."
He stepped forward. Mud did not cling to his boots.
Sachi broke the silence. She darted from the crowd, hair loose from its braid, healer's basket clutched in her hands. She planted herself in front of Aruto, arms spread wide.
"He's just a boy!" she cried, voice trembling but fierce. "You don't know him. He works harder than any of your sons, bleeds more than your hunters, and still he stands! How dare you call him cursed?"
The priest hissed. "Sachi! Back down!"
But she did not. "No," she said, voice louder. "If you touch him, you'll have to go through me."
Whispers hissed through the crowd like wind through dry grass. She defends him. She shares his taint. She'll doom us all. Faces turned away. No one stepped forward.
The Inquisitor's hand brushed the hilt of his blade, a slow, casual motion. "Step aside."
"I won't," she said, trembling but unyielding.
The priest began to stammer, torn between fear of the Inquisitor and anger at her defiance. But before he could speak again, another shadow cut through the crowd.
Yori.
He moved without sound, amber eyes fixed on the armored man. He stepped to Sachi's side, tall and quiet, his presence enough to silence even the priest. He said nothing. He never wasted words. But the message was clear: if the Inquisitor struck, he would strike back.
Aruto's chest twisted. Not pain, not fear—something heavier. The chains inside him thrummed, restless, vibrating against his ribs.
The Inquisitor regarded the three of them, weighing them like stones in his palm. Then, with deliberate slowness, he extended his gauntleted hand, palm upward.
"Come willingly, boy. Accept cleansing, and the suffering of your village ends."
The villagers leaned forward, hope and fear tangled in their eyes. To them, this was the only path, the only way to rid themselves of the shadow that clung to their lives.
Aruto heard them. He heard their whispers as clearly as the chains in his chest. Go with him. End it. Let the curse die.
He thought of his mother's voice, whispering his name as she bled. He thought of the book, its diagrams burning into his mind. He thought of the voice in the stone hall: Pain is the toll. Will you pay it again?
His jaw clenched. His ribs ached with every breath, but he drew one anyway, steady and sharp.
"Inquisitor," he said, his voice flat, cold as the river in winter. "If you want me… you'll have to take me."
The square gasped as one. The priest recoiled. Sachi's eyes widened. Yori's stance shifted, wolf-like, ready.
The Inquisitor lowered his hand. Slowly. Deliberately.
"Then we begin."
The square became a ring for a ritual no one would name.
Villagers clung to its edges—hands gripping fence rails, fingers whitening on shutter slats, breath fogging the morning chill. Smoke from last night's cookfires lay low, threaded with the sharp tang of incense bleeding out of the shrine. Somewhere behind the crowd a goat bleated twice, then fell silent, as if warned. The Inquisitor stood in the center as though the ground had chosen him, armor drinking the light, helm slit a pair of patient embers.
"Truth first," he said, and the words seemed to add weight to the air. "Speak, and be measured."
The priest found his courage the way a starving man finds bread. "Lord Inquisitor," he announced, bowing toward the steel rather than the man. "Ten winters ago we took pity on a mistake. The midwives saw chains when this child drew breath; storms shattered the sky. At dawn, his parents lay dead. Since then: fevers out of season, beasts soured in the pen, tools splitting in steady hands. Wherever he passes, misfortune follows like a shadow that eats."
A murmur swelled and broke. "The west wheat rotted." "My third son's cough began after he glared at us." "Bells rang with no wind." The baker's wife lifted her apron and showed a bruise on her thigh. "He did nothing—but I dreamed of drowning all night after he walked by." A laugh, brittle as thin glass, answered from the mill steps. "The curse leaks."
Aruto took the chorus like rain on an old roof. It found the same routes as always, ran along the same seams, pooled where the boards were thinnest—his ribs, his jaw, the hollow behind his eyes where childhood had been evicted. If I cried, you would say the demon mimics men. If I laughed, you'd say it mocks them. So I learned to breathe instead. He made himself do it now: four counts in, hold, six counts out. Calm that wasn't calm, only control.
The Inquisitor raised two fingers. The noise died so quickly the silence felt engineered. Those gold-lit eyes slid from face to face like a knife choosing fruit. They rested on an old stonecutter whose hands shook when they were empty. "You," the Inquisitor said. "Speak as if the rope waits for lies."
The man swallowed. "My eldest fought him last spring," he croaked. "The boy fell—then rose, quiet, like pain couldn't find him. He scared me. A child shouldn't look like winter."
"Fear is a ledger," the Inquisitor said mildly. "It records debt." He turned at last to Aruto. "Chainbearer."
"Aruto," he answered, because he refused to help them erase him.
"Names are varnish," the Inquisitor replied. "They do not alter the wood." He took one step that sounded like a verdict. "Confess. Do the chains sing when you sleep? Does a shadow stand when you cannot? Have you swallowed breath that was not yours?"
Sachi's fingers tightened around the mouth of her basket until the wicker creaked. Yori shifted almost imperceptibly, a hunter's weight settling into a new decision.
Aruto held the Inquisitor's gaze. "I breathe because I'm alive," he said. "I stand because no one else will do it for me. If you hear singing, it's your own fear."
A flicker moved in the helm slit—amusement, or interest, or nothing. "Defiance is a mask that fits boys and men," the Inquisitor murmured. "Step into judgment."
The crowd peeled itself backward, leaving a circle of mud that looked like a wound. Sachi caught Aruto's sleeve. "Don't," she whispered, anger and terror braided into one thread. "He doesn't teach. He finishes."
"If I bend now," Aruto said softly, "I won't remember how to stand." He slipped free and entered the circle.
Mist hung there thicker than at the edges, beading on lashes, clinging to lips. The Inquisitor smelled faintly of myrrh and old iron; a thin scratch scored one pauldron, polished rather than mended, as if he liked his scars to shine. Aruto set his feet where countless drills had taught him, weight light, hips ready, ribs crying under their wrap. Be small until you must be large. He kept his breath shallow enough to steady hands, too shallow to knock on deeper doors.
"Begin," the Inquisitor said.
Aruto went first. Not a wild rush—he had learned that lesson in cheaper fights—but a feint to the eyes, the quick right for the seam under the breastplate, elbow folded to become a hook if it slid. The Inquisitor did not block. He wasn't there when the fist arrived. A quarter-step, a shrug of steel, a pivot that treated Aruto as a gust to be turned aside.
"Pain taught you," the Inquisitor observed. "It is a blunt teacher. It leaves legible handwriting."
Aruto wrote a new sentence anyway: kick to the thigh, step through, shoulder to hips, a throw at the margin of his strength. The Inquisitor allowed the mechanics to complete themselves and then erased the result with a minor correction—gauntlet closing on forearm with surgical certainty, twist that asked the joint a question it did not want to answer, knee blooming in Aruto's midline. Breath fled; vision whitened; mud accepted him.
"Up," the Inquisitor said, not unkindly.
Aruto obeyed because humiliation is a better fuel than pity. He saw Sachi start forward and stop herself with visible effort, teeth set in her lip. He felt Yori's attention narrow to a thread that tied the three of them together and stretched across the armored man's throat.
He tried angles that wooden dummies don't offer—shuffle to blind the helm slit, attack the line where cuisses kiss greave, stamp and clinch. The Inquisitor flowed like a door that had learned to be open and closed at once. When he touched Aruto, it was to undo. When he struck, he chose edges of his body that hurt without destroying: forearm knuckle to ear, palm heel to sternum, a heel that thudded the outer thigh and left the leg briefly faithless. The ground arrived more often. Staying on it became the only real choice, and he refused.
"See?" the priest said to the crowd, relief slicking every syllable. "Truth unmasks."
"Truth also binds," the Inquisitor said, without looking away from Aruto. "Listen, boy." His voice dropped, not for privacy but for precision. "What hums in you is not courage. It is appetite. It will borrow their names—strength, justice, love—until you feed it what it wants. When it asks for blood, you will call it mercy so you can sleep."
Aruto tasted copper. He also tasted an urge, bright and terrible: to open the door inside his breath and let the shadow step, to freeze the river again, to feel the reeds bow, to make the square see something that would end this with a single name: monster. He locked his jaw and strangled the impulse until it lay still.
He stood. The world's edges had gone smoky, black creeping inward like burnt paper. He centered the shrinking circle on two gold points and said, because spite is a kind of spine, "If you want me, work for it."
"We are working," the Inquisitor replied, and wrote another paragraph into Aruto's flesh. Not a beating, not a brawl—instruction, delivered at a cost the student couldn't afford. When Aruto's knees finally sagged, the Inquisitor caught his wrist and lowered him with an economy that felt like insult more than mercy. His other hand settled lightly on the sword's hilt, making a picture out of restraint.
"Do it," Aruto rasped, loud enough for the ring to hear. "If cleansing is killing, stop hiding the word."
"Cleansing," the Inquisitor said, "is cutting rot before it reaches the heart." He released Aruto's wrist and looked at the village rather than the priest. "By authority of the Pale Throne, the Chainbearer is taken into Inquisitorial custody. He remains within village bounds until sundown to settle earthly matters. At sundown, he is mine. Any who hide him, arm him, or bar my hand will be bound beside him. This is mercy. Last mercy."
A tremor passed through the crowd—the relief of a reprieve you didn't earn. Men nodded hard to look brave. Women pulled children closer and pretended the word mercy tasted sweet. The priest sagged with gratitude big enough to drown in and began to babble arrangements no one had asked for.
"You will do nothing," the Inquisitor said, and the babble died as if choked. "Shutter your windows. Keep your tongues as clean as your doors."
He turned, clicked tongue to teeth. The black horse came like a thought. He paused with one boot in the stirrup and looked back—not at the priest, nor the crowd, but at Sachi and Yori holding Aruto between them like a knot.
"Loyalty is a chain," he said softly. "When it tightens, it breaks something. Decide what you can afford to lose."
He mounted and rode toward the shrine. The ring collapsed inward after him, everyone suddenly needing to be elsewhere. In their wake the square exhaled, a tired, ugly sound.
Sachi dropped to one knee beside Aruto and slid an arm under his shoulders. "Easy." Her voice wasn't soft; it was steady, which was better. Blood had dried at the corner of his mouth. When she wiped it, the cloth came away brown. "Can you stand?"
"Yes," Aruto said, and meant Not yet. Yori took his other side without being asked, the way wolves shoulder weight because moving the pack is the only rule that matters.
They rose together. The world tilted and corrected. Aruto looked over Sachi's head at the faces that hadn't scattered quickly enough—the butcher's boy, the stonecutter, the baker's wife with the bruise, all assembled under the same sky that had watched him learn to take a punch. He felt hatred try to plant a flag in his chest. He did not let it. Flags invite armies.
"Clinic," Sachi said. "Stitches if needed. Decoction definitely."
"River," Aruto answered.
"Clinic," she repeated, sharper.
"River," Yori said, not to agree with Aruto but to name the only place where anything made sense. The book lay there. Breath had a door there. If there was any bridge left between this morning and the night waiting with iron hands, it would be built with mud and pain and counting.
Sachi stared at both boys like she wanted to throw them in the millrace. Then she swore in a healer's vocabulary—names of plants used as curses—and adjusted her grip. "Fine. River. But if you fall face-first into the water, I'm dragging you to the clinic by your ear and carving out whatever pride is blocking your brains."
They moved as three through lanes that pretended to be empty. Curtains twitched. A latch clicked. Somewhere a prayer tried to rise and choked on its own piety. At the village edge, the path narrowed between poplars slick with dew. Mist gathered in the hollows. The river's voice found them—low, steady, unafraid of time.
Aruto's steps steadied with it. His ribs burned a line under the wrap; every breath scratched it raw. He welcomed the scratch the way men welcome a whetstone: hurt now, cut later.
At the bank, Sachi set him on a fallen log and unknotted the cloth around his chest. Purple swam under the skin like ink poured in milk. She clicked her tongue and pressed carefully until he bit his own. "Two cracked, not broken," she diagnosed. "So you'll try to break them properly if I blink."
"Not today," Aruto said.
"Not ever," she corrected, and began to brew. Leaves. A pinch of something bitter. River water boiled in a blackened pot over a quick little fire Yori built one-handed without looking away from the trees.
Yori faced the opposite bank—reeds, slow current, a ripple that might have been fish and might have been something with eyes. "He will watch us from the shrine until sundown," he said. "Then he will come with a rope that has a name."
"What name?" Sachi asked.
"Mercy," Aruto said, and the word tasted like rust.
Sachi handed him the cup. "Drink. Then breathe. Not like an idiot who wants to impress a ghost. Like someone who plans to be alive at dusk."
Aruto lifted the cup and felt heat climb his fingers. He met their eyes—Sachi's furious devotion, Yori's ruthless quiet—and nodded once. He would not open the door inside his lungs here. He would not freeze the river or raise the shadow. He would count, and he would harden, and when sundown came he would not be something the Inquisitor could name.
He drank. The decoction clawed his throat and left something cleaner behind.
"Again," Sachi said, moving his hand to his belly where breath should start. "Slow. I'm timing you. Cheat and I break your nose so you have something else to think about."
Aruto let the river count with him. Inhale four. Hold. Exhale six. The chains hummed low, a serpent asleep in a coil. He did not touch them. He would not touch them. Not yet.
Above the poplars, the sky began to thin. Light crawled its way into the day like a reluctant truth.
Sundown had already started walking toward them.
The decree struck the square like a bell toll.
"At sundown, he is mine."
The Inquisitor's words clung to the air, heavier than rain, heavier than smoke. No one moved until his horse's hooves carried him toward the shrine, mist curling around black armor like it feared to touch. Only then did the villagers scatter, relieved to be nameless again.
Aruto tasted iron where he had bitten through his lip. His knees trembled, but he forced them stiff. Sachi dabbed at his blood with shaking hands, and Yori crouched low, eyes fixed on the road where the Inquisitor had vanished, as though expecting the man to double back.
"He'll take you," Sachi whispered. Her voice had no softness—just fury too sharp to hide. "They'll burn you in the square and call it mercy."
Aruto met her eyes. He wanted to say she was wrong. He wanted to promise he could endure chains, fists, anything. But what the Inquisitor brought wasn't just death. It was erasure.
"I won't kneel," Aruto said instead, and every breath dragged fire through his ribs.
"You won't have a choice," Sachi shot back.
Yori's voice cut through them, low and sure. "There is always a choice. But the price grows."
By afternoon the priest sent children to watch him from alleys, pretending they played. The black-robed figure lingered near the shrine steps, still as a statue, every movement of his helm tracking the village like a hawk. Word spread that bells had rung with no wind. By dusk, no one left their houses. Doors were barred. Lamps burned low.
Sachi slipped into Aruto's hut with a bundle of cloth. "Food," she said, though it was barely more than stale bread and roots. "You'll need it."
Aruto frowned. "You're certain."
"Yes."
"Then you're both fools," he muttered. But he hid the bundle under his shirt all the same.
When the first bell of sundown rang, Yori's shadow filled the doorway. His wolfish eyes burned in the dim. "He's moving."
Aruto rose. His chest screamed, but he locked his jaw against it. "So am I."
They slipped into the night through the mill road, Sachi's lantern covered with her cloak. The forest loomed ahead, branches clawing the last strips of light from the sky.
Behind them, hooves struck stone.
The Inquisitor had not hurried. He moved like a tide, inevitable, unstoppable. A single black horse. A single rider. His helm turned once, and though the slit showed only a golden ember, Aruto swore the gaze touched his spine.
"Run," Yori hissed.
They bolted.
The path narrowed, roots clawing at their ankles, thorns raking skin. Aruto forced his body past the breaking point, vision tunneling. The chains within him hummed louder, as though the chase had woken them. A promise—or a threat.
Sachi stumbled once; Aruto caught her elbow. Yori slashed brush aside with a hunter's knife, clearing the way. But no matter how they ran, the sound followed: hooves, steady as a heartbeat.
Then the world changed.
The Inquisitor's voice rolled through the trees, not shouted, not loud—just there.
"Kneel."
The command wasn't for ears. It was for marrow. Aruto's legs buckled, his lungs locked. The ground tilted like it meant to swallow him whole.
"No!" He roared against it, clawing at the mud. Pain lanced through his ribs, but he forced himself upright, swaying. His vision swam; in its edges, the chains flickered, iron and light.
Yori dragged Sachi behind a fallen trunk, eyes wide. "Not human," he muttered. "He's not—"
The Inquisitor rode into sight. His horse's hooves didn't strike mud—they struck air, a breath above the earth, every step impossibly clean. Mist curled away from him, leaving him untouched. His sword remained sheathed. He hadn't needed it.
"Aruto Ramazawa," he intoned. "Born with nine chains. Mark of the Betrayer. You are judged."
Aruto's body screamed for him to collapse. Instead, he bared his teeth. "Then judge me standing."
He rushed. Foolish. Broken ribs, no weapon, no chance. But the alternative was worse.
The Inquisitor dismounted without ceremony, as if gravity itself obeyed him. His gauntlet caught Aruto's fist mid-swing. The impact rang through bone like striking an anvil. Before Aruto could recover, the man's knee drove into his stomach. Breath fled. Vision went white.
Yet he did not fall.
The chains within him rattled, louder, louder. A single click echoed through his skull. Pain seared him, sharp enough to steal thought. His scream tore through the trees, raw, animal.
A shadow stirred at his back.
It wasn't whole—not yet. Just the outline of something vast, something crowned with antlers of bone and wings that weren't wings. Its hands, long and skeletal, mirrored Aruto's own raised fists.
The Inquisitor froze. For the first time, his helm tilted, fractionally. Interest. Caution.
Aruto sagged to one knee, the apparition fading as quickly as it had come. His body was smoke and knives, but his eyes burned. "Not… yours… to chain."
The Inquisitor released him. "Not yet."
He stepped back, drawing a sigil in the air with two fingers. Light carved itself into lines, forming a circle that glowed with pale fire.
Yori cursed. "He'll bind you here."
"No," Sachi hissed, grabbing Aruto's arm. Her grip was fierce, desperate. "We move now."
Yori threw his knife. Not at the Inquisitor—pointless. At the horse. The beast reared, not in pain but in protest, breaking the circle's focus for a heartbeat.
That was enough.
Sachi yanked Aruto toward the trees. Yori slammed his shoulder into the Inquisitor's arm—like colliding with stone, but it shifted the man half a step.
"Go!" Yori barked.
Aruto stumbled forward, Sachi half-dragging him. His vision blurred, but instinct carried him: the river, always the river.
Behind them, the Inquisitor's voice followed, calm as ever. "Run. Your chains will bring you back."
Branches tore skin. Mud swallowed boots. The forest became a labyrinth of dark and breath.
Aruto's lungs burned. Every gasp was knives. Yet he ran. Because behind them, the Inquisitor walked. Not ran, not rode—walked. And that was worse.
At last they broke through the trees. The river spread before them, black glass under a broken moon.
"Across," Yori said.
"It's too deep," Sachi protested.
"He can't be delayed otherwise."
Aruto didn't argue. He plunged in, the cold stealing his breath, numbing his pain. Chains within him hissed, furious at the shock. Each stroke dragged like iron, but the far bank crept closer.
Behind, the Inquisitor reached the shore. He did not enter. He raised one hand, and the water bent toward him like it wanted to obey. For a heartbeat, the current itself threatened to drag Aruto back.
Then the shadow stirred again. Faint. Fleeting. But enough. The water snapped back, surging wild, breaking the Inquisitor's hold.
Aruto collapsed on the far bank, coughing river into mud. Sachi hauled him up, sobbing his name. Yori crouched, knife ready, though his chest heaved like a bellows.
Across the water, the Inquisitor watched. Silent. Still. Then he lowered his hand.
"Not yet," he said again, and turned away.
Aruto lay in the mud, every nerve screaming. But his eyes locked on the black figure receding into the trees. Not defeat. Not yet.
Sachi cradled his face. "You'll die if you stay here."
Yori's gaze was harder, unflinching. "We can't go back."
Aruto closed his eyes. The chains rattled within him, faint, patient. And for the first time, he didn't just hear them. He felt them pulling—not down, but forward. Toward something vast, waiting.
He spat mud and blood. "Then we go forward."
The forest had gone quiet.
No wind. No birds. Only the ragged rasp of Aruto's breath, the soft sobs Sachi tried to hide, and Yori's low growl as he scanned the shadows.
Aruto forced himself upright, every muscle shrieking. His clothes clung, soaked through, plastered to skin cut raw by branches and thorns. Mud streaked his arms, blood dried in patches where the river hadn't scoured it away.
Sachi pressed against him, frantic hands searching for wounds. "You can't move—you can't even stand—"
"I'm standing," Aruto rasped, even as his knees buckled again.
Yori caught his shoulder, steadying him. The wolf-eyed boy's face was unreadable, but his grip was unshakable. "Not for long," he muttered.
Aruto pulled free and straightened. His chest burned like a forge, but he refused to bow, not even to his own body. "I won't crawl. Not after this."
They staggered deeper into the forest, following no path. Branches clawed, roots snared. Behind them, the river whispered, as though mocking the idea that water could save anyone for long.
When they finally collapsed in a hollow between roots of an ancient tree, the night pressed in heavy.
Sachi tore strips of cloth from her own cloak, binding Aruto's ribs with fierce hands. "You're insane. Both of you. He could have killed us all without drawing his blade."
"He didn't," Yori said. His voice was even, but his eyes gleamed with something darker. "He chose not to."
"That's worse!" Sachi snapped. "It means he's waiting. Watching. Like we're insects he'll pin when he feels like it."
Aruto stared up through the branches, where the moon broke in slivers. The chains inside him shifted, restless. He remembered the shadow that had answered his scream, the way it had mirrored his fists. Not a weapon. Not yet. But a promise.
"He said 'not yet,'" Aruto murmured. His lips tasted of river salt and blood. "That means he expects me to crawl back. To break myself until I'm easy to shackle."
Sachi leaned close, voice breaking. "Then leave. Run far. Find a place they'll never look—"
"They'll always look," Aruto cut her off. His eyes, red in the moonlight, burned with something fierce and raw. "As long as these chains rattle, they'll never stop. And I won't hide."
Silence stretched.
Finally Yori spoke, quiet as leaves. "Then you can't return. Not to the village. Not ever."
The truth landed heavier than the Inquisitor's blows. Aruto felt it hollow his chest, colder than river water. The village had been hell, but it had been his hell. The familiar paths, the fields, the faces—even if they spat at him, even if they cursed his name. To cut it away was to cut the last tether to what he had been.
Sachi's eyes brimmed, but she said nothing. She knew he was already gone.
Aruto exhaled, slow, steady, through clenched teeth. "I won't go back."
Later, when the others slept curled near the tree's roots, Aruto stayed awake. The forest hummed faintly, insects and leaves filling the void left by terror. He pressed his palm against his ribs, feeling the faint hum of the chains.
They were quiet now. Waiting. Patient.
But in that silence, he heard it again—like a whisper in bone, not words but certainty.
Forward.
By dawn they stood at the forest's edge. The village roofs were faint smudges in the distance, smoke rising weakly from chimneys. Bells rang once, faint, carried by wind.
Aruto stared. Memories flickered: his mother's soft hum, his father's rough laugh, children pelting him with stones, priests spitting curses. Every scar, every bruise, every fleeting kindness—all bound to that cluster of huts.
He felt the weight of Sachi's hand on his arm. He felt Yori's gaze, steady and sharp.
He did not look away. He did not wave. He did not whisper goodbye.
The village had buried him long ago.
Without a word, he turned his back.
The road stretched ahead, little more than mud and broken stone. Beyond it lay forests, mountains, kingdoms he had only ever heard of in bitter whispers. And beyond them, the gods who had chained Aion—and chained him.
Aruto's breath steadied. Pain followed, sharp and loyal, but beneath it pulsed something else. Not hope. Not peace. Something hungrier.
He clenched his fists. The shadow stirred faintly at his back, antlers and wings flickering like smoke.
"They'll see me again," he whispered. His voice was raw, but steady. "Not as prey. Not as a curse. As their end."
The wind carried his words into the world. The chains rattled once, faint, like a promise answered.