The shepherd's hut creaked with the wind all night, its swollen timbers groaning like a tired man with each gust. The roof sagged, patched with moss and half-frozen thatch, but it kept the frost off their cloaks. When dawn broke pale across the hills, the cold still bit harder than stone walls ever had. Shithead woke with ice stiff in his hair and smoke clinging thick in his clothes, his breath fogging in the half-light.
Kaelen was already outside. Shithead heard the crunch of boots in frost, the slow jingle of tack as he saddled his horse with the steady economy of a man who had spent half his life on the road. Joren followed soon after, his cloak drawn close, checking the edge of his new blade before fastening it at his hip. Talia groaned as she wrestled her way out of her blanket, swearing as if it had tangled on her out of spite. Eryk moved in silence, his every gesture neat and deliberate, folding his blanket into a precise square as though they were still in the Chapterhouse dormitory.
Shithead sat up slowly, rubbing grit from his eyes, and listened. The road outside was quiet — no wolves crying in the distance, no voices, only the restless chatter of crows and the brittle crack of ice thawing in the nearby stream. It should have felt peaceful. Instead, it felt like the air itself was waiting.
"Up," Kaelen called through the doorway. Not sharp, not unkind, but firm. "We've miles to put behind us before the sun falls."
Talia flopped back onto her pack with a dramatic groan. "He's worse than the Preceptors. At least they let you finish chewing before they barked at you."
Eryk, without looking up, handed her a crust of bread.
She scowled, bit into it, and mumbled around the mouthful. "Fine. Chew on the road, then."
Shithead pulled on his cloak and tightened his pack straps. His hands fumbled a little in the cold, but he forced them through the motions. The hut had given them shelter, but only just. Another three nights like it made his shoulders ache before he even lifted his shield.
Outside, Kaelen mounted without fuss, the leather of his saddle creaking as he swung up. The others followed, horses stamping and blowing clouds of steam into the air. Frost lay heavy on the grass, a white veil stretching all the way to the tree line. Sunlight caught in it, turning the fields to brittle glass.
For a while, they rode in silence, the steady crunch of hooves the only sound. The hut shrank behind them until it was no more than a dark smudge against the horizon, then nothing at all. Shithead let out a slow breath, the steam curling like incense in the air.
"It's too quiet," Talia said at last. She hunched deeper into her cloak, her voice pitched low, as though she feared the frost might carry it away. Her eyes flicked across the hills as if something might rise out of them. "No sparring, no shouting, no Brina picking fights with whoever looks sideways at her. Just us. Feels wrong."
"Feels right," Eryk corrected, pale eyes never leaving the road. "Noise dulls the senses. Silence sharpens them."
Talia rolled her eyes and leaned her horse closer to Shithead's. "I think he means he misses Brina less than we do."
Shithead gave a faint grin but didn't answer. The weight of the road pressed heavier on him than he cared to admit, the shape of Greystone pulling at his chest, the knowledge that not all of them would still be riding together by the time they reached it.
Kaelen's voice carried back without him turning. "The hills ahead mark the edge of Westmarch's hold. Once we cross them, we're in Greystone's shadow."
Shithead's chest tightened at the name. Home. Close enough to touch, though still a day or more away.
Talia caught the change in his face and gave him a small, crooked smile. "Guess we'll see what's heavier — your pack or your memories."
He didn't answer right away. Only rode on, frost cracking beneath his horse's hooves, the pale sun climbing through a sky the color of steel.
The day stretched long, the shadows of the hills deepening as the road wound east. By midafternoon, the forest pressed close, pines crowding the path, and Kaelen slowed his horse at a fork where the track split. One road bent south, its ruts shallower, leading toward the low country. The other climbed east into the hills, the road to Greystone.
"This is where we part ways," Kaelen said, his voice carrying clear but even.
Eryk reined his horse toward the southern track without hesitation. "My road lies that way. For now." His pale eyes lingered on Shithead a moment longer than usual, and then he added, almost as if it cost him something: "Endure."
Talia gave a sharp exhale, something between a laugh and a sigh. "And mine too. I didn't think I'd feel it so quick. After wolves, sermons, and frozen mud, I thought goodbyes would be easier."
"You'll return," Kaelen said, not as a command but as faith.
"Maybe." Talia leaned closer to Shithead, bumping his arm with her shoulder. "Don't brood too much without me. You'll rust."
"I'll try," he said, his voice rougher than he wanted.
Her grin tilted, not sharp this time. "Good. And if you don't see me again, you'll hear me first. I'm not easy to lose."
She lingered another breath, eyes on him, something unspoken threading in their gaze. Then she kicked her horse forward to follow Eryk. Over her shoulder she called, "Don't let Aureon take you yet, Shithead! You still owe me a spar!"
Her laughter echoed once among the trees, then was gone.
The silence that followed was thicker than snow. Shithead stared after them until the bend in the road swallowed their cloaks. For the first time since leaving the Chapterhouse, the company felt small.
Joren shifted in his saddle, his voice calm but gentler than usual. "Goodbyes are meant to leave holes. That's how you know they mattered."
Kaelen gave the reins a twitch, urging them forward. "Come. The road waits."
The track bent east, rising into the hills. The forest thickened, branches clawing overhead, the sky graying as daylight began to fade. The road dipped through a hollow, and that was when they came upon the cottages.
Shithead reined in at once. He remembered these — a cluster of small homes on the edge of Greystone's reach. Smoke had curled from their chimneys a year ago when he rode out with Kaelen, children chasing chickens in the yard, the smell of baking bread in the air. Now the roofs sagged under the weight of snow. Doors hung open on splintered hinges. The windows gaped hollow and black.
He dismounted slowly, boots crunching in the frozen ruts. Chickens lay stiff in the mud where they had fallen, their feathers rimed with frost. A wooden pail had frozen solid, its contents shattered into jagged crystals. A child's toy horse lay overturned in the dirt, one leg broken off.
It wasn't abandonment. Something had happened here.
Kaelen's horse stamped uneasily. Joren swung down from his saddle, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. "Too many prints," he murmured. "Not farmers. Not travelers."
Shithead's eyes caught on the nearest doorframe. The wood was gouged deep, not with weather but by deliberate hand. A spiral had been carved into it, circling inward in jagged cuts. Animal fangs — wolf, boar, even human teeth — had been hammered into the grooves, their tips catching the frost.
His stomach twisted. "What is this?"
Kaelen came to stand beside him, his face grim. "A Fang Spiral."
Joren's tone was steady, but low. "Orcs leave it where they've raided. It's not only a warning. It's a claim. They believe the spiral binds what it touches — house, village, battlefield — to their people forever. To erase it, you'd have to burn the wood to ash."
Shithead stared at it, the lines seeming to draw inward until his vision swam. "They're still close?"
"No," Kaelen said. "Not now. This is weeks old. If they'd lingered, we'd see bones stacked by the gate. This mark… it's only meant to remind survivors that they lived by chance, not by strength."
Shithead's fists clenched. His throat felt tight. "They should've been safe."
Kaelen laid a gloved hand briefly on his shoulder, then let it fall. "No one is, without a wall."
They didn't linger. Kaelen pressed them forward, and by the time the sun slid behind the hills and shadows stretched long, they had made camp in a hollow ringed with pines.
The fire hissed to life under Kaelen's hands, snapping with pine resin. Their meal was beans and salt pork, eaten in silence. The Fang Spiral seemed burned into Shithead's vision, and he found himself staring at the flames as if they might erase it.
He finally broke the quiet. "What we saw back there… that wasn't bandits."
"No," Kaelen said flatly.
"Orcs," Shithead said, the word heavy on his tongue. "I've only heard them in stories. What are they?"
Joren drew his whetstone slow along his blade. "Men twisted by hunger for more. Stronger, larger, bred for war. A field of wheat means bread to you. To them, it means fire and plunder."
Kaelen added, voice low and sharp: "And they strike where walls are weak. Farmsteads. Villages too new to defend themselves. Cottages like those."
Shithead swallowed hard. "If I'd been born among them instead of Greystone—"
"You weren't," Kaelen cut in.
"That's not an answer." His jaw tightened. "Would I be burning cottages too?"
Joren set the whetstone down, his gaze steady. "Perhaps. But blood only carries weight if you let it. You've chosen differently, again and again. That choice is strength. That's what binds you to us."
Kaelen leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the firelight cutting hard lines across his face. "I've fought orcs. Seen what they do. But I've also seen men do worse. Blood isn't destiny. It's only the stone you start with. What you build on it is yours."
His voice dropped, quieter now, more memory than lesson. "First time I saw them, I was your age. A border village smaller than Greystone. We thought we'd scare off raiders. Instead we found ashes. People gone. Chickens still on spits. We chased the orcs down, ten of us proud and shouting. They didn't run. They laughed. Four of ours fell in the first rush. Two more before the night ended. At dawn there were three of us left, knee-deep in corpses — theirs and ours both."
Shithead's throat tightened. "And you lived."
"I endured," Kaelen said simply. "That's all. And I swore myself after that, not to vengeance, not to glory, but to the wall. Because the wall is the only thing that keeps them from doing it again."
The fire popped, sparks wheeling upward. The silence that followed was heavier than the night.
Joren finally spoke, softer now. "Do not mistake their savagery for strength. It is only hunger sharpened into a weapon. Real strength is knowing why you endure. You've already done that."
Shithead exhaled slowly. The unease didn't vanish, but something in it steadied.
They sat in quiet until the fire sank low, the night sky sharp with stars. Shithead lay back on his cloak, staring through the branches until his eyes blurred. The cottages, the spiral, Kaelen's story — all pressed close. But beneath it, a single thought held steady.
Blood is only one stone. What you build on it is yours.
The fire sank lower, throwing long shadows across their faces. The quiet stretched until Shithead found himself speaking without planning it.
"When I think of home," he said, voice low, "I don't picture Greystone as a whole. Not the fields or the walls. Just pieces. The way my mother used to hum when she cooked. My father cursing at the oxen like they'd done it on purpose. The smell of the forge down by the river. The willow."
Kaelen's eyes lifted from the fire. "The one you made your pact under?"
Shithead nodded. "Me and my friends — my brothers. We swore on its roots. Promised to hold one another up. No matter what. We called it the Willow Pact. It felt unbreakable then."
"And now?" Joren asked.
Shithead hesitated. "Now it feels… distant. Like I've grown taller and the tree stayed the same. I don't know if I'll fit the way I used to."
Kaelen stirred the fire with a stick, sending sparks spiraling upward. "That's the way of home. It doesn't stretch to fit you. You return, and you choose what still belongs to you — and what you've outgrown."
"Your pact may not be unbroken," Joren added quietly. "Even if time has thinned it, the roots still reach deep. Friends bind in ways walls cannot."
Shithead looked down at his hands, flexing them against the cold. "I keep thinking… what if they see me different now? What if they don't know what I've become?"
Kaelen's voice was steady. "Then you teach them. The wall endures, and so do you."
Joren inclined his head. "And they will see not just what you've become, but that you returned. That is enough."
The words sat with Shithead long after the fire sank to coals. When sleep came, it was heavy but steady.
Dawn came brittle and cold, the kind that turned every breath into a pale banner. They rose stiff, shouldering packs with little said. The fire was stamped to ash, and their horses snorted eager clouds of steam into the morning air.
The silence of travel was heavier without Talia's banter or Eryk's steady presence. Hooves crunched over frost-hardened ground, the rhythm of their company cut down to three. Every creak of leather, every crow wheeling overhead, felt sharper in the emptiness.
By midmorning the land began to open — the dense woods thinning to rolling fields, their stalks brittle with frost. Cottages stood here and there, fewer than Shithead remembered, their chimneys bare, their doors shut tight. Smoke still rose from some, but thin, as though the fire within was kept more for survival than comfort.
The road bent over a rise, and when they crested it, Shithead's breath caught.
There it was.
Greystone.
The village crouched against the curve of the river, its thatched roofs rimmed with frost, its smoke rising in slender plumes into the pale sky. Beyond it loomed the familiar ridge, and beyond that, the faint shimmer of the willow's crown, its branches silver-white even at a distance.
Shithead reined in, staring. His chest ached with the sight, sharp and strange. He had dreamed of this moment for months — but dreaming and seeing were not the same.
Kaelen slowed beside him, following his gaze. "A day, maybe less. Weather willing."
Joren's voice was calm, but softer than usual. "You'll find your home as you left it. But you are not the same man who walked away."
Shithead let out a short, rough laugh. "Then maybe I won't fit."
Kaelen shook his head. "Fit or not, they'll claim you. Family doesn't measure with the same stones the Order does."
"And your brothers," Joren added. "Those who swore with you beneath that willow will see not what's changed, but that you returned. That matters most."
Shithead swallowed hard, the knot in his chest tightening. He nudged his horse forward, eyes fixed on the horizon where smoke rose thin against the sky.
They pressed on until dusk, when the frost grew thick and the fields fell into shadow. Camp was made in the lee of an oak, its black branches clawing at the last light. They ate plain fare in silence, the fire's warmth thin against the cold.
Kaelen stirred the embers once and said, "Sleep. Tomorrow's road isn't long, but it's the hardest mile you'll walk."
Shithead lay back on his cloak, staring at the oak's branches twisting overhead. Beyond them, the stars burned sharp and cold. He closed his eyes, not to escape the thought of Greystone, but to brace himself for it.
The road was nearly done. And another waited just beyond it.