The forest had swallowed the boy whole.
By the time the first light reached their camp, his trail was gone—no footprints, no broken branches, nothing. As if the earth itself had decided to hide him.
They searched until the mist burned off, splitting into pairs. Arkan and Yunus followed the stream east, while Malik and Lian combed the higher ridges. Idris waited behind with Saif, his patience stretched thin. The silence between trees was not empty; it was listening.
Yunus crouched, brushing his fingers across the mud. "Nothing," he said. "Not even the weight of a step."
Arkan frowned. "He couldn't have just vanished."
"Unless he didn't walk out."
The hunter's tone was calm, but his eyes told another story—something primal, the unease of a man who could read a forest like a book and now found its pages blank.
They pressed on. The water whispered against stone, and the air thickened with the smell of pine sap and decay. Somewhere above, a raven cried—a sound too sharp, too close. Arkan looked up. The bird circled once and flew toward the north.
"Scavenger?" Yunus asked.
"Or witness," Arkan murmured.
When they returned, the others had found nothing either. Lian's hands were scraped raw, Malik's temper barely contained. "It's like he was never here," he said. "He took the parchment, vanished, and left us to clean his trail."
"You think he planned it?" Saif asked.
Malik laughed without humor. "You don't vanish like that unless you want to."
Arkan wanted to argue—but couldn't. He'd seen the fear in the boy's eyes, the guilt, the desperation. But he'd also seen the seal in his bag. Both truths couldn't exist at once.
Idris sat by the ashes of the fire, his staff across his knees. "We'll not waste daylight chasing ghosts," he said finally. "If the boy's alive, he'll lead them to us soon enough. If he's dead, then our mercy has come full circle."
His words landed heavy. No one spoke after that.
They moved again before noon, heading north through denser terrain. The mountains rose sharper now, cutting the horizon like jagged teeth. Each hour stretched longer than the last, filled with the quiet dread of being hunted. Malik scouted ahead, but every time he returned, his expression grew darker.
"Tracks," he muttered. "Not his. Hoofprints. Maybe six riders, keeping distance."
Arkan's gut tightened. "Templars."
"Or bounty men," Malik said. "Either way, someone's watching."
That night, they found shelter beneath a natural overhang of rock, the wind howling above like a living thing. The fire they built was small, a glow barely enough to hold the dark at bay.
Lian sat apart, sharpening her dagger in long, slow strokes. Yunus repaired a bowstring, humming under his breath. Idris kept his eyes on the flames, motionless except for the faint tremor in his hand.
Arkan watched them all. The Brotherhood was changing—not breaking, not yet, but bending under something invisible. Guilt, suspicion, fatigue. The things no sword could cut.
When Malik returned from patrol, his face was pale.
"There's something you need to see."
They followed him up the slope to where the moonlight broke through the clouds. At the crest of the ridge stood a tree—tall, ancient, its bark scarred by fire. Hanging from one of its lower branches was a strip of cloth, fluttering in the wind.
The boy's satchel strap.
Beneath it, carved deep into the wood, was a mark: the Templar cross, drawn with ash. But beside it—another symbol. A crescent broken through the center, the mark of their own order.
"Someone wants us to see this," Lian whispered.
Idris's face darkened. "A message. Or a warning."
Arkan stepped closer, tracing the carved lines with his gloved fingers. The cut was recent, fresh enough that sap still bled from it. The mingled symbols looked wrong together—impossible, even. Like a unity that should never exist.
"Could one of ours have done this?" Saif asked quietly.
No one answered.
They descended in silence, the image burned into memory. Sleep came to none of them that night. Arkan dreamed of fire and parchment, of the boy's voice whispering through the smoke.
> You are seen.
He woke before dawn, the world pale and wet with fog. Idris was gone.
Panic rose like instinct. Arkan grabbed his sword and ran toward the treeline. Footprints—bare, uneven—led away from camp, down toward the riverbed.
He found the elder standing knee-deep in the water, staring into the current as if expecting it to speak.
"You shouldn't be alone," Arkan said.
Idris didn't turn. "I've been alone longer than you think."
The river's murmur filled the pause.
Arkan took a step closer. "What are you looking for?"
"The truth," Idris said softly. "But it's never where you think it is."
He turned then, eyes shadowed and unreadable. "You saw the mark on the tree?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember who first drew it?"
Arkan frowned. "Our order did. Long before—"
"No. I mean you, Arkan."
The old man's voice cut like glass. "It was you who carved it, years ago, when you swore your first oath. When you believed our war was pure."
Arkan's throat tightened. "That was another life."
Idris's smile was faint, sorrowful. "Every life leaves echoes."
He reached into his cloak and pulled something out—a fragment of parchment, half-burned, sealed once with red wax. The same seal Arkan had destroyed in the Templar camp.
"I found this near where the boy vanished," Idris said. "You burned the rest. Why leave this one behind?"
Arkan froze. He hadn't. He was certain he hadn't.
"I didn't—"
But the elder's expression didn't change. Only his eyes, soft and searching. "Maybe you didn't. Or maybe you wanted to believe that."
A cold wind moved through the pines, carrying the scent of rain and something older. Arkan opened his mouth to speak, but Idris raised a hand.
"Keep your doubts close, Arkan," he said. "They may be the only truth you'll have left."
And with that, the old man turned and walked back toward the camp, his figure fading into the mist like a memory dissolving.
Arkan stood there long after he was gone, the current whispering against his boots.
When he finally looked down, he saw something caught between the stones—a strip of leather, tied in a simple knot.
The boy's bracelet.
And beneath it, carved faintly into the rock, words nearly washed away by the stream:
> Forgive me.
The wind shifted again, and the forest seemed to breathe.
For the first time, Arkan realized he wasn't sure whether they were still the hunters… or the hunted.