All Tristan could see was a humongous figure fading into the dark — but that wasn't what disturbed him. What did disturb him was what Scarface said.
"So… there's another."
Those words wouldn't leave his head. They echoed in him like vibrations — tremors beneath the earth — steady, rhythmic, cruel.
He sat alone in the dark for what felt like hours, eyes locked on the dying glow of the campfires below. The bandits' laughter had long since fallen silent, replaced by the occasional gruff growl of the hygrons in their sleep.
The world was still, as if time had stopped .But his thoughts weren't.
Another. There's another.
"Impossible… I refuse to believe it," he whispered to himself, his voice cracking in the cold air. "No. It's impossible. I thought I was chosen. I am chosen. I was the one who heard it first… the one who felt it all my life — through the silence, through the abuse I took from that stranger—"His words broke into quiet, breathless sobs. "Ahhh… ahhh…"
His voice came out desperate, half a whisper, half a plea. He pressed a hand to the ground. The soil trembled faintly — a soft heartbeat, familiar and real.
"You still hear me, don't you?" he asked the earth. "You still feel my presence. You spoke to me. You chose me — not him. Not anyone else."
Silence.
The wind blew through the ruins like laughter — almost mockery.
He clenched his fist, nails digging into the dirt. "Answerrrr me!"
For a moment, it did — a faint pulse rising beneath his palm, then fading again, like something retreating, uncertain.
Tristan froze. His breath grew shallow .For the first time since the world began whispering to him, he felt something unfamiliar — something everyone faces at least once in their lifetime .Uncertainty.
He remembered Scarface's voice — deep, commanding, inhuman. The way the earth seemed to obey his every movement, the hygrons bowing to him, the air itself holding its breath around him.
"He can command them," Tristan muttered. "But he can't be like me… he can't."
But the more he told himself that, the less he believed it.
If Scarface had the same connection — if there were others the world spoke to — then Tristan wasn't chosen. He was replaceable.
That thought clawed at him worse than hunger, worse than loneliness. His entire life — the physical abuse from his father, the silence he endured day after day, the loss — all of it had meant something because he believed he was special. Now, that belief was crumbling, bit by bit.
He stared out across the plain again. The fires flickered in the distance, faint and dying, but the pulse beneath them was still strong — too strong.
Scarface was still out there. And the world was still listening to him.
Tristan's jaw tightened. The cold bit into his skin, but his blood ran hot.
"If he's like me," he said quietly, with new conviction, "then I'll find out why."
The ground pulsed once more, faint but certain — a single beat that could have been an answer.
Tristan stood. His shadow stretched long and thin across the dying fields. The world beneath him hummed softly, waiting.
He looked toward the horizon — toward the fires, the monsters, and the man who could command them — and took his first step.
************************************
Down at the camp, Scarface sat alone by the fire. The others had long fallen asleep, drunk on victory. Only the soft breathing of the hygrons filled the night — a steady, monstrous rhythm that almost sounded like the heartbeat beneath the world.
He hadn't stopped thinking about the boy. The look in his eyes — that emptiness. Not defiance, but something else. Something he knew too well.
Scarface's hand rested on the hilt of his blade, fingers moving lightly against the metal. He had lived by rules — rules he made himself, rules that defined him. And one rule stood above the rest:
Always leave someone to tell the tale.
Scarface broke a lot of things in his life — bones, cities, people, even beasts — but never that one rule. Witnesses meant memory. Memory meant stories. And stories made men human again.
But that boy wasn't human. Not in the way others were. He was like him.
Scarface had felt it the moment he set eyes on the kid, the pulse, the same one that had whispered to him when he was nothing but a forgotten nobody with death carved into his face.
He stood, his massive frame moving like a shadow that remembered it used to be a man.
"Swift," he called, his voice cutting through the quiet.
The lieutenant appeared, her face tired but sharp. "Sir?"
"Fetch that boy."
Swift blinked. "The one from the ridge? The witness?"
Scarface nodded.
"But that's against our rule. We never take witnesses."
Scarface turned toward her. The look he gave was enough — a stare sharp enough to kill. "You dare question my orders?" he said, his tone low but commanding.
Swift swallowed hard. "No, sir."
He turned back toward the darkness beyond the camp. "The world's changing, Swift. Can't you feel it?"
Swift didn't answer. Not because she had nothing to say — but because fear silenced her. Her hand twitched toward her blade, out of instinct, not defiance.
Scarface's grin widened. "Bring him. He's not a survivor. He's something else. He's… special."
****************************
Tristan saw the torches long before he heard the footsteps.
He didn't run. Something deeper held him still — that same tremor beneath his feet, as if the earth itself wanted him to stay. When the raiders reached him, their spears gleamed faintly in the firelight.
"By Scarface's orders," one of them said. "You're coming with us."
They brought him through the camp. The hygrons stirred as he passed — their eyes glowing faintly, heads lowering, as if sniffing for something familiar. The ground beneath them pulsed once, heavy and slow.
Scarface was waiting by the largest fire.
Tristan was thrown to his knees before him, the heat of the flames burning against his skin.
The bandits gathered in a loose circle, whispering. Swift stood just behind her leader, arms crossed, gaze cold and uncertain.
Scarface looked down at the boy, saying nothing for a moment. Then he spoke softly, almost like a mentor humoring a student.
"There are rules," he said. "Rules even monsters like me follow. But I've broken most — if not all — except one."
He crouched, eyes level with Tristan's. "Always leave a witness to speak of my conquest."
The fire popped between them. Neither flinched.
Scarface's grin returned — slow and dangerous. "But you're no longer a witness, are you?"
Tristan didn't answer.
Scarface leaned closer, his shadow spilling across the boy's face. "The earth speaks to you," he whispered. "Just like it speaks to me."
Tristan's eyes flickered — fear, disbelief, then something else. Curiosity.
Scarface straightened, his voice booming through the camp.
"From this day forward," he declared, "he rides with us."
The camp fell into uneasy silence. Swift's jaw tightened. The hygrons shifted, their claws scraping the ground.
For a heartbeat, the earth itself seemed to hesitate — then a faint tremor rolled beneath their feet, deep and uncertain.
The monsters growled. The firelight dimmed.
Tristan looked down, his hand brushing the dirt. The pulse was still there — but it felt different now. Heavier. Divided.
Scarface turned away, the corners of his mouth curling into a grin.
"Welcome to the pack, boy."
The ground rumbled again, soft but unmistakable.
This time, it didn't sound like welcome.