By the time Mavin turned fourteen, the camp had stopped pretending he was a child.
No one announced it. There wasn't a moment where anything shifted cleanly from one thing to another. It happened the way most things did with the bandits, slow and practical. He was given heavier packs. Sharper blades. Jobs that didn't come with someone watching over his shoulder.
He noticed the change before anyone said it out loud.
Four years had passed since the hound.
Four years of moving, hiding, stealing, and surviving.
Four years of keeping a secret pressed tight against his chest.
The world hadn't gotten kinder in that time. Safe Zones expanded their walls. Patrols pushed farther into the wastes. Ruin-marked heroes became more common on old broadcasts scavenged from broken tech, standing tall in clean armor, abilities burning bright and controlled.
Monsters got worse.
Non-marked ones still roamed, but more often now they found signs of something else first. Burned ground. Frozen stone. Cracked earth where nothing should have cracked.
First circles were no longer rare.
The camp avoided those places.
Mavin learned to feel them before anyone pointed them out.
He didn't talk about that.
His body had changed too.
He was taller now, shoulders broader, hands rough with old scars. The rot scars along his back had faded into something darker and tougher than skin, like they had settled into him instead of sitting on top. He still wrapped them when he slept, out of habit more than necessity.
The mark on his chest hadn't gone away.
It had grown.
The second circle had appeared the winter he turned twelve.
No pain. No sound.
He woke up one morning with the faint ring etched into his skin, clean and deliberate, sitting just outside the first. He had stared at it for a long time in the dim light of his tent, heart pounding, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing did.
The rot felt the same. Stronger, maybe. Quieter.
He covered it and went back to work.
Using Rot Born had become easier over time. Not safer. Easier. He learned how to let it surface just enough to do what he needed without tearing himself open. How to pull strength from it without letting it take control. It still hurt when he pushed too hard, but pain was familiar. Pain could be worked around.
No one ever saw it.
Not fully.
There were moments, close ones. Times when a crate should have crushed him and didn't. Times when a wound matched his pace instead of slowing him down. People noticed, but they noticed the way they always had.
As usefulness.
Virel noticed more than most.
She didn't ask questions. She didn't confront him. She just adjusted where she placed him in the camp. Mavin stopped walking near the back. He was closer to the middle now. Sometimes near the front.
Scouts started taking his word seriously.
That was new.
On the day everything shifted again, the camp had been following a dry riverbed for hours. The ground was cracked and pale, bleached by sun and time. It was open territory, which meant danger, but faster movement.
Mavin walked beside Jorren, scanning the edges of the land.
"You feel it?" Jorren asked quietly.
Mavin nodded. "Yeah."
A few years ago, that question would have meant weather or patrols.
Now it meant something else.
The air felt tight. Not wrong. Just alert. Like the land itself was paying attention.
Virel raised a hand and the camp slowed.
"What is it?" someone asked.
"Second-circle sign," a scout muttered. "Burned stone ahead."
Mavin felt the mark warm faintly under his shirt.
Two circles.
He knew what that meant now.
Second-circle monsters weren't legends anymore. They were territory holders. Smart enough to test threats. Strong enough to wipe out groups that moved carelessly.
Still killable.
Sometimes.
Virel looked back at the group, eyes passing over faces until they settled briefly on Mavin. Not long enough for anyone else to notice.
"Route change," she said. "We go wide."
No one argued.
As they turned, Mavin caught sight of the damage in the distance. Stone scorched black, edges warped like wax left too close to flame. The shape of it made his stomach tighten. It looked intentional.
He kept walking.
That night, as they made camp in a sheltered dip, Virel called him over again.
"You're fourteen now," she said.
It wasn't a question.
Mavin nodded.
"You've been pulling weight since before that," she continued. "But age matters to people, whether it should or not."
He waited.
"There's a town a day's walk from here," Virel said. "Small. No walls worth mentioning. No Ruin-marked presence that we know of."
Mavin's chest tightened.
"We're not hitting it yet," she added. "But we're close enough that it'll come up."
He understood what she was saying.
Not a warning.
A preparation.
"You keep up better than most," Virel said. "You don't panic. You don't hesitate when things go wrong."
Mavin met her gaze. "I do what I'm told."
"That's not all you do," she replied. "And you know it."
She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "People like you don't stay on the edges forever."
Mavin said nothing.
Virel studied him for a moment, then nodded once. "Get some rest."
As he walked away, his heart pounded harder than it should have.
That night, he lay awake longer than usual.
Four years ago, he'd been dragged back to camp bleeding and terrified.
Now people watched him differently.
Expected things.
The mark felt steady against his chest. Two circles, clean and quiet. He didn't know how many it could grow to. He didn't know what would happen if it did.
He did know this.
The camp wasn't just surviving anymore.
It was planning
And sooner or later, they were going to expect him to be part of it.