Reth limped before he realized he was doing it.
The pain in his leg was old - badly set after a caravan ambush two winters ago - but it flared when the day ran long or his temper shortened. Today was both. He corrected his gait out of habit more than pride. A visible weakness invited comment, and comment invited trouble.
He adjusted the wrap on his arm as he crossed the yard behind the warehouses, ignoring the way the cloth stuck to dried blood. It wasn't his blood. That at least was something. Blood meant coin had already been spent, one way or another.
"Next time," one of the guards called after him, "tell them to bring more men."
Reth didn't turn around. "Next time," he said, "pay them enough to stay."
That earned a few laughs. Bitter ones. The kind that came from men who knew exactly why they were underpaid and exactly why nothing would change.
He headed toward the well at the edge of the square, letting the noise of the town wash over him. It was smaller than it had been five years ago. Less trade. Fewer carts. Too many mouths that still needed feeding. The walls hadn't moved, but the life inside them had thinned, stretched tighter each season.
Someone had to keep the roads open.
That someone had never been the lord.
Reth drank slowly, bracing his weight against the cold stone. The ache in his leg settled into a dull throb, familiar enough to ignore. He'd learned long ago that pain was just another thing to account for, like weather or distance. You planned around it, or it planned for you.
It was while he drank that he noticed the boy.
Too still.
Children moved when they were bored. Shifted. Looked around. This one sat like he was listening to something no one else could hear, eyes unfocused but alert all the same.
Reth frowned, then dismissed it. The town saw all kinds now. Refugees. Orphans. Drifters passing through because no one had bothered to chase them away yet. Still, his gaze lingered a moment longer than it should have.
He turned back toward the warehouses.
The boy's voice stopped him cold.
"You're hurt."
Reth froze.
Instinct pulled his hand toward his knife, but something - pride, maybe - kept him from drawing it. He turned slowly, measuring distance, exits, angles.
Up close, the boy was… wrong.
Not in the way madmen were wrong. Or zealots. He looked ordinary enough. Too ordinary. Like a shape the world had forgotten to finish filling in. No dirt on his boots. No tension in his shoulders. No fear where there should have been some.
"Everyone is," Reth said. "Who are you?"
The boy didn't answer right away. He looked at Reth the way a merchant looked at a scale - measuring, weighing, deciding if it could be trusted.
"You run the roads," the boy said.
Reth's jaw tightened. "Careful."
"You don't pray," the boy continued, unfazed. "And you don't wait for permission."
Silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable. Reth felt suddenly exposed, though no blade had been drawn and no accusation spoken aloud.
"If this is about coin," he said at last, "speak plainly."
"This place listens," the boy replied. "That's rare."
Something about the way he said it unsettled Reth more than any threat could have. As if the town itself had been judged and found… acceptable.
"You talk strangely for a child," Reth muttered.
"I'm not here to stay," the boy said. "But I may return."
That was when it happened.
Not fear.
Pressure.
It pressed against Reth's chest, light but undeniable, like standing too close to the edge of a cliff and realizing how easy it would be to fall. His breath caught before he could stop it.
"And if I don't want you to?" he asked quietly.
The boy met his gaze without blinking.
"Then you won't remember this conversation."
The pressure vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving Reth's heart pounding for reasons he couldn't quite grasp.
"…What do you want?" he asked.
"Nothing," the boy said. "For now."
And then he was gone - lost in the movement of the street, swallowed by people who hadn't noticed him at all. No one turned. No one stared. It was as if the boy had never been there.
Reth stood for a long moment, one hand pressed unconsciously to his chest.
He told himself it was nothing.
Just exhaustion. Just imagination. He had gone too long without rest, taken on too many roads, too many problems that weren't his to solve.
That night, the town settled uneasily. Dogs barked longer than usual. The wind rattled shutters that should have been secure. Reth lay awake on his pallet, staring at the ceiling beams as shadows shifted with the torchlight outside.
For the first time in years, the roads felt watched.
Not by lords.
Not by gods.
By something patient.
And whatever it was, it had decided this deteriorating town was worth remembering.