The baseline did not announce itself.
It settled.
Morning arrived without surprise. The knee answered weight with a familiar ache—present, contained. Not improving. Not worsening. Predictable.
That predictability mattered.
He stood, tested range, and adjusted once. No second-guessing followed. The day did not begin with negotiation. It began with execution.
The reroute carried him across gentler contours where effort spread evenly instead of spiking. He moved in short, deliberate blocks, pausing before fatigue blurred judgment. Each pause was brief, purposeful—enough to keep the system honest.
The Blood Sigil remained quiet.
Quiet, now, felt like confirmation.
As the terrain opened, he encountered markers of others who had chosen similar patience: stones stacked to indicate safer footing, branches bent to mark shallow descents. He followed them without ceremony, neither grateful nor resistant.
A baseline, he realized, did not require originality.
It required continuity.
By midmorning, he crossed a stretch of firm ground where he could have increased pace. The body offered it. The habit of endurance suggested it.
He declined.
Speed belonged to the old arithmetic. The new one counted differently.
Later, he met a lone traveler moving in the same direction. They walked parallel for a time without speaking, their rhythms close but not matched. When the path narrowed, the traveler slowed, letting him pass.
"You're steady," the traveler said, not looking at him.
He nodded. "So are you."
The exchange ended there. No advice. No comparison.
The baseline held without needing reflection.
At a shallow crossing, he waited—not for stones, but for timing. He crossed when breath and balance aligned, not when impatience pressed. The knee complained softly and then settled.
Pain, he understood, was now information—not instruction.
By afternoon, the weather shifted and a light drizzle began. The ground slicked. He shortened stride automatically, widened stance without thought. The adjustments came cleanly, without cost.
This was new.
Not the absence of pain, but the absence of hesitation.
He stopped early to reassess and found the numbers unchanged. Distance lost yesterday remained lost. Capacity preserved remained intact.
The baseline held its shape.
As evening approached, he chose a place to rest that reflected the day's discipline—unremarkable, stable, sufficient. He lowered himself carefully and checked the knee. Swelling stable. Ache contained.
The presence behind his sternum steadied, aligned with the day's pattern rather than any single decision. The sense of his name felt closer now, not because it advanced, but because it no longer wavered with each choice.
Names, he thought, followed baselines.
They did not create them.
Night came gently. Sleep arrived without bargaining, deeper than before. The body rested into the new rhythm without resistance.
Tomorrow would bring new terrain. New pressure.
But the baseline would remain—
not as a rule to obey,
but as ground to return to.