One Month Later
The training ground was a muddy scar on the edge of camp, trampled by boots and churned by practice battles until nothing green remained. Grog stood in the center of it, alone, sweat dripping down his face, his training axe raised in hands that would not stop shaking.
Again.
He swung.
The axe bit into the wooden practice dummy, splitting bark but not deep enough. Not nearly deep enough. In his old body, that same swing would have carved through the dummy's thick trunk and kept going. Would have taken a Vargr's head clean off.
Now his arms burned after thirty minutes. His lungs heaved like bellows. His form was sloppy, muscles forgetting what his mind knew.
Again.
He swung.
Again.
And again.
And again.
"You're going to kill that dummy," a voice said from behind him. "Or yourself. One of the two."
Grog lowered the axe. Turned.
Lira leaned against a supply cart at the edge of the training ground, arms crossed, expression unreadable. She'd taken to watching him train most mornings. Said it was to make sure he didn't collapse. Grog suspected it was to make sure he wasn't lying about the future.
He didn't blame her.
"Can't sleep?" he asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.
"Can't stop thinking." She pushed off the cart and walked toward him, stepping around mud puddles with practiced ease. "You?"
"Same."
They stood together in the gray morning light, looking at nothing.
Lira spoke first. "I went through the village yesterday. The little one east of here. Picked up supplies for the healer."
Grog waited. There was more.
"Talked to some people. Farmers. A baker. An old woman who remembered when Aldric's family first settled here." She paused. "His mother died when he was young. Did you know that?"
Grog nodded. "He told me. Once. A long time ago."
"She was sick. Some kind of wasting illness. Took years." Lira's voice was careful. "The old woman said Aldric used to pray for her. Every night. At a little shrine in the woods. Begging whatever gods would listen to save her."
Grog said nothing.
"She died anyway. He was nine." Lira looked at him. "The old woman said he stopped praying after that. Stopped believing. Just... went quiet for a year. Then started training with a sword."
Grog remembered this. Aldric had told him, years into their friendship, during a quiet night watch. The story had come out haltingly, piece by piece, like pulling teeth. Grog had listened and said nothing, because what was there to say?
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
Lira shrugged. "Because I'm trying to understand. If something's going to happen to him—if something's already in him—I want to know how it got there. What made him vulnerable." She met his eyes. "You said he made a deal. With something he didn't understand."
"Yes."
"Do you know what the deal was? What he asked for?"
Grog thought back. The old timeline. The final battle. Aldric, cornered, desperate, reaching for something—anything—that would let him save them.
"He wanted power," Grog said slowly. "To protect us. To win. The thing in the Spire was too strong. We were all going to die. And Aldric—" He stopped. "Aldric couldn't accept that. He'd rather make a deal with darkness than watch us fall."
Lira was quiet for a long moment.
"So it's love," she said finally. "That's what kills us. His love for us."
Grog hadn't thought of it that way. But she was right. Aldric hadn't made the deal out of ambition or greed or hunger for power. He'd made it because he couldn't bear to lose them.
The thing that would destroy them was born from the thing that made him a hero.
"That's fucked," Lira said flatly.
"Yeah."
"It's really fucked."
"Yeah."
They stood in silence, contemplating the fucked-ness of it all.
---
The days passed.
Grog trained. Lira watched. Aldric smiled and talked and was exactly the same as he'd always been.
Nothing happened.
No red eyes. No strange whispers. No moments of forgetfulness. Aldric ate with them, trained with them, laughed at Grog's terrible jokes and made terrible jokes of his own. He was seventeen and earnest and so painfully good that Grog sometimes forgot what was coming.
Sometimes, for whole hours at a time, Grog forgot he'd ever died at all.
Those hours were the hardest.
Because then he'd remember. He'd look at Lira and see her reaching for an arrow that would kill her. He'd look at Theron and see his body on cold stone. He'd look at Aldric and see red eyes and a smiling mouth and a sword through his own guts.
And the weight would come crashing back.
---
On the forty-third day, Lira found him at the training ground again. But this time, she carried something under her arm—a leather-bound book, worn at the edges, with blank pages visible at the spine.
"What's that?" Grog asked, lowering his axe.
"My journal." She held it up. "The one I've been keeping. Every strange thing. Every moment that felt wrong. Every time Aldric blinked twice at nothing or forgot a conversation or said something that didn't quite fit."
Grog's chest tightened. "How many entries?"
"Forty-three." She met his eyes. "One for each day since you told me."
"That's—" He stopped. "That's a lot."
"It is." She opened the book, flipping through pages covered in her sharp, cramped handwriting. "But here's the thing. Most of them are nothing. Absolutely nothing. Aldric forgetting where he left his sword. Aldric trailing off mid-sentence and then picking up like nothing happened. Aldric staring at the fire too long."
"But?"
"But there's a pattern." She turned to a page near the back, marked with a folded corner. "Look."
Grog looked.
The page was covered in dates and times, meticulously recorded. Lira had drawn lines connecting some of them, grouping them into clusters.
"These are the moments," she said, tapping the page. "Not the normal forgetfulness everyone has. The strange ones. And they're not random."
Grog studied the clusters. His brow furrowed. "They're all around—"
"Full moons. Every single one. The day before, the day of, or the day after." Lira's voice was quiet. "I went back through the whole journal. Forty-three moments, spread over forty-three days. Every single one connected to the moon cycle."
Grog looked up at her.
"That means something," he said slowly.
"It means something's happening to him when the moon is full. Something he doesn't remember. Something that makes him—" She searched for the word. "Slip. Just a little. Just enough to forget where his sword is, or lose track of a conversation."
"Or walk into the woods," Grog murmured.
Lira went still. "What?"
Grog's mind was racing now, pulling up memories from the old timeline. Things he'd noticed but never connected. Aldric, gone from camp some nights. Always coming back with no explanation, no memory of leaving.
"I didn't think about it before," he said. "It was just—he'd wander sometimes. Said he couldn't sleep. We all had nights like that."
"But?"
"But it was always the same nights. The bright nights." Grog met her eyes. "Full moons."
Lira stared at him.
Then, very quietly: "We need to watch him. During the next full moon. Actually watch him. See what happens."
Grog nodded slowly.
"The next full moon is in six days," Lira said.
"Six days."
They looked at each other.
And for the first time since Grog had woken up in the past, they had something like a plan.
---
The six days passed slowly.
Grog trained harder than ever, pushing his weak body until it screamed, then pushing more. Lira watched Aldric constantly, noting every blink, every pause, every moment that might mean something.
Aldric noticed.
"You're staring at me," he said on the third day, catching Lira's eye across the cookfire. "Is there something on my face?"
"No."
"Then why are you staring?"
Lira shrugged. "Practice. Learning to read people. You're convenient."
Aldric accepted this with the easy trust of someone who'd never been truly betrayed. "Fair enough. Tell me what you learn."
Lira's smile didn't reach her eyes. "I will."
On the fifth day, Grog pulled Lira aside.
"Theron's joining the scouts," he said. "Permanently. He's moving to the main camp tomorrow."
Lira frowned. "So?"
"So in the old timeline, he didn't join for another three years. Something's different."
"Different how? Is it bad?"
Grog shook his head slowly. "I don't think so. He was always supposed to be with us. Maybe this just means—" He stopped.
"Means what?"
"Means things can change. Small things. Maybe that's good." He looked toward the main camp, where Theron was probably packing his few belongings. "Maybe it means we're not trapped."
Lira considered this. "Or maybe it means the timeline's already shifting. Things we don't expect. Things we can't predict."
"Maybe."
They stood with that thought for a while.
Then Lira said: "Tomorrow night. Full moon. You ready?"
Grog's hand found his axe. "Ready."
---
The night of the full moon was cold and clear.
Grog lay in his tent, fully dressed, axe within reach. He didn't sleep. Didn't try. Just listened to his tentmates breathe and counted the hours.
Midnight came. Nothing.
One hour. Nothing.
Two hours. Nothing.
Grog began to wonder if they were wrong. If the pattern meant nothing. If—
A sound.
Soft. Careful. Footsteps passing close to his tent.
Grog was moving before he thought about it, slipping out of his bedroll, through the tent flap, into the moonlight.
Aldric walked away from the camp.
He moved like a sleepwalker—slow, steady, unseeing. His eyes were open but empty. His feet found paths through the trees without hesitation.
Grog followed.
Behind him, barely audible, Lira emerged from the shadows. She'd been waiting too. Watching too.
They followed Aldric into the woods.
---
The moon painted everything silver.
Aldric walked for a long time. Twenty minutes. Thirty. Deeper into the forest than Grog had ever gone, past old game trails and fallen logs and trees so ancient they'd stopped growing.
Finally, he stopped.
In a clearing.
Where the moonlight fell like water.
Aldric stood in the center, head tilted back, eyes on the moon. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
Grog and Lira crouched behind a massive oak, watching.
"What's he doing?" Lira breathed.
Grog shook his head. Didn't know.
Then Aldric's lips stopped moving.
And something answered.
Not in words. Not in sound. But Grog felt it—a pressure in the air, a weight on his chest, a presence that hadn't been there a moment before. Lira gasped softly beside him.
The shadows at the edge of the clearing deepened.
Became solid.
Became eyes.
Red eyes. Two of them. Hanging in the darkness like embers, watching Aldric with ancient patience.
Grog's hand clenched on his axe. Every instinct screamed at him to charge, to fight, to protect. But his legs wouldn't move. Couldn't move.
The red eyes looked at Aldric.
Aldric looked at the moon.
And between them, something passed. Something Grog couldn't see or hear but felt—a thread, invisible, connecting the boy to the darkness.
Then it was over.
The eyes faded. The pressure lifted. Aldric blinked once, twice, and turned back toward camp like nothing had happened.
Grog and Lira waited until he was gone, then waited longer, then finally moved.
Their eyes met in the moonlight.
"We saw that," Lira whispered. "We both saw that. It was real."
Grog nodded. Couldn't speak.
"It's already happening," she said. "Not in twenty-five years. Now. It's already in him."
Grog looked toward the clearing, where the shadows had returned to normal.
"No," he said slowly. "Not in him. Connected to him. Watching him." He turned to Lira. "Whatever that thing is—it's patient. It's waiting. It's been waiting since he was a child."
Lira's face was pale.
"Then we have time," she said. "If it's just watching—if it hasn't taken him yet—we have time to figure out how to stop it."
Grog nodded.
But as they made their way back to camp, through the silver moonlight, he couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't the only ones watching anymore.
Something else was watching them now.
And it knew what they'd seen.