He woke up to firelight.
It came back slow. The body first, then the mind. His mana had been almost gone when he passed out, and now it was easing back into him in small, careful currents, the way water finds the low places in a field after rain.
He didn't move yet. He just listened.
Coat under his head. Blanket up to his chest. The crackle of a fire somewhere behind him, close enough that he felt the heat on the side of his face before he saw the light.
And voices.
"…d'you think he'll wake up tonight, or—"
"Shh. Shh. You'll wake him."
"I'm trying to figure out—"
"Pappu."
"What."
"Just shut up."
Pause.
"…d'you think he'll wake up tonight?"
Ahaan opened his eyes.
For a long second he just looked up. The sky over the Endless Night was something he had never actually seen — black branches laid across deep blue, leaves moving in a wind that hadn't reached down to the ground yet. Quiet. Strange. Honestly beautiful.
Then his memory caught up.
He sat up.
The blanket fell off his chest — and immediately six men scrambled. Bowls clattered. Someone knocked something over. Pappu lurched to his feet, nearly tripping over the fireside log.
"Boss is awake—"
"Get water—"
"Stew — he needs stew—"
"Water first, Tappu, gods—"
A waterskin appeared at his face from the left. A bowl arrived from the right. Two men crouched in front of him at once, nearly colliding foreheads. The rest hovered just behind them, watching with the focused concern of people who had been waiting a very long time for this exact moment.
Ahaan sat there. One hand pressed slowly to the side of his head.
He looked at all of them.
Then, quietly:
"…why are you all calling me boss?"
The men paused.
"I told you. To get lost."
"Yes, boss."
Ahaan stared.
"I am thirteen."
"Yes, boss."
The other five, perfectly in chorus: "Yes, boss."
He let out a long breath. Glanced at his pack. It sat by his elbow, untouched, the silver pouch still visible at the top. His sword, his waterskin, his map — all laid out near his hand. Someone had arranged them so they'd be the first thing he reached for.
The annoyance in his chest went down half a notch.
He sat up properly. Crossed his legs. Pulled the blanket around his shoulders.
"…fine. What's that smell?"
"Stew, boss—"
A bowl appeared in front of his face, held out in both hands. The cart driver again. Ahaan looked at the bowl. Then at the man. Then at the stew, which — against all reasonable expectation — looked good. Brown meat. Roots. Steam.
He didn't take it.
The cart driver's smile sagged.
"Boss, please. We didn't poison it."
"Why would you say we didn't poison it."
"Because — because I just realized that's exactly what someone planning to poison the stew would say—"
"Pappu."
"What."
"You're not helping."
The cart driver — and Ahaan was beginning to understand that the name Pappu had been laid on him at birth in a moment of poor parental judgment — looked genuinely hurt. Then he did something Ahaan wasn't ready for.
He pulled the bowl back. Lifted it to his own mouth. Took a real spoonful. Chewed. Swallowed.
"There. See, boss? Trust." He held it out again. "Now eat. We've been waiting six hours."
Ahaan, slowly, took the bowl.
He ate.
It was good.
—
For a minute, nobody talked. The fire snapped at itself. Somewhere out in the trees, something small ran across leaves and stopped.
Then the smallest one cleared his throat, very politely.
"Boss. We also dressed the bull."
Ahaan paused mid-bite.
"You — what?"
The smallest pointed past the fire. There, just at the edge of the firelight, sat a careful arrangement of bone, hide, and dark cured meat, sorted into bundles. Even in bad light, you could tell it was the work of someone who knew exactly what each piece of a Hornback was worth.
"Twelve good horns," the small one said. "Nine silver each at the guild. The hide makes leathers — Armor-smith pays four silver a square. We dry the meat tonight, sell it tomorrow at market before it turns. Bones for arrow-tips. The biggest pair of horns is the bounty piece, you take those when you register the kill."
He smiled, hopeful.
"We did it the way the guild handlers like."
Ahaan held his bowl very still.
He hadn't known any of that.
Not even one piece of it. He had killed the Hornback. He had assumed, in the lazy way a person assumes things, that the killing was the hard part and someone else, somewhere, did the rest. He had not thought about a market. He had not thought about silver per horn.
He set the bowl down. Cleared his throat.
"…ah. Yes. Of course."
The smallest looked at him.
Ahaan made what he sincerely hoped was the calm, slightly-bored face of a young hunter who had, of course, known about Hornback dressing his entire life and had simply been testing whether they'd do it correctly.
The smallest beamed wider. Apparently he passed.
The cart driver leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"Boss. Can we ask you something?"
Ahaan, still recovering from being silently rescued from his own ignorance, nodded.
"You're so young, boss. So young. Why are you here? Alone? In a forest like this?"
Ahaan thought about it.
"I'll tell you. After you tell me."
"After we tell you what, boss?"
"Why you live in a monster forest."
The fire snapped.
The cart driver's smile, for the first time tonight, slipped off his face.
"…alright, boss."
He took off the hat. Set it on his knee. Drew a breath.
"My name is Pappu."
He gestured around the fire.
"This is Gappu. Tappu. Chappu. Lappu. Jhappu."
Ahaan's face did a thing it could not quite control.
His mouth twitched. His brows pulled together. Some small involuntary noise tried to climb out of his throat and he locked his jaw against it.
"…those," he said carefully, "are your names."
"Yes, boss."
"All of them."
"Yes, boss."
"Pappu. Gappu. Tappu. Chappu. Lappu. Jhappu."
"Yes, boss."
Ahaan put one hand against the side of his face.
"Continue."
—
When Pappu started talking again, his voice was different. Lower. Slower. The voice of a man who had told this story to himself a thousand times and never said it out loud.
"We're not from the World of Living, boss. We came from a place called Velmora. An island. Far south of here."
He turned the hat in his hands.
"There's an orphanage on Velmora. Old one. Older than any of us. It used to take in the children of the war — that war ended thirty years ago, but the children kept coming anyway. Refugees. Survivors. Soldiers' sons whose fathers never came home."
His mouth tilted, almost a smile. It didn't reach the rest of his face.
"The six of us grew up there. We were the oldest. The ones big enough to carry the firewood, fix the roof, fetch the water from the well. There were always children behind us. Smaller ones. A lot of them very thin."
He looked down at his hands.
"For the last three years, the orphanage hasn't run well. The matron does what she can. There's not enough food. The youngest ones — the ones too small to work — they were the first to start dying."
The fire snapped.
"We heard hunters in the World of Living earned good money. So we came. Tried to be hunters. We weren't good enough. We're not strong men, boss. We couldn't bring down even Naught creatures cleanly. So we gave it up."
He looked at Ahaan.
"What we did find was — a hunter takes what sells highest. Horns. Eyes. Cores. They leave the rest of the body. Took us a while to notice. Once we did, we started following hunters. At a distance. Quiet. We took what they didn't want. We dressed it. We sold it at the guild. What we earned, we sent home."
A long pause.
"That's how the orphanage has eaten, the last two years."
He looked at the fire instead of at Ahaan.
"This forest isn't a good home. But the rooms in Bluestone cost coin, and coin is what we send home. So we sleep here when we can't afford to sleep there. We've gotten very good at being unseen."
Then, in the slow honest voice of a man who had decided he was telling all of it now —
"What happened on the road yesterday, boss. With you. That was the first time. We've never done that before. Ever. You looked rich. We thought one full purse would be a month's food for the children at home. We thought it would be quick."
He swallowed.
"It was the worst plan we've ever had. And we are very sorry."
The other five, around the fire, lowered their heads.
Ahaan stared at his bowl.
He wasn't hungry anymore. The stew was warm in his hands. The fire was bright. The men around the fire were looking very deliberately at anywhere except him.
Six grown men. Orphans themselves. Stealing scraps from carcasses to feed children who weren't theirs. Who'd robbed exactly one person in their lives, on one road, on one bad day, because they were running out of time.
Quiet for a long moment.
Then he set the bowl down.
He looked into the fire.
"…my name is Kaal."
The men looked up at him slowly.
"I'm thirteen. I'm from the World of Living. I have a family. They're alive and waiting at home. I'm here on a test — when it's done, I go back to them."
He didn't say Cyan. He didn't say Sevenfold. But he gave them his name.
The fire popped.
Pappu nodded, quietly.
"…thank you for telling us, boss."
"I'm not your—"
"…thank you. Kaal."
A small, awkward silence.
Ahaan cleared his throat. His ears, in the firelight, had gone faintly pink.
"…right. Listen. Since I am, apparently, now your boss—"
The men's faces lifted at once.
"—about the money. From the bull. And from anything else we hunt together while I'm in this forest."
A breath.
"Fifty percent."
Six firelit faces.
"Fifty percent of what we earn — every kill, every layer, for as long as I'm with you — is yours. To split. And to send home."
The silence that came after was the kind that lands in a room when somebody says something nobody in that room expected to hear.
Pappu's mouth opened.
"…boss—"
"It's fine."
"Boss… we didn't tell you all that for this."
"Boss, that — that's too much—"
"Boss, the standard hunter-handler split is eighty-twenty. The hunter takes eighty. We — we would have taken twenty—"
"Then the orphanage will eat better than usual." Ahaan didn't look at him. His ears, by now, were getting redder. "I do my own killing. I have my own reasons for being here. The coin is for you to send home. I won't need it past what I use here."
A pause.
"That's the offer."
The silence got longer. Heavier. Almost holy.
Then —
Without coordinating, without warning, without anything resembling the dignity of grown men —
Pappu, Gappu, Tappu, Chappu, Lappu, and Jhappu erupted.
"BOSS—"
"BOSS YOU ARE THE KINDEST—"
"GODS PRESERVE YOU, BOSS—"
"WE WILL DIE FOR YOU, BOSS—"
"BOSS, OUR KIDS WILL EAT PROPERLY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A YEAR—"
Ahaan put his face in his hands.
"Stop calling me boss."
"YES, BOSS."
He exhaled. Lifted his head. When he spoke again his voice was steady. Cooler. The blush coming down a little.
"On one condition."
The shouting died.
"You tell me everything you know about the monsters of this forest. Every one. Every layer you've seen. I have killed exactly one thing in my life. I am not dying out here because I didn't know what something was."
Six heads bowed in instant, fervent agreement.
"YES BOSS—"
"WE KNOW EVERY MONSTER—"
"WE — we have charts, boss—"
"Pappu has charts—"
"PAPPU HAS CHARTS, BOSS—"
Ahaan laughed.
He couldn't help it. It was a short laugh, helpless, a little startled — the laugh of a thirteen-year-old who had walked into a forest expecting to die alone and ended up here instead, with six idiots and an accounting of his future.
The fire popped.
After that, nobody said anything important for a while.
Pappu refilled his bowl. Gappu pulled out a small wooden pipe and started carving something into the side of it. Chappu fell asleep sitting up. Lappu fell asleep against Chappu. The smallest one — Jhappu, Ahaan was almost sure — was curled up with his cheek pressed to a tree trunk, fighting sleep with the doomed, brave defiance of a child who knew he was losing.
Ahaan ate slowly. The stew was good. He hadn't been lying about that.
Above them, the canopy of the Endless Night shifted in a wind he still couldn't feel down here at ground level. The fire was warm. The night was kind, somehow. And the forest, just for tonight, was only a forest.
He looked across the fire — at Pappu's quiet, pleased face, at the four men slouching into each other in increasingly undignified angles, at the smallest one finally giving in and falling asleep against the bark — and something inside him went still.
He didn't know what to call it.
It wasn't a lesson Guruji had taught him. It was just that the road from yesterday morning — the empty one, the one he'd walked alone with twenty silver and a sigh — wasn't an empty road anymore.
Pappu, already half-asleep, mumbled into his hat:
"…goodnight, boss."
Ahaan looked at the embers for a long moment.
Then, very quietly —
"…goodnight."
Pappu's eyes opened. Just a fraction. A small, astonished, delighted fraction.
He pulled the hat down over his face and pretended very hard that he hadn't heard.
The fire burned low.
The seven of them slept.
To be continue…