Garret picked up the paper with hands that trembled slightly, and he began to read.
To Garret, Sera, and Tim,
The words were Kemun now, clean and clear, but the voice behind them was the same voice they had heard for three days—quiet, careful, measuring every word before it was spoken.
If you're reading this, it means I'm already gone. I'm sorry. I wanted to leave properly, to thank you in person, to let you know that I didn't take anything with me except the clothes on my back and the map I've been carrying since before I woke up in your house.
I know you probably have questions. I know you deserve answers. But the truth is, I don't have many of those myself. I was a nobody in the place I came from, and in this place I'm something even less—a dead man walking, a name that doesn't belong to me, a face that people in power would rather forget.
The soldiers who have been patrolling your village, the ones who showed up a few days ago, the ones who are looking for something they won't tell you about—they're looking for someone. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's not. But I can't stay to find out. I can't put you in danger for a stranger you pulled out of the mud three days ago.
Three days. That's how long I've known you, and already you've given me more kindness than I received in my whole life before this. The food. The bed. The way you didn't ask questions when you could see I wasn't ready to answer. The way Sera made sure I ate even when I said I wasn't hungry. The way Garret pretended not to notice when I couldn't sleep and sat by the window instead. The way Tim looked at me like I was someone worth saving.
Garret's voice cracked on Tim's name, and he had to pause, had to swallow, had to blink a few times before he could continue.
Sera stood beside him, her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes bright with something that might have been tears or might have been anger or might have been both.
I can't repay any of that. I wish I could. If I survive whatever comes next, I will find a way. But I can't promise that I will survive. I can't promise anything except this: I will remember you. All of you. For as long as I have left.
There's something I have to do. Something I promised someone I would do, a long time ago, in a life that isn't mine. I don't know if I'll succeed. I don't know if anyone has ever succeeded at this. But I have to try. I have to try because if I don't, then everything that happened to get me here—the dying, the waking up, the running, the wolf, all of it—will have been for nothing.
And I can't let it be for nothing.
So I'm going. South first, then east, then north again, following a path that doesn't exist on any map anyone in this kingdom has ever seen. If I come back, I'll find you. If I don't—
If I don't, then please remember me as Kain. Just Kain. Not whatever else I was before. Not whatever other names people might try to give me. Just the boy who slept on your floor and ate your food and left before he could put you in danger.
Thank you. For everything.
— Kain
Garret lowered the paper, his hands still trembling, and for a long moment no one spoke.
Tim was still on the floor, his head propped against the wall, his chest still heaving from the effort of the spell, but his eyes were fixed on Garret's face, waiting, hoping for something he couldn't name.
"So that's it," Tim said finally, his voice small. "He just... left."
Sera moved to the window, her arms wrapped around herself, her gaze fixed on the darkening road that led south out of the village. "He said he didn't want to put us in danger. He said the soldiers might be looking for him."
Garret folded the paper carefully, almost reverently, and tucked it into his shirt, close to his heart. "He also said he was going somewhere that doesn't exist on any map. Somewhere south and east and north again, following a path he shouldn't know."
They were all thinking it now, though none of them said it. The Veilborn Expanse. The place everyone avoided. The place no one returned from.
Tim pushed himself up, his legs unsteady, his face pale, but his voice steadier than it had been all evening. "He could have stayed. We would have protected him. We could have figured it out, whatever it was."
Garret shook his head slowly. "He didn't want us to protect him. He wanted us to be safe. And sometimes the only way to keep people safe is to leave them behind."
He looked out the window, at the road that disappeared into darkness, at the place where the village ended and the forest began, at the boy who had walked into it alone, with nothing but scars and a map and a promise he didn't have to make.
"I hope he finds what he's looking for," Garret said quietly. "I hope it was worth leaving for."
Outside, the night had fully fallen, and the stars were coming out one by one, scattered across the sky like promises waiting to be kept.
Kain walked until the village lights were nothing but a memory, until the familiar shape of Oakvale's rooftops had long since disappeared behind the rolling hills, until his legs felt like they might give out beneath him and his scars pulled tight with every step. The road stretched ahead of him, pale and winding in the moonlight, disappearing into the darkness of the forest that marked the edge of everything he had come to know in this world.
Several miles had passed beneath his feet—more than he'd thought possible, given how weak he'd been just three days ago. The adrenaline of leaving, of finally moving, of walking toward something instead of running away from it, had carried him farther than his body should have allowed. But now, with the moon high overhead and the trees closing in on either side of the road, he could feel the exhaustion settling into his bones, heavy and insistent, a weight that no amount of determination could push through.
I can't keep going, he admitted to himself, slowing to a stop at the edge of a clearing where the moonlight pooled like water on the grass. If I collapse out here, there won't be anyone to find me. There won't be another Garret and Sera to pull me out of the mud.
He looked around, his eyes scanning the tree line with a caution that had been sharpened by weeks of running, by the wolf, by the memory of teeth closing around him in the dark. The forest here was different from the one around Oakvale—older, denser, the trees thicker and taller, their branches intertwining overhead to form a canopy that swallowed the moonlight and turned the spaces between them into pools of shadow.
Something rustled in the undergrowth, and Kain tensed, his hand going to the small knife he'd taken from Sera's kitchen, the leather-wrapped handle warm against his palm. The rustling stopped. Whatever it was moved on, uninterested or unaware, and Kain let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.
I need to find somewhere safe. Somewhere off the ground. Somewhere nothing can get to me while I sleep.
His eyes found the trees again, and something stirred in his memory—a fragment of a conversation overheard in the café, a piece of game lore that had lodged itself in his brain like a splinter and never quite worked its way out. Clover trees, he thought, the words coming to him slowly, uncertainly, like shapes emerging from fog. Clover trees repel monsters. Something about the leaves. Something about mana.
He moved toward the nearest tree, his hand reaching out to touch its trunk, and the moment his fingers made contact he knew he'd found what he was looking for. The bark was rough but warm, alive in a way that felt different from the other trees around it, and when he looked up he could see the leaves spreading against the sky—not the ordinary green of oak or ash, but something darker, something that seemed to absorb the moonlight and turn it into a soft, steady glow.
Clover leaves. Three-lobed, like the clovers of his own world, but larger, each one the size of his hand, and everywhere he looked he saw them, hundreds of them, thousands, turning the canopy above him into a shield of light and magic.
This is why they plant these trees near villages, he remembered. To keep the monsters away. To create a boundary they won't cross.
He circled the tree, looking for a branch low enough to reach, wide enough to hold him, safe enough to sleep on. The first branch was too thin, the second too high, but the third was perfect. It jutted out from the trunk about fifteen feet up, wide as a man's shoulders and long enough for him to lie down with room to spare, and it was covered in clover leaves that glowed faintly in the darkness, pulsing with a rhythm that felt almost like breathing.
Kain climbed.
His body protested every movement—his arms shaking with the effort of pulling his weight up, his legs scraping against the bark, his scars pulling and burning with each stretch—but he kept going, hand over hand, foot over foot, until he was crouched on the branch with his back against the trunk and his heart pounding in his ears. From here he could see the road winding back toward Oakvale, could see the forest stretching out on either side, could see the stars scattered across the sky like seeds waiting to be planted.
This is the biggest tree I've ever seen, he thought, looking up at the trunk that rose above him, at the branches that spread out like the ribs of an umbrella, at the leaves that covered everything in their soft, steady light. But even as the thought formed, he knew it wasn't true—not here, not in this world. He'd seen trees twice this size on the road to the southern border, trees that had been standing for centuries, trees that would still be standing when he was nothing but dust.
He pulled the bag from his shoulder—Garret's bag, or one of them anyway, a worn leather thing that he had filled with bread and dried meat and a waterskin without asking—and opened it, his fingers finding the loaf of bread he'd taken from the kitchen. It was still warm, somehow, or maybe that was just his memory of it, the feeling of Sera's kitchen, the smell of bread fresh from the oven, the sound of Garret's laugh and Tim's questions and the simple, impossible peace of those three days.
He broke off a piece and put it in his mouth, and for a moment he was back there, sitting at their table, pretending he was someone who could stay. The bread was good—it had always been good, it gave him enough energy to keep his eyes open a little longer, to look at the stars and wonder if somewhere, in another world, someone was looking at the same stars and thinking of him.
Will I survive? he asked the darkness, the question rising up from somewhere deep, somewhere that had been asking it since the day his father left, since the day his mother walked out, since the day he'd swallowed those pills and woken up in a dead prince's body. Will I find them? Will I make it to the Veilborn? Will I ever see Oakvale again?
The stars didn't answer. The leaves glowed, and the wind whispered through the branches, and somewhere in the distance an owl called out to something that called back, and the night went on, as nights always did, indifferent to the questions of one small, tired boy on a branch in a tree.
Kain ate the rest of the bread in silence, then drank from the waterskin, then tucked everything back into the bag and used it as a pillow, lying down on the branch with his legs stretched out and his arms folded across his chest. The wood was warm beneath him, the leaves glowing above him, and for the first time in days—in weeks, maybe, in a lifetime—he felt something that might have been safety.
I'm going to find them, he thought as his eyes grew heavy, as the leaves blurred above him, as the world began to fade. I'm going to find the children. I'm going to keep my promise. I'm going to—
Sleep took him before he could finish the thought, pulling him down into darkness.
He slept.
Everything was looking normal until..!!
The system's alarm cut through his dreams like a blade.
WARNING
HOST LIFE IN DANGER
ENEMY DETECTED: UNHOLY CLOVER TREE
ATTACK TYPE: NIGHTMARE CONSUMERS