Dawn came slowly, reluctantly, as if the sun itself was tired of watching.
Grog hadn't moved from his spot behind the oak for hours. Not after Aldric left. Not after the red eyes faded. Not after Lira finally tugged his sleeve and whispered we need to go.
He'd followed her back. Mechanical. Numb.
Now he sat outside his tent, axe across his knees, watching the camp wake up around him. Soldiers stretched and yawned. Cookfires crackled. Someone laughed at a joke he couldn't hear.
Normal. Ordinary. Impossible.
"You look like shit."
Lira dropped onto the ground beside him. She'd brought two tin cups of something hot—tea, maybe, or weak broth. She pressed one into his hands.
"Drink."
Grog drank. It was tea. Bitter and thin. He finished it anyway.
"We saw that," Lira said quietly. "I keep thinking maybe we didn't. Maybe it was a dream. Both of us. Same dream."
"We saw it."
"Yeah." She stared at her own cup. "I know."
They sat in silence as the camp stirred around them. Men passed by with nods or grunts of acknowledgment. No one noticed anything wrong. No one saw the two young soldiers sitting rigid with terror behind calm faces.
"We need to talk to him," Lira said finally.
Grog's head snapped toward her. "No."
"He deserves to know."
"Know what? That something's watching him? That he walks in his sleep and talks to shadows?" Grog's voice was low, fierce. "What good would that do? He'd think we're crazy. Or worse—he'd believe us. And then what? He spends the next twenty-five years terrified of himself?"
Lira was quiet.
"Maybe he should be," she said. "Terrified, I mean. If something's inside him—"
"It's not inside him. Not yet." Grog gripped his axe. "We saw it. It's separate. Watching. Waiting. If we tell him now, we don't know what happens. Maybe it speeds up. Maybe it takes him early. Maybe—" He stopped.
Lira waited.
"Maybe he tries to fight it alone," Grog finished. "And loses. Twenty-five years early."
The words hung between them.
Lira set her cup down. "So we just... watch? For twenty-five years? Let him live his life, make friends, become a hero, while that thing sits in the shadows waiting to take him?"
"Yes."
"That's cruel."
"It's the only way." Grog met her eyes. "In the old timeline, we didn't know. We were happy. All of us. For twenty-five years, we were happy. Aldric saved people. Made friends. Lived. If we tell him now, we take that away. We make him live in fear."
Lira's jaw tightened.
"And if we can't stop it?" she asked. "If we watch and wait and try to prepare, and it still happens? Then we took his happiness for nothing."
Grog had no answer for that.
They sat with the question between them, heavy as stone.
---
Aldric found them an hour later.
He was yawning, rubbing sleep from his eyes, his hair sticking up in fourteen different directions. He looked exactly like a seventeen-year-old who'd stayed up too late and slept too hard.
"Morning," he mumbled, dropping onto the ground beside them. "Why are you both sitting here like someone died?"
Grog's chest tightened.
Lira recovered faster. "Couldn't sleep. Watched the sunrise. It was pretty." She gestured vaguely at the sky, now bright with morning. "You missed it."
Aldric yawned again. "Sorry. Slept like the dead. Don't remember anything after—" He stopped. Frowned. "Actually, I don't remember going to sleep at all. Huh."
Grog's hands stilled on his axe.
"You don't?" Lira's voice was carefully casual.
"No. I was by the fire, talking to... someone? I think?" He rubbed his head. "Then nothing. Woke up in my bedroll. Weird."
"Weird," Lira agreed.
Aldric looked at them both, brow furrowed. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like I'm a puzzle you're trying to solve." He glanced between them. "You've been doing that a lot lately. Both of you. Staring at me when you think I'm not looking."
Grog forced his shoulders to relax. "Didn't realize."
"Well, I noticed." Aldric's frown deepened. "If I've done something wrong, just tell me. I'd rather know than have people whisper behind my back."
Lira snorted. "No one's whispering."
"You are. With your eyes."
Grog almost smiled. The boy was too perceptive for his own good. That hadn't changed.
"It's nothing," Grog said. "Just—watching you grow. You're not a kid anymore."
Aldric blinked at the unexpected words. Then his face softened into something almost shy.
"That's—" He ducked his head. "That's really nice, actually. Thank you."
Lira shot Grog a look. Smooth, it said.
Grog ignored her.
---
The day passed.
Normal. Ordinary. Excruciating.
Grog went through the motions—training, eating, talking when spoken to—while his mind churned endlessly. The red eyes. The clearing. The thread between Aldric and the darkness.
Lira was right. Watching for twenty-five years would be torture.
But telling him might be worse.
By evening, he'd made a decision.
He found Lira near the supply tents, helping Marta organize bandages. She looked up when he approached, reading his face in that sharp way of hers.
"You've decided something."
"Yes."
"Good or bad?"
"Don't know yet." He glanced around. No one nearby. "We need information. About what that thing is. Where it came from. How it works."
Lira nodded slowly. "Agreed. How do we get that?"
Grog had been thinking about this all day. "The old woman. The one who told you about Aldric's mother. Does she still live nearby?"
"The village east of here. Why?"
"She knew his family. Maybe she knows more. Things Aldric never told us." Grog met her eyes. "Things even he might not know."
Lira considered this. "It's a two-day walk. We'd need permission to leave."
"Then we get permission."
"Captain Voren will want a reason."
"We'll give him one." Grog's voice was steady. "Supply run. Personal business. Doesn't matter."
Lira studied him for a long moment. Then, slowly, she smiled. It wasn't a happy smile—more like the smile of someone stepping onto a frozen river, testing the ice.
"You're really doing this," she said. "Fighting it. Not just waiting."
"I'm done waiting."
"Good." She nodded once. "I'll talk to Voren. You pack."
She turned and walked toward the captain's tent.
Grog watched her go, then looked toward the trees where the clearing waited.
Somewhere out there, red eyes watched back.
Not yet, Grog thought. Not yet.
---
The village was smaller than Grog remembered.
Twelve houses, a smithy, a shrine with a broken roof. Fields stretched behind it, brown and fallow this late in the season. Children played in the muddy street, stopping to stare at the two strangers walking through.
Lira led the way. She'd gotten permission easily enough—supply run, she'd told Voren, and Grog needed to get out of camp before he went crazy. The captain had waved them off without interest.
Now they stood outside a small cottage at the edge of the village, its roof patched with mismatched shingles, its garden overgrown with weeds.
"This is it," Lira said. "The old woman's place."
Grog knocked.
Silence.
He knocked again.
The door creaked open a finger's width. One eye peered out—brown, cloudy with age, but sharp.
"What do you want?"
"We're here about Aldric," Lira said. "The boy who lived here as a child. We need to ask you some questions."
The eye studied them.
Then the door opened wider.
The woman was ancient—older than anyone Grog had ever seen, her face a map of wrinkles, her back bent like a willow in winter. She leaned on a gnarled walking stick and stared at them with those cloudy eyes.
"Aldric," she repeated. "Haven't heard that name in years. He's still alive?"
"Yes," Grog said.
"Good." She stepped back, gesturing them inside. "Come in, then. And close the door. Wasn't born in a barn."
---
The cottage was warm and cluttered, filled with dried herbs and old furniture and the smell of woodsmoke. The woman—she never gave her name—settled into a creaking chair by the hearth and waved them toward a bench.
"Sit. Talk. Tell me why two soldiers are asking about a farm boy."
Lira glanced at Grog. He nodded.
"We're his friends," Lira said carefully. "We're worried about him. He's been having—" She hesitated. "Trouble sleeping. Bad dreams. We thought maybe his past might help us understand."
The old woman's eyes sharpened. "Bad dreams. What kind?"
"He walks in his sleep," Grog said. "To a clearing. In the moonlight."
Something flickered across her face. Too fast to read.
"I see," she said quietly. "I see."
She was silent for a long moment, staring into the hearth.
Then: "His mother came to me, you know. Before she died. Said the boy was changing. Said he talked to things that weren't there."
Grog's heart hammered.
"I thought it was grief," the woman continued. "Losing a parent young—that marks a child. Changes them. I told her to give him time." She shook her head slowly. "Maybe I was wrong."
"What did she mean," Lira asked carefully, "talking to things that weren't there?"
The old woman looked up.
"Shadows," she said. "He talked to shadows. At night. When the moon was full. His mother found him in the woods once, carrying on a conversation with empty air. When she asked who he was talking to, he said—" She stopped.
"Said what?" Grog pressed.
"He said: 'The nice man who promised to make me strong.'"
The words hit Grog like a physical blow.
Lira went pale beside him.
"How long before she died?" Grog asked. "How long was he talking to this—this 'nice man'?"
The old woman thought. "Years. Started when he was seven, maybe. Continued until she got too sick to notice. After she passed, I don't know. He stopped coming to the village. Stayed on that farm alone until he was old enough to join the border scouts."
Seven years old.
The thing had been with Aldric since he was seven.
Grog's hands clenched into fists.
"We need to know more," he said. "About what it is. Where it came from. How to fight it."
The old woman looked at him with those cloudy eyes.
"You can't fight it," she said simply. "Not with swords. Not with axes. That thing is older than these hills. Older than the kingdom. Older than—" She gestured vaguely. "Everything. You don't fight something like that. You run. You hide. You pray it forgets you."
"I can't run." Grog's voice was rough. "He's my friend."
The old woman studied him for a long moment.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
"Love," she said. "Always love. Stupid, stubborn love." She reached into a pocket of her worn dress and pulled out something small and dark. A stone, Grog saw. Smooth and black and strangely warm.
"Take this," she said, pressing it into his hand. "His mother gave it to me before she died. Said it came from the clearing where he talked to shadows. Maybe it helps. Maybe it doesn't. But you should have it."
Grog looked at the stone. It pulsed with faint warmth against his palm.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. And I don't want to know." The old woman leaned back in her chair, suddenly exhausted. "Now go. I've told you everything I can. Leave an old woman to her peace."
Lira stood. "Thank you."
The old woman didn't answer.
They let themselves out.
---
The walk back to camp was long and silent.
Grog kept the stone in his pocket, close to his heart. It stayed warm.
Lira walked beside him, lost in thought.
Finally, as the sun began to set, she spoke.
"He was seven, Grog. A child. Whatever that thing is, it's been with him almost his whole life."
"I know."
"It's not a possession. Not like we thought. It's more like—" She struggled for words. "Like a friend. A voice. A promise. It's been shaping him since he was old enough to talk."
"I know."
She looked at him. "What do we do with that?"
Grog thought about the stone in his pocket. About the red eyes in the clearing. About Aldric's smile, oblivious and warm.
"We get stronger," he said finally. "We learn everything we can. We watch. We wait. And when the time comes—" He stopped.
"When the time comes?"
Grog met her eyes.
"When the time comes, we make sure he has something to fight for. Something stronger than a promise made to a lonely child."
Lira nodded slowly.
They walked on toward camp, toward Aldric, toward twenty-five years of waiting.
Behind them, in the darkening woods, something watched.
And smiled.