One Week After Arrival. Renshaw's Keep.
Grog woke to pain.
It was a familiar pain now—the deep ache of healing flesh, the pull of wounds that weren't quite closed. He'd learned to live with it. Learned to move through it.
He sat up slowly. His chest throbbed. His arms were weak. His legs were restless.
The apple hummed in his blood. Working. Always working.
He dressed. Strapped on his sword. Walked to the window.
The courtyard below was gray with early light. Soldiers changing guard. Servants heading to kitchens. The ordinary rhythm of a keep waking up.
He went downstairs.
---
The healer was an old woman named Hessa.
She'd been tending the keep's wounded for forty years. She'd seen everything—sword cuts, arrow wounds, infections, diseases. She'd buried soldiers and saved soldiers and learned to tell the difference.
She looked at Grog's chest without flinching.
"Better," she said. "Much better."
Grog looked down. The wounds were closed now—pink lines across his chest, still tender, still healing. But closed. No infection. No fever.
"How long?"
"For what?"
"To be whole."
Hessa studied him.
"You'll carry scars. That's wholeness for some men." She touched his chest gently. "The flesh is healing fast. Faster than it should. Something's helping it along."
Grog didn't answer.
Hessa didn't ask.
"Another week, you'll be walking without pain. Two weeks, you'll be sparring. A month—" She shrugged. "You'll be what you were."
"Good."
She packed her supplies. Paused at the door.
"You've been through something," she said. "Something more than a battle."
Grog waited.
"I've seen men who've survived terrible wounds. Men who've seen things they shouldn't have. You've got that look." She met his eyes. "The wounds you can't see are the ones that take longest to heal."
She left.
---
He walked the walls.
Slowly. Carefully. His legs were weak, but they held. The apple's gift pushed him forward, kept him moving, kept him alive.
The guards nodded as he passed. They knew him now—the barbarian who'd killed the monster. They didn't crowd him. Didn't ask questions. Just let him walk.
He stopped at the eastern wall. Looked out at the hills.
The valley was somewhere out there. The battlefield. The black tent. The hunters.
Gone now.
Or waiting.
He didn't know which.
---
He found the training yard an hour later.
Empty at this hour—just the practice dummies, the racks of swords, the beaten earth. He stood at the edge, watching.
His body remembered fighting. His muscles remembered the swing, the block, the counter. But his wounds remembered too. The Breaker's claws. The berserker's rage. The moment when he'd almost lost himself.
He picked up a practice sword.
It was light. Too light. Nothing like his own blade, which pulsed against his hip even now, waiting, wanting.
He swung.
His chest protested. His arms shook. But he swung.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Slow. Careful. Relearning what his body had forgotten.
---
Lira found him an hour later.
She didn't say anything. Just picked up a sword and stood across from him.
They sparred.
Slowly. Carefully. No strikes that would hurt, no moves that would pull at healing wounds. Just the rhythm of two people who'd fought together, who'd learned to trust each other, who'd survived what should have killed them.
After a while, they stopped.
Lira sat on a crate. Grog sat beside her.
"You're getting better," she said.
"I'm getting older."
"Same thing."
He almost smiled. Almost.
"Renshaw's healer says I'll be sparring in two weeks."
"She's optimistic."
"She's old."
Lira laughed. It was a good sound—warm, real, the first he'd heard from her since the battle.
"She's been here forty years. She knows what she's talking about."
Grog nodded.
They sat in silence, watching the sun climb higher.
---
Aldric found them at midday.
He'd been exploring the keep—the library, the kitchens, the gardens. He looked different than he had a week ago. Lighter. Less hollow.
"There's a cook," he said, sitting beside them. "Old woman named Marta. She makes bread every morning. Said I could help if I wanted."
Lira raised an eyebrow. "You want to make bread?"
Aldric shrugged. "Something to do."
Grog looked at him.
The boy who'd carried darkness his whole life. Who'd fought an army, faced hunters, said no to something that should have been impossible to refuse.
Now he wanted to make bread.
"Good," Grog said.
Aldric smiled. Small, but real.
---
That night, they ate together.
Mirena joined them, her books forgotten for once. She talked about the mages she'd been meeting with, their theories, their excitement. Lira talked about the bow, the way it responded to her, the way it felt like it had been waiting. Aldric talked about bread—the feel of dough, the smell of baking, the satisfaction of making something with his hands.
Grog listened.
He was healing.
They all were.