He walked back to the platform and reached under it, pulling out a bundle wrapped in cloth. He opened it and revealed a few crude iron objects, hooks, nails, a short knife that was not rusted like the one he'd started with.
Rowan's eyes narrowed. "Where'd you get iron?"
Edrin felt his heartbeat spike for an instant, then forced it still.
He could lie. He had lied in Hollow for years, stumbling and coughing and pretending to be small. Lying kept you alive.
But lies also built walls between you and the people you needed.
He did not need them to love him.
He needed them to work.
"I found it," he said, which was true in the way most lies were true. "In the ridge. Old scraps. Old deposits. It's not much. But it's enough to start making things that last."
Rowan stared at the iron, hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food. In the Gift, iron was power. Iron was the difference between a knife that snapped and a knife that cut.
"You've been hiding this," she said.
"Yes," Edrin said simply.
Tym swallowed. "Why?"
Edrin looked at the boy. "Because if everyone knows you have something, everyone wants it," he said. "And if you can't defend it, you lose it."
Rowan's gaze snapped back to him. "And can you defend it?"
Edrin thought of the wildling with the bone club. Thought of the sound his skull had made when it cracked.
No, his mind said.
Then he thought of Death Three, the way he'd moved like he'd already seen the blows. Thought of the system chime that had followed him into darkness and back.
He had defended them, at least.
Edrin's jaw tightened. "I'm learning," he said.
Rowan held his gaze. Then she nodded once, small.
"All right," she said. "Teach me."
The word teach hit Edrin in a strange place.
In his old life, teaching had been a job, a role. Here it was a leash, a chain.
He nodded back. "Fine. But you do what I say when it matters."
Rowan's eyes glittered. "You want obedience."
"I want survival," Edrin said. "If you want to argue, we can do it after we're fed and the roof isn't on fire."
Lysa sank onto the platform, looking suddenly exhausted beyond words. "We're not going back," she whispered.
It wasn't a question. It was a realization, like a door closing.
Edrin felt the weight of it settle in the cabin with them.
"No," he said.
Outside, the wind kept gnawing.
They ate the rabbit strip in silence, each tearing off a piece with fingers that shook. It wasn't enough. It barely coated the tongue with grease. But it was something hot, and in the Gift hot food was a kind of prayer.
When they were done, Rowan took the first watch without being told. She sat just inside the doorway with her knife across her knees, staring out into the night as if she could see through snow.
Edrin tried to sleep.
He lay on the platform with Lysa on one side and the two boys huddled on the other, their bodies pressed together for warmth. The cabin smelled of damp fur and smoke and fear.
He closed his eyes.
And saw Hollow burning again.
He saw Hobb's face in the firelight, stubborn and furious, and then he saw Hobb go down under a wildling's axe, and he felt the old man's weight through his hands as he'd tried to drag him, failing.
He heard Mara's dry voice; There is nothing better than staying alive--and then the scream that had cut off abruptly, like a rope snapped.
He tasted blood.
He opened his eyes.
The roof beams were dark. The vent in the sod let in a thin sliver of night. Somewhere outside, Rowan shifted, and his Awareness caught it like a twitch.
Sleep, he told himself. You need it. You can't think straight without it.
Then another voice rose inside him, colder.
You don't get to sleep. Not yet. Not if you want them to live.
He hated that voice.
He hated that it was right.
His mind drifted, half dream, half planning.
He thought of Hollow's flaws. Communal fire that drew eyes. Huts clustered too close, making fire spread fast. No palisade. No lookouts. No contingency.
He thought of modern ideas that felt obscene here, perimeter alarms, tripwires, early warning systems, layered defenses.
He thought of the simplest truth: if you were hit once and you survived, you changed. If you were hit twice, you changed more.
If you were hit and you died and you came back…
Edrin's throat tightened.
The System had been silent since the last gain. No new chime. No new panel. Almost as if it was watching.
Or waiting.
He forced himself to breathe slow.
At some point he must have slept, because the next thing he knew Rowan was shaking his shoulder.
"Tracks," she whispered.
Edrin sat up too fast and nearly smacked his head on a beam. His body protested, stiff.
Rowan's face was a pale blur in the dim. "South," she said. "On the ridge line. Not close. But there."
Lysa stirred, eyes wide. "They found us?"
"No," Rowan said. "Not yet. But they're looking."
Edrin slid off the platform and grabbed his cloak and knife.
Outside, dawn was a grey smear. The sky looked bruised, like someone had beaten it with a fist.
Snow had fallen in the night, light and dry, the kind that hid prints and made the world look clean. Edrin hated it for that. Clean was a lie. Clean was just dirt covered up.
Rowan led them up the slope to a stand of pines where the ground rose and then fell away into a shallow valley.
"There," she said, pointing.
Edrin crouched, squinting.
At first he saw nothing. Then Awareness kicked, that predatory stillness settling behind his eyes, sharpening edges.
There. Disturbed snow. A footprint half-filled. A broken twig.
Not one set.
Several.