The wagon wheels rattled like bones on the uneven path.
Cale sat with his knees drawn to his chest, back pressed against the cold wooden frame. The chain on his ankle clinked with every turn of the wheel. Fog rolled around them, heavy and low, swallowing the edges of the world. The guards sat up front, quiet for once, only the clop of hooves and creak of axles filling the silence.
He wasn't the only one in the wagon this time. Three other children, none familiar, sat across from him. Their eyes were tired. Their clothes ragged. He didn't try to speak. He barely even looked at them.
The memory of Emis' voice still lingered in his skull like smoke. It had been two days since that strange, whispered communion. Since then, nothing. Emis had gone quiet again.
But the mark on his wrist never stopped pulsing.
Hours passed. Maybe more. Cale lost track. Eventually, the trees began to thin, and the fog peeled back just enough to reveal rooftops—low, dark, and clustered like teeth.
Lukhia.
The village sat in a shallow basin, ringed by grey hills and black pines. The buildings were wooden, but sturdier than the rotted shack they'd been kept in before. Still, it felt no less grim. There was no market, no sound of laughter. Just hard faces and harder eyes watching as the wagon rolled through.
The children were unloaded with little ceremony. Cale stepped down, joints stiff. The chain was removed, but not gently. A guard shoved him forward. "Storage building. Third one on the left. Move."
The storage building was long and narrow, built of thick planks. Inside, a row of beds—straw mattresses and thin wool blankets. At least there were windows.
Cale chose the one farthest from the door. Sat. Didn't speak.
He didn't want to bond with anyone here.
But someone didn't get that message.
A boy sat across from him, legs dangling off the opposite bed, watching him with idle curiosity. He looked clean—relatively speaking. His clothes weren't torn. He wore a linen undershirt, sleeves rolled up, and an old silver signet ring on his thumb.
Cale noticed it immediately.
"You're nobility," he said flatly.
The boy smiled. "Technically. Not that it's done me much good lately."
"What's your name?"
"Regan," he said, offering his hand like they were at a dinner party. "Regan Caerleth."
Cale just looked at the hand.
Regan let it drop with a small shrug. "And you?"
"Cale."
"Just Cale?"
"Varn."
Regan's brow lifted. "Hm. That sounds... faintly familiar."
Cale ignored it.
"How long have you been here?"
"About a week. Maybe more. It's hard to say. No clocks. No bells."
Cale leaned back against the wall. "What do they want from us?"
Regan looked down at his hands. "Some of the kids talk about auctions. Others say we're part of some bigger... trade. Something going to the capital."
"The king's birthday," Cale muttered.
Regan's eyes flicked up. "You know about that?"
"Heard it from someone I wish I hadn't met."
There was silence for a while.
Then Regan said, "You've seen the guards' tattoos?"
Cale nodded. Black ink just under the collarbone. A jagged emblem shaped like an eye. Some sort of sigil.
"They're all part of the same network," Regan said. "My tutor taught me about it. Secret groups. Smugglers. People who move things the crown pretends not to know about."
"So we're just more things?"
Regan didn't answer.
Cale looked out the window. The hills surrounding Lukhia were steep and forested. One narrow road in. Maybe another out. But nothing good waited beyond either path.
__________________
The next morning, they were taken outside.
There was a routine here. Wake, line up, eat. The food was better—if only slightly. Gruel instead of moldy bread. A single boiled egg for the older ones. A guard watched every mouthful.
After breakfast, they were allowed an hour in the yard—a fenced clearing with patchy grass and a single dead tree. It felt like a parody of recess.
Regan walked beside Cale, hands in his pockets.
"I've been watching the guards' rotation," he said quietly. "There's always a shift change around midday."
"Are you thinking of escaping?"
"Thinking I like options."
Cale gave him a look. "Have you ever climbed a hill with a bruised rib and half a lung?"
Regan smirked. "I've done worse with less."
Cale didn't reply. But a part of him—small and bitter—liked Regan's arrogance.
"Are you always this talkative?" Regan asked.
"Only when I'm forced to stand in a pretend park surrounded by kidnappers."
Regan laughed. A real laugh. Sharp and short.
The other children gave them looks—wary, uncertain. Most were too scared to talk. But that one sound felt like a crack in the fog.
__________________
That night, as the wind howled through the boards, Cale lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The room was quiet. Regan snored softly across from him.
He pressed his fingers to the mark again.
"Emis," he whispered. "Are you still there?"
Nothing.
But the pulse was steady. As if the answer was yes.
He rolled onto his side.
There had to be a way out.
And for the first time, he knew he wouldn't be alone when it came.
Even if that way was through shadow and blood.
Then something shifted.
A flicker at the edge of his bed. A whisper of pressure in the air.
He sat up, slowly.
And there—sitting at the end of his mattress—was a sleek black cat, eyes glowing blue.
"You—" Cale started, breath catching.
"Try not to scream. You'll ruin the moment," Emis said aloud this time, the words curling from his mouth like smoke.
Cale stared, blinking. "You're really here. Not just... in my head."
"Not everything has to be telepathy. Sometimes I enjoy theatrics."
Cale let out a shaky breath, heart pounding. "Why now? Why not sooner?"
Emis flicked his tail. "Because until now, you weren't ready to see me. Not like this."
Cale opened his mouth to respond—but stopped.
He'd felt it. A shift.
One of the boys nearby had stirred. Cale's head turned sharply, eyes narrowing.
The boy's breath evened out, a low snore escaping him.
Still, Cale's gut clenched.
"You saw that?" he asked quietly.
Emis's gaze never left him. "You remember what your father told you, don't you?"
"Be paranoid," Cale whispered.
"Good. Then trust the lesson."
The shadows near the window stirred. A breeze rolled through a cracked vent high in the wall.
And then, soundless and still as moonlight, a raven perched on the edge of the vent.
Its feathers were glossy black, its eyes sharper than they had any right to be.
It stared directly at Cale.
He stared back.
Then it blinked. Once. Slowly.
And stayed right where it was.
Emis glanced up at it. "Not all watchers are enemies. But not all allies wear friendly faces, either."
Cale looked from the raven, back to the cat, and felt the line between reality and legend blur again.
The room was quiet.
But nothing felt still anymore.
___________________
On the outskirts of Port Hane, where the brine-laced winds carried the scent of rust and gull droppings, a lone figure stood before a house no one visited anymore.
The structure had once been whitewashed, maybe even cared for. Now its paint peeled like dry skin, shutters hung crooked, and the roof sagged under the weight of decades. The air around it was still—too still, as if even the rats beneath the floorboards held their breath in the man's presence.
He stood motionless, cloaked in a black robe stitched with faint sigils that only glimmered when caught by the light at the right angle. His posture was relaxed, almost casual, but his presence weighted the air.
A floorboard squeaked. A gust of wind howled through the broken eaves. Still, he did not move.
"Hm…" His voice was smooth, almost amused. "Too bad. I was hoping to catch them here."
He took a few slow steps forward, boots barely creaking over the mossy wood. The house, whatever it had once meant, meant nothing now. No magic lingered. No warmth. Just ghosts of decisions too late to matter.
"Where would they have gone now?" he mused aloud, rubbing his chin with two gloved fingers.
He turned his head slightly, tilting it like he was listening to something faint—something far away. Not a sound, but a pattern. An alignment.
"Has Mira found them yet?" he asked the wind.
There was no answer, of course.
Above him, the sky had begun to turn. Dark clouds gathered, thick with unshed rain. The air smelled of metal and cold stone. A storm was coming, but he seemed pleased by it. He looked up, lips curling into a smirk as if daring the sky to get on with it.
"Go on," he whispered to the clouds, mirth glinting in his blood-red eyes. "Wash the trail away. See if it matters."
Then he stilled.
Something shifted in the air—an unseen tether tugging gently on the edge of his awareness.
His eyes narrowed.
"Oh," he breathed, the smirk deepening. "So that's where they are."
He turned briskly on his heel, his coat flaring with the motion. Within moments, he had returned to his waiting carriage, a sleek black vehicle drawn by two horses bred more for silence than speed.
The driver looked back through the hatch. "Sir?"
"South," the man said. "Now. We're nearly there."
The horses obeyed with a lurch. The carriage wheels began to roll, grinding against the gravel path.
The man leaned back against the velvet lining of the interior, eyes still half-closed, but his mind far ahead.
"Just a bit more," he murmured. "And I'll see the boy again."