The next morning brought rain, a cold, persistent drizzle that slicked the packed earth of Darkan village and turned the world grey. The scent of damp soil and woodsmoke hung heavy in the air.
Raka worked alongside Thom, the rhythm of the axe a stark contrast to the life he'd known before… before Arlen, before the fall, before everything had shattered.
Thom, bearded and weathered like an old oak, remained silent, his presence a quiet weight. He offered only a grunt when Raka's swing was clumsy, but a brief, almost imperceptible nod when the axe bit true, splitting the log cleanly.
The body ached. Arlen Veyr, whoever he truly had been beyond a weary villager hiding from something, possessed muscles unused to this kind of sustained labor. Each swing sent jolts through unfamiliar sinews, each lift strained a back that felt brittle. But Raka pushed through the burning fatigue.
There was a strange solace in the repetitive motion, a physical anchor in the swirling chaos of his thoughts. Swing. Split. Stack. Think. The rhythm carved out space in his mind. Plan.
He couldn't stay. That much was brutally clear.
Every glance from the other villagers held a flicker of suspicion, of fear. He was an anomaly, wearing a dead man's face, inhabiting a life that wasn't his. He saw it in the way mothers pulled their children closer when he passed, the way men stopped talking, their eyes narrowed.
Arlen had been accepted, perhaps pitied, but Raka, the presence looking out through Arlen's eyes, was an unknown quantity. An infection in the quiet fabric of their lives. He needed to leave, before their unease festered into something uglier. Before he became the problem they decided to solve.
That night, the small cottage felt both stifling and fragile against the sighing wind and rain. Raka sat by the hearth, turning Arlen's damp, patched tunic over and over, letting the meager heat kiss the worn fabric. Mira watched him, her expression unreadable in the flickering firelight. She'd been quiet since sharing her meager meal with him, a stew thick with root vegetables.
Finally, she spoke, her voice soft but clear. "You're going to leave soon, aren't you?"
Raka stopped turning the tunic, meeting her gaze across the small space. He didn't bother with pretense. "You knew?"
She nodded, a simple, sad affirmation. "It's in your eyes. The way you look at the road. Arlen looked resigned. You… you look like you're calculating escape velocity."
She traced a pattern on the rough wooden floor with her finger. "Just… promise me something."
"What?" The word felt rough in Arlen's throat.
"Don't die in silence."
Raka blinked, startled by the intensity in her voice, the sudden focus in her eyes. "That's… a strange thing to ask."
Mira looked back into the fire, her profile etched in orange light and shadow. "People like Arlen... the ones who carry too much weight alone... they don't scream when the world breaks them. They don't cry out. They just endure until they can't anymore, and then they simply… vanish. Into the forest, into the night, into the earth. Gone. Don't be like that. If the end comes, let the world hear you rage against it."
A chill, unrelated to the damp clothes, traced its way down Raka's spine. He thought of his own first death, the suddenness, the surprise, the lack of any defiance. He thought of the void. He stood, the movement stiff in Arlen's body.
"I'll try not to."
And the strange thing was, standing there in a dead man's clothes, in a life borrowed for mere days, he meant it. He owed that much, perhaps not to Mira, but to the flickering ember of self that remained.
Before the first hint of dawn painted the bruised sky, Raka moved with quiet purpose. He packed the handful of dried meat and the half-loaf of dense bread Mira had given him into a roughspun cloth bag. He donned Arlen's patched cloak, its wool scratchy but blessedly thick. On the rough-hewn table, he left a small, smooth stone he'd found by the river – a silent acknowledgement, perhaps better than words – beside a hastily scribbled note on a piece of salvaged parchment: Thank you.
He stepped out not into dawn, but into a thick, clinging fog that swallowed the village whole. The road leading away from Darkan was less a path, more a suggestion swallowed by mist. Visibility was barely ten paces. The air was cold, biting at his exposed cheeks.
Taking a deep breath that tasted of wet earth and silence, Raka turned his back on the only sanctuary he'd known since his abrupt arrival in this world. He whispered the words into the concealing grey, a promise to the soul trapped within.
"This is your second chance. Don't waste it."
The world beyond Darkan proved his whisper tragically naive. It was not merely unwelcoming. it felt actively hostile.
For three days, Raka walked. The fog eventually burned off, revealing a landscape carved by hardship. The road, little more than twin ruts in the mud, wound through dense, ancient forests where sunlight struggled to pierce the canopy, and across bleak, rocky outcroppings where the wind howled like a hungry wolf.
He saw no travelers, no merchant wagons, no farmers heading to market. Only the skeletal trees, the indifferent stones, and the oppressive silence broken occasionally by the cry of an unseen bird or the rustle of something small and fearful in the undergrowth.
Arlen's vague memories offered little comfort. Flashes of this road, perhaps, but distorted, dreamlike. A sense of weary travel, but no specific landmarks, no warnings of dangers.
He was navigating blind, fueled by stale bread and dwindling hope. The isolation gnawed at him. It wasn't the quiet itself – he'd known profound silence in the void – but the unknown nature of it.
Every looming shadow seemed to writhe with potential threats. Every snapped twig echoed like a prelude to attack. Was it bandits? Wild beasts? Or something worse, something native to this harsh land he didn't even have a name for?
He hated the vulnerability, the gnawing tension that tightened his shoulders and quickened his breath. Still, he kept moving. One foot in front of the other. South. Arlen's fragmented memories suggested something lay south.
On the fourth day, the silence was broken. Not by a bird, but by the unmistakable, gut-wrenching scent of death and burnt wood carried on the wind. He rounded a bend choked with thorny bushes, and the road opened onto a scene of utter devastation.
A caravan, or what was left of it. Two sturdy carts lay splintered, their wheels shattered, axles snapped. Crates and barrels were smashed open, their contents – grains, textiles, perhaps traded goods – strewn across the muddy track like entrails. Dead horses lay twisted at unnatural angles, their eyes glassy, hides ripped. Flies buzzed lazily in the still air. The attack had been brutal, overwhelming, and recent.
Raka's breath hitched. He crept forward, hand instinctively reaching for a weapon he didn't possess. He knelt beside one of the bodies – a young guard, barely older than Arlen looked, maybe twenty. His throat was slashed wide, a grotesque grin exposing teeth and torn muscle. His hand was frozen in a death grip around the hilt of a simple steel sword, its blade stained dark.
Too late, the thought echoed, cold and hollow. Too late to save anyone. He hesitated, then pried the sword from the dead man's fingers. The leather-wrapped hilt felt solid, real, a desperate comfort.
"Hello?" A weak voice croaked from beneath the wreckage of the nearest cart. "Is… is someone there?"
Raka froze, sword held defensively. He scanned the carnage. A hand, smeared with mud and blood, waved feebly from under a pile of canvas and splintered wood.
"Help us… please…"