The forest changed the farther west he walked.
Gone were the weirwoods with their bleeding faces. Gone were the frozen streams and shattered bones of fallen trees. The air turned heavier, but not colder—charged. As if the land itself were watching, judging, weighing the one who dared walk alone with blood still drying on his sleeves.
Kieran moved carefully now, not because he feared what was ahead, but because of what he had already done. The scent of smoke had faded, but the memory clung to his senses like ash in his lungs. Five men had died beneath his hands, and though his heart hadn't trembled at the time, something had shifted inside him since.
He didn't feel remorse.
But he didn't feel whole either.
On the third night after leaving the ruined village, he found shelter beneath a canopy of thick pine near a steep ridge. The wind was cruel that evening, biting at the edges of his cloak, tugging at the ends of his hair like unseen fingers. He built a fire, carefully this time—small, controlled, hidden from the trees. The pendant pulsed faintly, but offered no words. The system had grown quiet over the past days, letting silence answer the questions Kieran hadn't dared to ask.
It was nearing midnight when he sensed the shift in the wind.
Not a sound. Not a footstep. Just the subtle disruption of something moving through the trees, too light to break a branch, too focused to be a beast.
He didn't reach for magic immediately.
Instead, he stood, his posture calm, firelight dancing across his face as he scanned the shadows beyond the ridge. The forest stared back, quiet and endless.
Then a whistle cut the air.
It was soft—measured—and the arrow that followed buried itself into the snow inches from his feet, not aimed to kill, but to warn.
He didn't flinch.
A second whistle. Then, from behind a twisted spruce, she stepped into view.
She was tall—almost as tall as he was—and draped in leathers lined with fur. Her hair, long and windswept, fell past her shoulders in tangled waves the color of midnight. But it was her eyes that caught him. Not blue. Not green. Silver. Pure, polished, sharp like blades under moonlight.
She held a shortbow in her hand, unstrung now, but her posture was ready. Confident. Dangerous.
She said nothing. Neither did he.
The fire cracked softly between them.
Then, slowly, without fear, she walked past him, knelt by the flame, and began to warm her hands.
That was how they met.
No name. No warning. No threat.
Just silence shared between two people who had seen too much.
She was a Wildling. That much became clear by the third hour of watching her move. Not just because of her accent, or the way she handled the bow, but because she didn't carry herself like someone afraid of the world. She wore it, like a second skin. When she finally spoke—barely above a whisper—her words came in simple, clipped phrases. She didn't ask who he was. She didn't ask why he was alone. She only asked one thing.
Why didn't you kill the sixth man?
Kieran didn't answer right away. He just stared into the fire, remembering the boy's voice. The plea that hadn't come from fear, but from innocence. When he finally replied, it was with no pride in his voice. Because someone still believed I shouldn't.
She didn't nod. Didn't agree. But her expression softened, if only slightly.
They ate together that night. Nothing more than smoked rabbit, dry and tough, but warm. The silence between them was not awkward. It felt like a pact.
She told him her name just before dawn, as if the firelight had earned it.
Lysa.
No clan name. No lineage. Just Lysa.
She didn't offer more, and he didn't press. In return, he gave her his name, simply and without embellishment.
Kieran.
The syllables hung in the air between them, accepted.
Over the next few days, they traveled together. Not out of trust. Not yet. But convenience. She knew the woods like they were written into her bones. He knew how to manipulate the wind to hide their trail. They moved like two halves of a broken compass—her eyes watching for tracks, his aura scanning for things no mortal could see.
She didn't fear his magic.
That surprised him.
When he drew a glyph in the snow to set a shield before they slept, she simply watched, her head tilted slightly, as if remembering a story someone had once told her as a child. She didn't flinch at the glow, didn't recoil when the pendant sparked against his chest.
Magic doesn't come from men like you, she said one night as they camped beneath a half-buried overhang. It comes from what's beneath the world. You're just borrowing it.
Her tone wasn't accusatory. Just factual. He asked her what she meant, but she didn't answer. Only closed her eyes and slept with her hand on the hilt of a curved bone knife.
But the more time passed, the more she spoke.
Not about her past—never about her past—but about the trees. The wind. The way animals went quiet before storms, or how certain rocks held heat longer than others. She was carved from the land, and he was beginning to see her not just as a companion, but as real. Raw. Unfiltered.
And beautiful.
Not the polished beauty of royalty, nor the soft elegance of memory.
But something fierce. Untamed.
It stirred something in him that no spell could control.
On the fifth night, as frost glittered across the ground like spilled glass, they shared a cloak.
They didn't speak of it. Just curled beneath it for warmth, pressed shoulder to shoulder.
She was trembling. Not from cold.
He didn't ask.
She leaned her head against his chest, slow and cautious. Her silver eyes were closed. Her breathing was quiet.
He wrapped his arm around her without thinking.
And when she whispered his name, almost too soft to hear, something inside him cracked open.
Not magic. Not prophecy. Not power.
Just humanity.
The part of him he thought had died when his car crashed into that guardrail.
It was still there. Buried.
But breathing.
And that night, they didn't kiss. They didn't touch beyond the shared warmth.
But they knew.
Something had begun.
And neither of them wanted to stop it.
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