They moved at first light. Not with urgency, but with caution. The forest no longer felt hollow the way it had before dawn, yet the unease lingered, sitting just beneath awareness like a bruise you only felt when you moved wrong. Whatever had surrounded them during the night had withdrawn, but Raizō could still sense where it had been. Not gone. Just no longer pressing. Seris walked ahead of them, shield secured but lowered, eyes tracking paths that barely existed. She didn’t look back. The distance she kept was deliberate, a measured buffer that neither Raizō nor Taren tried to close. Taren was the first to break the silence.

  “So,” he said quietly, adjusting his grip on his spear. “You going to tell us why people like that keep finding you?”

  Seris didn’t answer immediately. They crested a shallow rise where the trees thinned, revealing the remains of a waystation. Or what was left of one. Stone walls scorched black, the Church’s crest cracked clean through above the entrance. Someone had tried to tear it down. They hadn’t finished. Seris stopped.

  “That,” she said, nodding toward the ruin, “is about when I realized I wasn’t going to get answers.”

  Raizō waited.

  “My father’s name was Valerius Thayne,” she said. “He was the Paladin-Legate Executive of Aseran church.”

  Taren stiffened. “Executive,” he repeated. “That’s not—”

  “Field command,” Seris finished. “No. He handled oversight. Internal judgment. Policy. He controlled the church.”

  She paused only long enough to make sure they were listening. “He was killed.”

  No emphasis, no drama, just hard truth to swallow.

  “There was no body,” she continued. “No public inquiry. No record beyond a sealed notice. The report closed within days.”

  Taren frowned. “And no one questioned that?”

  “They didn’t,” Seris said. “And those who did stopped.”

  She turned slightly, gaze resting on the shattered crest. “I followed procedure at first. Filed requests. Asked the right people.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Her mouth tightened. “Then the doors closed.”

  She investigated for a year. Not hurried. Not reckless. A full year of watching names vanish from records. Of tracking reassignments that happened overnight. Of noticing which files stopped updating and which ones appeared more often than they should.

  “People stopped answering,” she said. “Some warned me quietly. Others stopped speaking to me at all. A few were transferred.”

  She didn’t say what happened to the rest.

  “That’s when you ran?” Taren asked.

  “No,” Seris said. “That’s when I learned what not to ask.”

  Raizō nodded once.

  Seris’s jaw set. “Arden was on my unit.”

  That caught both of them.

  “He was competent,” she continued. “Reliable. He followed orders. He stopped asking questions.”

  “You think he killed your father?” Taren asked.

  “No,” Seris said. “I think he learned who benefited from silence.”

  She looked away. “The order to kill me came months later. No warning. No charges.”

  Taren swore under his breath.

  “They sent my own unit,” Seris said. “I survived because I expected it.”

  She didn’t explain how. She didn’t need to.

  “The Church doesn’t erase people loudly,” she said. “It closes around them.”

  The forest was quiet. Raizō felt it before anything else. The same structured absence from the night before brushed against his awareness, subtle but unmistakable, like something stepping close without crossing space. A voice spoke.

  “You’re wrong about one thing.”

  Taren startled, spear snapping into his hands as he spun toward the trees. “What—”

  Seris moved at the same time, shield rising, eyes sweeping the darkness. “Who said that?”

  Raizō didn’t move. His jaw tightened.

  Taren’s breath hitched as recognition caught up to him. “Shizume?” he snapped. “What are you doing here?!”

  The presence didn’t answer immediately.

  Seris glanced sharply between them. “You know her,” she said. Not a question.

  “She’s been following us,” Raizō said evenly.

  Taren took a step forward, anger cutting through the surprise. “You don’t get to just show up,” he said. “Not after…”

  “I’m not here to—”

  “Don’t,” Taren cut in immediately. “Don’t explain. Don’t say anything else.”

  The silence tightened for a heartbeat, then loosened again, as if whatever occupied the space had drawn back.

  Seris kept her shield raised. “If you know something about my father,” she said carefully, “say it clearly. Or leave.”

  Silence. The forest sounds returned unevenly. Wind stirred where it hadn’t moments before. A bird called, too late. Whatever had been there withdrew. Not retreating. Not vanishing. Simply ceasing to occupy the space.

  Seris lowered her shield slowly, confusion etched across her face. “That didn’t make sense,” she said. “None of it.”

  Taren exhaled hard. “She’s been watching us,” he muttered. “This whole time.”

  Raizō looked down the road ahead, lightning flickering once beneath his skin before settling again.

  “She knows enough,” he said quietly, “to be dangerous.”

  He turned and started walking. The others followed, none of them looking back, the unanswered presence lingering behind them like a problem that hadn’t decided what it wanted yet.