The days after the Revenant blurred.

  Graythorn moved through its grief like a wounded animal—slowly, carefully, with too much quiet between sounds.

  The funerals were small and practical. Hunters didn’t get long speeches. They got names spoken clearly, work left unfinished, and promises to remember.

  Bran, Lira, Sera, Tyren.

  Joren stood at the back, fingers dug into his sleeves, ears half-ringing as Rowan spoke over each pyre.

  He kept expecting someone to turn around and ask why he was there.

  Why are you standing with the mourners and not on the wood?

  No one did.

  They just looked away.

  People still needed to eat. Fields still needed tending. Fences still needed repairs where demons had tested them that night.

  Life moved—but it moved around Joren.

  Children fell silent when he passed.

  Hunters who used to clap him on the shoulder now just nodded stiffly, then found a reason to be somewhere else.

  Someone called him “lucky” once.

  Not to his face.

  Lucky that the Revenant picked the others.

  Lucky that he survived.

  He’d have preferred a clean wound.

  Rowan didn’t give speeches to Joren. He left books.

  Tomes about Aether flows. Old stories about times when the Afterlife behaved strangely. Notes on demon evolution and Saint-ranked anomalies.

  They’d be waiting for Joren in odd places—the bench outside Bran’s house, the training post, the fence overlooking the fields. No lectures. Just pages.

  Joren read them until the words blurred.

  Their explanations didn’t help.

  They described things souls did and didn’t do.

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  None of them mentioned this.

  Rowan came to him on the third morning.

  Joren sat on the outer wall, staring at the forest, arms draped over his knees. The village behind him stirred with the clink of buckets and low murmur of voices.

  “You should rest,” Rowan said.

  “I can’t.”

  The elder studied him for a long moment before settling onto the stones beside him. His staff leaned against the wall, its worn wood as familiar to Graythorn as the eastern ridge itself.

  “The others are talking,” Rowan said.

  Joren tensed. “About me?”

  “About what happened,” Rowan corrected. “And yes. About you.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “That a Revenant died,” Rowan said. “That four hunters didn’t come back. And that one boy did.”

  Joren looked down at his hands.

  “I don’t feel like I came back,” he admitted.

  Rowan’s gaze was steady. “Survival isn’t wrong, Joren.”

  “I didn’t save any of them.”

  “No,” Rowan said quietly. “You didn’t.”

  The words hurt.

  Rowan let them.

  “But you tried,” he added. “And when the moment came, you didn’t run.”

  “Trying didn’t do anything,” Joren muttered.

  Rowan turned his head slightly, watching the treeline.

  “Strength rarely comes in one piece,” the elder said. “It comes like this. Shards. The kind that cut when you hold them.”

  Joren huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh.

  “I don’t feel strong.”

  “You will,” Rowan replied simply.

  A faint shimmer of blue-white rippled across Joren’s shadow without him noticing.

  Rowan’s eyes flicked downward briefly, then away.

  Later that day, Joren returned to the training field.

  Not because he believed he’d suddenly be better.

  Because if he kept sitting still, he thought he’d tear apart.

  The field was mostly empty now. No morning sparring. No laughter when someone missed an obvious strike. Just the wind rattling the old targets.

  He picked up a wooden sword.

  It felt lighter than it used to.

  He stared at the practice dummy.

  The last time he’d stood here, he’d barely scratched it.

  He raised the blade and swung.

  It thudded against straw. Weak. Shallow.

  He gritted his teeth and swung again.

  His shoulders were too tight. Grip too rigid. Balance off.

  Relax, something inside him murmured—not words, exactly, just the memory of a correction repeated over and over in softer times. You’re not chopping wood.

  Joren forced himself to inhale.

  He loosened his grip.

  Changed his stance the way Bran had shown him a thousand times.

  He swung.

  The dummy shook.

  A faint crack split the wood beneath the straw padding.

  Joren froze.

  That… shouldn’t have been that easy.

  He stepped back and forced himself to breathe.

  “You’re pushing too hard.”

  Rowan’s voice drifted in from the edge of the field.

  Joren turned.

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “Fill the silence,” Rowan finished.

  Joren’s jaw clicked shut.

  “I can still… feel them,” he admitted. “I hear them sometimes. Not like before. Not full conversations. But pieces. Corrections. Warnings. I don’t know if it’s grief or…”

  He trailed off.

  Rowan’s eyes were unreadable, but not cold.

  “If it is grief,” Rowan said, “you will carry it either way. If it is more than that… we will name it in time.”

  “And if it’s something wrong?” Joren asked quietly.

  Rowan looked at the faint crack in the dummy’s support beam.

  “At the moment,” the elder said, “what’s wrong is that you’re exhausted, sleep-deprived, and trying to train alone.”

  He tapped his staff once against the ground.

  “Tomorrow morning. At the old east clearing. Where Bran used to take you. Come before sunrise.”

  “Why?” Joren asked.

  Rowan’s gaze sharpened.

  “Because whatever you are now, Graythorn cannot afford for you to remain untrained.”