Graythorn woke… off.

  Doors opened slower. Conversations paused when certain names passed by. People walked in small clusters, glancing around as if expecting the forest itself to step through the gates.

  News traveled fast in small places.

  News about glowing eyes traveled faster.

  Rowan felt it the second he stepped outside.

  Tension hung like a net across the village.

  He made his way to the well.

  A small cluster of villagers had formed there, speaking in low voices. When they saw Rowan, they straightened quickly, some bowing, others giving tight nods.

  “Elder Rowan,” a woman said, wringing her hands in her apron. “There was… an incident. At the training field.”

  Rowan’s chest went cold.

  “With demons?” he asked.

  The villagers exchanged looks.

  “Not with demons,” the woman said.

  A girl stepped out from behind her—small, hair mussed, basket dangling empty at her side.

  Her eyes were puffy from crying.

  Rowan lowered himself until they were almost level.

  “Tell me what you saw,” he said gently.

  The girl swallowed hard.

  “Joren was… in the field,” she whispered. “He had a sword, and the dummy— it broke without him touching it. The ground cracked. His eyes were… glowing. And then he—he threw light.”

  Her hands mimed the motion—something flying from one point to another, striking, shattering.

  “It hit the target and it exploded,” she said. “I ran. I’m sorry. I just—”

  “You did nothing wrong,” Rowan said quietly.

  He meant it.

  “Go home,” he added. “Your family will be worried.”

  She nodded and fled.

  The villagers didn’t disperse so easily.

  “Elder,” a man said, voice tighter than he wanted it to be. “Is the boy… is Joren… safe? Around the children?”

  No one said monster.

  They didn’t have to.

  Rowan looked from face to face.

  Fear.

  Grief.

  A desperate need for an answer that made sense.

  “Joren is not our enemy,” Rowan said. “He is a boy who survived something none of us were prepared for. I will speak with him. Until then, no one harasses him. No one touches him in anger. Is that understood?”

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  They nodded.

  But fear did not simply vanish because an elder told it to.

  Rowan walked away with the taste of iron in his mouth.

  He found Joren exactly where he expected.

  At the training field.

  Joren sat against a broken post, sword across his lap, eyes fixed on the cracked ground like it might confess something if he stared long enough.

  “You were supposed to rest,” Rowan said.

  “I tried,” Joren replied without looking up. “Didn’t take.”

  Rowan surveyed the damage.

  The split post.

  The small fracture lines in the dirt.

  The scattered remains of a blasted target.

  “You’ve drawn attention,” Rowan said.

  “I know,” Joren whispered.

  Wind rustled through the grass.

  Rowan crouched in front of him, joints popping.

  “Tell me,” he said, “exactly what happened.”

  Joren’s fingers tightened on the hilt.

  “I pushed too far,” he said. “I was trying to use just… enough. But I kept thinking about—” He stopped. Swallowed. “I got angry. It answered. The power. Whatever it is. The Echoes tried to hold it back, but… I lost it.”

  He nodded toward the shattered target.

  “And someone saw.”

  Rowan absorbed that silently.

  “You didn’t hurt anyone,” the elder said at last.

  “Not yet,” Joren said.

  His voice didn’t shake.

  That somehow made it worse.

  “I can feel it growing,” he continued. “Every day. Every time I swing. Every time I even think about that night. It’s getting easier to call. Harder to stop.”

  His hand moved to his chest, fingers flattening over his sternum.

  “They’re in here, Rowan,” he said quietly. “Bran. Lira. Sera. Tyren. I don’t always hear them, but I feel them. And whatever woke up when the Revenant died… it keeps pulling on them. On me.”

  He looked up finally.

  His eyes weren’t glowing.

  But Rowan still felt like something older was staring back with him.

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Joren said. “Not again. Not ever. But wanting isn’t enough. Everyone knows that.”

  Rowan held his gaze for a long moment.

  “Graythorn cannot protect you from this,” the elder said eventually, voice low. “And it cannot be protected from you forever.”

  The words landed like a stone thrown into deep water.

  “You think I’m a danger,” Joren said.

  “I think,” Rowan said carefully, “that you are changing. Rapidly. In ways I do not fully understand. The village is small, Joren. Its fear is smaller. It will look for something to blame. It always has.”

  “Blame me,” Joren said immediately. “Not them.”

  Rowan almost smiled, a tired, bitter edge to it.

  “That’s already happening,” he said. “But this isn’t just about fear. It’s about scale.”

  He gestured toward the forest, toward the distant, unseen mountains.

  “What woke in you when that Revenant died… other things felt it,” Rowan said. “Things with rank. With crowns. With armies.”

  A faint shiver crawled up Joren’s spine.

  “Far from here,” Rowan went on, “men like Aelric Vael read reports and change their patrol routes. Soul-hungry monsters like Itsuka turn their heads and start walking this way. The balance has shifted, Joren. You are at the center of a crack that runs across more than this village.”

  Joren’s throat went dry.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  “For now?” Rowan said. “You train. You eat. You sleep when you can. And you do not show what you are to anyone you don’t trust until we understand it better.”

  “And after ‘for now’?” Joren asked.

  Rowan straightened slowly.

  “After that,” he said, “you leave Graythorn.”

  The words stole what little breath Joren had left.

  “Leave,” he repeated.

  “This village is too small for what you’re becoming,” Rowan said. “And too precious to be crushed under the weight of your power—or the enemies it calls.”

  He looked tired then.

  Older.

  “This was never going to be your whole life,” Rowan added more gently. “Bran knew that. It’s why he kept pushing you. Why he kept taking you farther out on patrols. Whether he knew why or not… he was getting you ready to walk away.”

  Joren stared at his hands.

  Then at the field.

  Then at the wooden fences and worn posts he’d known since childhood.

  “I don’t want to go,” he said.

  “I know,” Rowan replied. “You’ll go anyway.”

  Wind stirred dust around their feet.

  Somewhere beyond the walls, horses pounded over distant earth.

  Aelric and Kaela were already descending into Graythorn’s valley.

  Somewhere else, over charred ruins, Itsuka tracked the faint, lingering taste of a soul unlike any other.

  Joren closed his fingers around his sword hilt.

  He felt four faint presences settle in his chest like a council taking their seats.

  He didn’t hear their voices.

  Just their weight.

  He drew in one slow breath.

  If he was going to be dragged into the kind of world that noticed Revenants dying and Soulbearers surviving…

  He would not meet it crawling.

  “I’ll get stronger,” he said quietly.

  “For them.”

  Rowan nodded once.

  “For you,” the elder corrected.

  Joren didn’t argue.

  But in the hollow between one heartbeat and the next, where grief and power tangled together, four quiet echoes agreed with him.

  For us.

  And high above Graythorn, a crow circled once, its eyes flashing faint violet as something on the other side of the Veil turned its attention fully, finally, toward the boy who should have died.

  The Soulbearer.