They moved west under a roof of branches that had learned the word green again.

  Jack set a leisurely pace, letting the four fall in behind him as if his steps cut a path the woods agreed with. No one said it out loud, but creatures felt it. Things that would have tested a normal party’s perimeter breathed in the scent of him and chose hunger over suicide.

  They made camp three times in six days. The first night, Gary tried to joke their way back to normal and ran out of courage halfway through. By the second, humor had shrunk into practical things: who set the wards, who cooked, who took first watch, even though everyone knew watching was theater with Jack in the ring.

  On the third night, Lucy started a list because doing something felt better than remembering. “What he was good at,” she said, scratching lines into the edge of her Journal by firelight. “Not just fighting.”

  “Capes,” Selena said, deadpan.

  “Cloaks,” Gary corrected automatically, and the correction was a mercy they let sit between them.

  Sebastian drew Gus’s dagger across a whetstone with a slow, even motion. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The dwarf had been quiet since the field, quieter still when the woods hummed like something waking in a good mood.

  Jack said nothing about any of it. He fed the fire with a twist of Wind Strand that kept sparks pointed up, walked the perimeter with Perception spread thin as gauze, and watched the forest like a physician watching a patient come out of fever: pulse steadier, respiration deepening, color back to the leaves.

  The Dark Woods had been named for the temple at their heart, for the rot that leaked from its stones like old oil. With the Demon God banished and the shadow-doors sealed, the map itself had started to change. Dead trees that once held their own corpses upright were pushing out cautious shoots. Fungi still painted the logs with poison moons, but now there were honest mushrooms among them, brown caps doming up like promises. Birds argued in the mornings. Once, a stag watched them pass without the wild roll to its eyes that used to mean run or kill.

  “Feels wrong,” Gary admitted on their fourth day, when a stream they crossed ran clear instead of the old bruise-color. “Good wrong. Like getting back a word you forgot.”

  “It’ll hold,” Jack said.

  “How do you know?” Lucy asked, not challenging, just needing it.

  Jack listened, really listened, to the trees until he could taste the memory of sun in the leaves. “Because the roots remember how.”

  That afternoon, he pointed out a patch of ground where the old corruption still puddled under the soil. “Don’t step there,” he said, and when Selena arched a brow at him, he added, “Your boots will hate you.”

  She stepped somewhere else without comment.

  They skirted the fallen temple at a respectful distance. Even sleeping, the stone mumbled to itself in old, bad grammar. The canopy above it hadn’t greened yet. Some wounds close last.

  “Was it like this when you first came through?” Lucy asked because grief makes historians of everyone.

  Jack shook his head once. “Worse. More teeth.” He touched the brim of his cap like he was tipping it to a ghost. “Fewer birds.”

  By the sixth day, the air itself felt lighter. Wind moved through the trees without whispering threats. The path broadened here and there, not by axe but by use, the way trails get made by people who expect to walk them again. They all smelled the change, pine and damp earth and the sweet rot of old leaves turning into soil instead of soldiers.

  No one was happy. That wasn’t on the table. But the knot in their chests had loosened to something breath could pass through.

  They were two hours from the western edge, or near enough, when the woods forgot the rules.

  Jack stopped because the world did.

  Ahead, the trail drew a clean line between two moss-banked rises. In that line stood a wolf the size of a pony, fur gone iron-dark along the back and ash-pale at the belly. It watched them with the stillness of a statue and the focus of a loaded trap. Its breath smoked from a mouth full of knives.

  A second shape slid out of the shadow at its flank, not behind, but at an angle that made sense if you knew how to flank. They stood together the way trained things do: far enough apart to split targets, close enough to cover.

  The Journals at four hips chimed with a cold little prickle of text.

  Dire Wolf (Level D-89)

  Dire Wolf (Level D-87)

  Lucy’s stomach dropped. “Here?”

  “This stretch is low D and mid D at worst,” Gary said, voice small. “They’re… they’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Things wander when borders move,” Sebastian said, shield already angling forward. His tone didn’t change. His grip did.

  Selena had an arrow on the string without thinking. Then she thought and lowered it two inches. “If we shoot and they’re scouting for something bigger,” she said, “we get more wrong.”

  Jack took one step forward, and the forest exhaled around the motion as if it had been waiting for the cue.

  “Stay behind me,” he said, soft enough not to be a challenge, hard enough to stick. Outworlders obeyed. The wolves didn’t blink.

  The wolves stood their ground, iron-dark backs, pale bellies, eyes like cold coals, blocking the narrow run of trail.

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  “Formation,” Lucy said, steady because she had to be. She slid half a pace left and back; Selena fell in beside; Gary bumped her shoulder and stayed there; Sebastian’s shield found the center like it belonged.

  “Behind me,” Jack said, quiet, certain. “No sudden moves.”

  He took one unhurried step forward. The air around him picked up the hint of a storm and set it down again.

  The wolves watched. The forest held its breath.

  The second wolf drifted a handspan wider to test the angle.

  Jack shifted with it, blocking the lane without looking back.

  For a heartbeat, nothing moved but the wind.

  Then the nearer wolf lifted a paw…

  ..and then the world became teeth and fur.

  It launched, a gray-black blur that slammed Jack onto his back. The second wolf flowed in a breath later, all weight and muscle, pinning his legs. Selena’s arrow flashed on instinct…

  …ting! It glanced off the first wolf’s shoulder like a twig off a wagon wheel.

  “Jack!” Gary choked, already pulling a glyph that wouldn’t matter.

  Sebastian surged a step, shield up, and Lucy’s blade came up in a clean guard, and Jack started laughing.

  Not pain. Not shocked. Laughing.

  Because the two monsters were… licking his face. Big, slobbery, joyful swipes that would’ve knocked a smaller man senseless. Tails thumped the leaf litter in heavy, happy drums.

  “What…” Selena said flatly, bow drooping, “...is happening?”

  Jack managed to get an arm free long enough to ruffle the nearer wolf’s ears. “Missed you, too, buddy. Okay, okay, hey, your breath could stun a troll, okay, ”

  The wolves wagged harder.

  Lucy felt the fear drain out of her legs so fast it left her lightheaded. She sheathed her blade, stepped cautiously forward, and held out. The smaller wolf’s head snapped toward her, a low, warning rumble,

  She froze. It leaned in, sniffed, then gave her a single, decisive lick up the cheek.

  “Ah!” she squeaked, half-laughing, swiping at her face. “Okay. Hello.”

  Sebastian lowered his shield by inches. Gary, hands still trembling, fumbled out a strip of jerky and offered it with the solemnity of a treaty. The larger wolf took it delicately, then bumped his chest like they’d known each other for years.

  Selena stared at her arrow, then at the glossy, happy beasts, then slid the shaft back into her quiver with exaggerated care. “Not a word,” she told Gary.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Gary said, grinning now despite himself.

  “Your face said everything.”

  Jack pushed himself upright, both wolves leaning into him like living bookends. He scratched along their jaws, contentment radiating from all three like heat.

  “Introductions,” he said, finally. He patted the smaller male. “Saul. Mine.”

  Saul huffed and leaned harder.

  Jack put a hand on the larger wolf’s rough fur. “Lucia. Asil’s.”

  Lucy blinked, then laughed, warm and surprised. “That’s… my name. In Italian.”

  Lucia gave Jack an affectionate shove that nearly put him back on the ground.

  Saul nosed at Sebastian’s belt until he found the whetstone, then sat down squarely on the dwarf’s boot like he’d claimed it. Sebastian tried to look stern and failed utterly, one big hand finding the exact spot behind Saul’s ear that turned his eyes to happy slits.

  “They’re… Tier D?” Gary ventured, glancing at the Journals, still blinking their last scan.

  “High D and holding,” Jack said. “They roam this stretch when I’m out east. Found us by the scent of my very punchable face.”

  Saul sneezed into Jack’s palm.

  “Confirmation,” Selena said dryly.

  Lucy rubbed Lucia’s neck, feeling the dense, healthy weight of her. “They blocked the path like guards.”

  “They are,” Jack said simply. “Family, too.”

  Saul chuffed. Lucia’s tail thumped once, heavy and pleased.

  “Come on,” Jack added, pushing to his feet and dusting off a fresh layer of wolf. “We’re two hours from the edge. Walk with us, you two?”

  The dire wolves fell into step as if they’d always been there, Saul ranging left, Lucia right, herding them gently through the green-shadowed trail toward home.

  They broke from the green into open light, the Dark Woods loosening its grip behind them. Ahead, the plains weren’t plains anymore. Fields quilted the land, rows of hardy grain, trellised beans, irrigation ditches humming, feeding the three settlements that ringed the forts.

  Beyond the patchwork, Fort Anjelica rose steady as a promise. The tower speared the sky, wrapped now by a village that looked less like a camp and more like a place people intended to grow old in. Roads were packed firm, fences straight, chimneys working. The sight made the four walk a little taller and hurt a little more.

  Saul and Lucia flanked the party like gentle bookends, their easy presence cutting the edges off the quiet. It was the first time since the field that laughter sat near the surface. Selena scratched Saul’s neck and didn’t pretend she wasn’t grateful. Gary fed Lucia jerky, swearing he wasn’t saving it for himself. Sebastian shook his head at both of them and did not stop smiling.

  They took the path between farms. Workers paused to lift hands in greeting; a few kids pointed at the wolves and whispered the kind of whispers that are really invitations. No one blocked Jack’s way. People moved with the tide of him, the respectful seam a village makes around its knife.

  At the gate, Jack paused a heartbeat on the threshold. A year and a half ago, this arch had been a throat to the Shadow Realm. He could almost hear it, old stone gulping bad light. He let the memory pass, tipped two fingers to the guards, and walked in when they waved him through.

  Courtyard. Sun. Hammers. The rhythm of a place is alive.

  Saul wagged once, permission request, and peeled off to roam, nose already catching scandalous butcher smells. Lucia stuck to Jack’s heel, posture sharpening as the fort’s scents stacked into home.

  They climbed the inner stairs and took the long corridor toward the office Abby and Asil shared. Halfway down, Jack spotted Abby boxed in by three officials, each talking like the others weren’t. Abby caught Jack’s eye and flashed him a helpless little grin that read: Rescue? He spread his hands, later, and kept the four moving.

  He knocked once, more out of habit than necessity, and pushed into the office.

  Asil stood behind the table, sleeves rolled, maps and ledgers spread like a chessboard. Whatever she’d meant to say vanished when Lucia saw her. The dire wolf launched, a black-gray thunderbolt of affection, and Asil barely braced in time, catching a faceful of joy and an armful of fur.

  “Hi,” Asil managed, laughing into Lucia’s ruff. “Yes. I missed you, too.” She endured three ceremonial licks, hugged the wolf hard, then pointed to the balcony. “Go on. Find your trouble.”

  Lucia took the order like a blessing, bounded to the open door, and sprang, one roof, then another, gone in a scatter of tile and delighted barks headed, inevitably, butcher-ward.

  Asil straightened, smoothed her hair, and turned to the visitors. The four hovered in the doorway like students late to class. She gestured to the chairs already set out. “Sit.”

  She mentally noted that only four of the five had arrived, a detail she sensed as they approached, her perception sharpening as they broke through the forest border.

  They did, the collective posture of people ready for a lecture they probably deserved. Jack leaned against the map wall, arms folded, mouth fighting a smile he didn’t plan to win. Asil flicked him a look that said later, and got one back that said promised.

  And the room went quiet, the kind of quiet where things that matter get said.