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For several seconds he does not respond, and then, a small nod.

“When you were a boy?”

Another nod.

She thinks of the journey this one man was forced to endure. First the raid of his childhood village, then the Ledge, and finally Glacia. This one human, who lived and survived all kingdoms and their callous rulers, now back at his beginning.

And despite the tree and debris that impedes what once was his, it is undeniablyrightthat he is here. Alive.

He is home.

Dawsyn grasps his hand, and for a moment the young and the old stand together in a Fallen Village amongst the ghosts and wreckage of their shared people.

“You made it back,” she tells him, and is awarded the pleasure of seeing him smile. Gerrot takes his free hand and places it on her cheek, and then taps a finger on her chin.

You as well.

Hector trails behind the rest. Dawsyn cannot tell if it is the mixed Glacians or the fatigue that shortens his steps. Indeed, his cheeks redden further with each minute, but his eyes, squinted against a sun brighter than he has ever seen, tend to drift to the backs of Ryon, Tasheem, and Rivdan with wary contemplation.

Dawsyn does not slow to join him again. She tracks him, glances often, but cannot, for reasons yet to dawn to her, bring herself to talk with him anymore than she already has. Seeing him here, sun bleaching his hair to a true shade of blonde, boots muddied, furs slung over his shoulder, is inconceivable. Each time she remembers his presence, the incredulity strikes her anew. The sight of him, the sound of him, is tied to a place she considers an enemy. She finds that she cannot simply untangle the two.

She opts instead to trail behind Ryon and Baltisse, who know the path to Salem’s better than any other.

In the distance, white smoke curls above the treetops, snaking toward the clouds.

“The inn is ahead,” Ryon calls, his eyes skirting quickly to Baltisse, with what Dawsyn knows is unease.

“Stop concerning yourself, Ry,” the mage mumbles. “I am merely tired.”

“I am not concerned.”

“Your mind,” she sneers, “begs to differ.”

“Andyourmind has recently taken up a proclivity for heroics,” Ryon says quietly. “Risks be damned.”

“You’d be wise to mind your thoughts.”

“Andyou’dbe wise to redirect your energies,” he snarls. “You are no help at all if you’re dead.”

The mage narrows her eyes, but, shockingly, falls quiet. It strikes Dawsyn as the first time she has heard Baltisse concede an argument. A telling omittance.

The mage shudders then. Not the shudder of cold bones, but the kind that signals awareness.

She halts so suddenly that the rest halt with her, an eerie silence befalling the forest. No one dares to break it. They wait, eyes to the back of her unnaturally still form, slowly absorbing the sure presence of dread.

The mage inhales, pulling the air from the forest, the sky, the very earth it seems. Dawsyn has the unsettling sensation of oxygen being pulled from her lungs. It is as though the mage has claimed the air. Tastes it. Then, she expels her breath, and the feeling is gone.

“Danger comes?” Ryon asks, expression darkening.

“No,” the mage answers, her voice, for once, shallow. Afraid. “The danger has already been.”

Suddenly, the mage is running, her eyes to the smoke that has thickened with their proximity. A plume of grey, ascending in volumes, so obviously not that of a chimney. They race down the well-worn trail, where ash litters the path. The closer they come, the more cloying the air.

There is a difference between the smell of wood burnt in the hearth, and that of a home set alight. The latter is noxious, a deadly blend of all that once comprised someone’s existence, now melted, charred.

Their feet pound the trail around the last bend, but their haste is for nothing, of course. The smoke is weak in colour, having already consumed all it could. The forest is blackened with debris.

They break free from the forest path. Ryon, Baltisse, and Dawsyn stop first, all three within inches of each other, and at the same time.