The afternoon sun opened up a world of wonder.
Bright—yet cool. Rays filtered through scattered clouds and the occasional clump—but radiant in the way it made shadows dance beneath shade. Dew sat on grass like it had been placed there one bead at a time. The tension from the morning's troubles crumbled without debris. Even the air seemed tranquil: chill at the ground, warmer at shoulder height, as if the world had built a layered comfort and expected them to stay inside it.
The caravan stirred with arranged motions. Cloth folded. Packs tightened. No one argued about rest. No one misplaced emotion amidst the journey ahead.
The Song did what it always did when groups moved—tested the mass, measured the footfalls, suggested a flow that kept shoulders from bumping and wheels from catching the same ruts.
But this afternoon, it felt thin.
Not absent. Not weakened. Just… less. Like a hand that had guided crowds and carts through narrow streets and market snarls was merely pointing. The resonance did not need to correct them because they were already moving the way it preferred. The Song did not gather.
Sawyer noticed that.
He stopped in the act of tightening his satchel strap and listened, not with ears but with the old habit behind them—the part of him that measured pressure shifts, that counted the gaps between noises.
The birds were there. Small chatter high in the branches, a few sharp calls that bounced off the slope. Insects too, a soft periodic whine that came and went with the breeze.
But below that, where there was usually a mild chaos of movement—rustle, scrape, the faint unsteady rhythm of people waking—the soundscape was smooth. Too smooth.
He watched the civilians gather without looking at them directly. Their spacing was better than earlier. Not the wide scatter of nervous strangers but a loose lattice, like they had agreed on distances in their sleep. Children held closer to hips. Men and women who had insisted on walking side-by-side now drifted into a staggered line. Still close, but less rigid.
Aluna whispered something to Kristaphs. Not long after, he clapped his hands once in a way that sounded practical rather than sharp.
"Before we put real distance behind us," he said, turning so his voice carried without rising, "wagon check. Axel grease, straps, and water seals. Ten minutes."
It was not an order. It was a habit given voice.
The party moved without friction. Faust rolled his shoulders and drifted toward the lead wagon, already tugging at a loose strap as if he'd been waiting for an excuse. Aluna knelt near one of the water casks, fingers brushing the seal, murmuring something to herself as a crowd gathered around. Agnes took a slow walk along the line, pausing here and there, making eye contact where it mattered, nodding reassurance without promising anything.
The civilians followed the example. Someone passed around a skin of water. Another laughed quietly when a child tried—and failed—to lift a pack twice his size. A pair of older men argued softly over whether the sun felt warmer now than it had an hour ago, the disagreement more ritual than conviction.
Sawyer watched it all from the edge of motion.
He helped where it was asked of him—held a wheel steady while Faust adjusted the pin, passed a length of cord to Aluna without comment—but his attention stayed loose, unfixed. This was not vigilance. This was something closer to observation without expectation.
Time passed.
Not in the way it did during danger, stretched thin and sharp, but in gentle increments marked by small tasks completed and put away. Laughter rose once, brief and surprised, when one of the wagons lurched slightly and was caught before it could tilt. The Song brushed over the group and smoothed the moment, encouraging balance, dispersing the flicker of alarm before it could take shape.
It still did not gather.
Sawyer found that strange. Unlike the nature of the Song he knew.
When the checks were done and the wagons settled back into readiness, no one hurried to move on. Someone took out a small loaf and broke it, passing pieces around. Unprompted yet natural. The road waited. The afternoon was young.
Sawyer leaned against the nearest wagon and let his thoughts drift, unmoored from the careful counting he usually relied on.
He watched a woman adjust her child's cloak, tucking it tighter even though the air was warm. Watched a man rub at the scar on his knuckle while he talked, as if the motion anchored the memory of an old injury. Watched how people clustered not by instruction but by comfort—familiar faces drawn together, strangers orbiting the edges until proximity dulled unease.
It was… ordinary.
That realization caught him off guard. Calmness in a world of Song.
In another life—another place—he had seen the same behaviors play out beneath different skies. People pausing in the middle of long journeys, inventing small tasks to give shape to waiting. Sharing food not because it was necessary, but because it reassured them that abundance, however small, still existed. Laughing too quickly, too lightly, like laughter itself might ward off the unspoken.
He had seen it in the depths of the Abyss, in camps pitched beside safepoint and reversed rivers that no one remembered naming. Different languages. Different clothes. Same instincts. Same order. Same fragile agreements. The familiar humanity.
Sawyer's gaze softened.
These people had grown up with the Song woven into their days, guiding crowds, easing collisions, smoothing the sharp edges of living close together. They trusted it the way people elsewhere trusted infrastructure, routine, the assumption that tomorrow would resemble today closely enough to plan for it.
And yet—
When the Song thinned, they adjusted anyway.
They got closer. They checked straps. They held children closer without knowing why. Not because they were told to, but because something older than words recognized the shape of uncertainty.
He knew that shape.
It had followed him across worlds.
Different ages. Different rules. Different metaphors for fate and chance. But people… people carried the same quiet resilience, the same capacity to normalize the edge of danger until it fit inside a day.
Sawyer exhaled slowly.
For a long time, he had told himself this world was alien. That its dangers were stranger, its logic less forgiving. That distance—emotional, conceptual—was necessary.
Standing there in the afternoon light, watching a child kick at a pebble and then look up to see if anyone noticed, he realized how thin that lie was.
They were not so different.
Which meant they were just as breakable.
Kristaphs' voice drifted over. "Ready to move?"
Sawyer straightened, the old habits sliding back into place like well-worn armor.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's go."
The caravan set off once more, wheels turning, boots finding rhythm. The afternoon stretched ahead of them, bright and deceptively kind, the road unspooling beneath their feet.
Behind it all, the Song continued to point rather than guide.
And Sawyer walked with the quiet understanding that whatever came next would not be shaped by how different this world was—but by how familiar its people proved to be.
Time slid forward in its never ending march.
The road curved gently, enough to change the angle of the light but not the pace. Shadows lengthened without cooling the air. The forest loosened in places, opening into shallow clearings where grass grew thicker and wildflowers clustered in careless colors. The caravan moved through it like a quiet procession, sound softened by earth and leaf.
Conversation returned in fragments.
Not loud. Not animated. Just enough to remind everyone they were not walking alone.
Sawyer let himself drift a half pace from the wagons, close enough to hear the rhythm of wheels, far enough to keep the trees in his periphery. His thoughts remained distant, still circling that familiar conclusion—that this world differed less than he'd told himself.
That was when a single butterfly appeared.
It floated into view without urgency, wings pale yellow edged with white, catching sunlight as if it had been made for this hour alone. It dipped once, then settled on a small blue flower growing near the roadside, wings folding and opening in slow, patient beats.
A gasp cut through the low murmur of travel.
"Mommy look—a butterfly!"
The girl broke from her mother's side before the words had finished leaving her mouth.
It wasn't disobedience. It was instinct—the same instinct that made children chase light and color and movement without weighing consequence. Small boots pounded twice against packed earth as she ran, laughter already forming, arms half-raised as if she might catch the air itself.
Sawyer saw the dip at the same moment her foot did not.
The roadside sloped sharply there, a shallow but sudden drop hidden by grass and shadow. One misstep. Enough to twist an ankle. Enough to crack a wrist. Enough for a child's momentum to turn a stumble into a fall.
The world narrowed.
He moved before thought could organize itself.
Two paces.
One step.
Not a stride. Not a sprint. A single, complete motion that devoured the distance between them as if it had never existed.
Boot struck earth with a sound too soft for the speed behind it. Sawyer caught the girl around the waist just as her foot slipped, lifted her clear of the drop, and turned with the motion, absorbing her momentum against his own center. Grass bent beneath him. Dust stirred and settled.
The entire action took less time than a breath.
The girl blinked, startled more than frightened, her laughter cutting off into a confused huff. Sawyer steadied her, one hand firm, the other bracing her back, then lowered her to solid ground as if nothing unusual had occurred.
"Careful young one," he said quietly.
Behind them, the caravan froze.
Sound did not return immediately.
A mother's breath caught halfway into a scream and never finished it. Someone swore under their breath—not in anger, but disbelief. The butterfly lifted, startled, and vanished back into the light.
Sawyer straightened.
That was when he felt it—the weight of eyes.
Bran stared openly, mouth slightly ajar, hand still hovering where it had been mid-gesture. Faust's brows had drawn together, his gaze flicking from the dip in the road to Sawyer's feet and back again as if trying to measure something that refused to add up. Agnes stood very still, one hand raised near her gaping mouth, expression readable in a way Sawyer had learned to recognize as awe.
Kristaphs exhaled slowly.
The girl's mother rushed forward at last, dropping to her knees and pulling the child into a tight embrace. "I— I'm sorry—I didn't—"
"She's fine," Sawyer said before the apology could unravel into panic. His voice was even. Ordinary. "Just tripped."
The woman nodded too quickly, clutching her daughter closer than necessary. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
The girl peeked out from the crook of her mother's arm, eyes wide with lingering excitement rather than fear. "He was really fast," she announced, as if sharing a discovery.
A ripple passed through the civilians—not fear, not yet, but awareness.
Sawyer felt the Song stir.
Not gather.
Adjust.
The resonance brushed outward, smoothing the sudden tension, encouraging people to breathe, to resume motion, to accept what they had seen without pressing too hard on it. A few nodded to themselves. A few laughed, thin and uncertain. Someone muttered about good reflexes. Someone else agreed a little too quickly.
Faust finally broke the silence. "Did you see that?" he said, not bothering to lower his voice.
Bran swallowed. "That was… that was far."
Agnes's eyes never left Sawyer. "You all right?" she asked, as if he were the one who'd nearly fallen.
"Yeah," Sawyer said.
It was true.
The movement itself was natural—mastered through years of labor. How his body had responded without hesitation, without strain, amid the Song's presence.
He became acutely aware of the space he occupied again. Of how people unconsciously edged a fraction closer—or a fraction farther—when he stepped back into line.
The caravan began to move once more.
Conversation resumed, quieter than before. The road stretched on, unchanged. The afternoon light remained kind.
But something had shifted.
Sawyer walked on, gaze forward, expression calm, carrying the weight of a moment he could not take back. He did not regret saving the girl. He would do it again without hesitation.
What lingered was the realization that the mask had slipped—just a little.
And in a world guided by the Song, even a small disruption had a way of echoing farther than it should.