When food came out, the mood shifted slightly.
They ate slowly and carefully, hands still never far from weapons. Every time Noctis or the kin moved, at least one person's gaze snapped toward them. They took small bites, chewing while watching, as if expecting every swallow to be their last.
One of them decided to try a different approach.
"I'm Ilyas," said a man with quick eyes and a sly half-smile. His tone was lighter than the others', almost playful. "Trader, mostly. They call me a lucky dog, but it's more stubbornness than luck, I think."
He chuckled softly, as if hoping the sound would ease the tension.
"We haven't seen another human in…" He paused, counting silently. "Weeks? Months? Hard to say now. Where's your family, if you've always been here?"
Noctis did not hesitate.
"The land is my family," he said. "The monsters, my teachers. If I ever had another life…"
His gaze slid toward the cave mouth, where the night pressed close.
"…it's lost to the mist."
A visible shiver passed through the group.
In their experience, even the harshest lives usually began with someone—parents, siblings, a village, a crew. To grow up with only monsters for company and the wilderness for a home was beyond unusual. It tread the edge of myth: the kind of story parents might tell to scare children into staying inside.
The youngest girl, the one with a small scar on her chin, drew her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them, shrinking in on herself. Her eyes kept flicking from Noctis to the kin's faint silhouette and back again.
Yara, the leader, narrowed her eyes.
She weighed his words like she weighed enemy movements, testing for weakness and lies. When she spoke again, her tone was slower, sharper.
"You have a cave with food, weapons, drawings, maps," she said. "You speak like someone who's hunted alone for years—but also like someone who's seen many kinds of people."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Tell us truthfully, Noctis: Are you a scout from some settlement we never heard of? Or are you what you say—a ghost who prefers wolves to men?"
Noctis's smile widened, but it did not grow any softer.
"Ghost, perhaps," he said. "Hermit, definitely."
He shook his head once.
"But not a spy—not for anyone here, at least."
He let the answer hang there, offering just enough to quiet the most dangerous kinds of suspicion without really explaining anything. Before anyone could press him, he turned the questions around.
"What about you all?" he asked, voice steady. "You move like soldiers. You're well-armed and disciplined. You don't wander here by chance."
His gaze traveled slowly around the semicircle.
"Who are you running from? Why come to this place? It's not exactly a holiday spot—unless your idea of fun is getting blown off a cliff or eaten for breakfast."
A short burst of nervous laughter escaped one of them. It sounded too high, too sharp, but it helped loosen their locked shoulders a little.
Yara sighed, the sound heavy.
Up close, the firelight made the lines on her face stand out—lines carved by worry, loss, and years of command. When she spoke, it was as someone used to giving reports and bearing their weight.
"I'm Yara," she said. "Once, I was captain of the Five Lakes Militia."
Her eyes briefly unfocused, seeing a place that no longer existed.
"Half my people are dead or mad now. We lost our city to a storm and something that came with it—a black tide, full of monsters we'd only heard about in old tales."
Around the fire, the others began to speak.
One by one, they gave their names and a slice of the road that had led them here.
Ilyas, the trader, lifted a hand.
"I jumped worlds after my town was raided," he said. "Things hit us that looked like glass serpents, sliding through walls. My brother didn't make it."
He gave a crooked smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"I kept moving. Always another market, I thought. Always another chance. Haven't seen a proper market in a long time now."
The big man with the burn scars cleared his throat.
"Toma," he said. "I was a blacksmith. The forge was… quiet. Simple. Then the sky turned red one morning, and my family was just… gone. No bodies. No answers."
His hand curled into a fist.
"I picked up a sword when there was nothing left to build."
The youngest, the markswoman with the scar on her chin, spoke in a small voice.
"I'm Lena. I learned to shoot because of hunger. My father said: if you hit the heart, it dies quickly, and you waste less meat."
Her words shook, but she kept going.
"He taught me to aim. Then the monsters came. They took him, and… after that, I kept shooting because there was nobody else."
A few of the others offered shorter introductions—names without full stories, hints of burned villages, vanished families, failed missions. Some simply nodded in agreement when others spoke, letting their eyes tell the rest.
They talked about cities swallowed by forests overnight, streets overrun with roots and vines that grew too fast to be natural. They talked about laws failing under pressure, leaders disappearing, people turning on each other when the monsters didn't kill them fast enough.
Sometimes monsters came like storms, sudden and overwhelming. Sometimes they came like slow famine, gnawing away at the edges of a region until nothing stable remained.
Trust had become rare.
Choosing to rely on a stranger had killed more people than teeth and claws ever did.
Noctis listened closely.
He did not just hear the words; he sorted them, linked them, added them to what he already knew. Each detail slotted into an invisible structure in his mind. He was building a picture—not just of these individuals, but of the world outside his forest, a world he had mostly kept at bay.
After a while, he leaned forward.
His eyes, still sharp, softened slightly at the edges.
"What about the world you left?" he asked. "Was it better than this?"
Ilyas snorted quietly, shaking his head.
"Safer, maybe," he said. "Boring enough I used to wish something would happen. Then the world broke for real, and I would have killed for one more quiet day."
Lena nodded.
"There were rules," she said. "Families. Schools. Adults who told you what not to do."
Her fingers tightened on her knees.
"Once the monsters came… the rules changed. The only ones left were: keep moving, keep watch, stay alive."
The words lingered in the air.
For a moment, the cave felt like a shared confessional. Then the old habits returned—suspicion tightening shoulders, eyes narrowing again.
Especially Yara's.
She watched Noctis as if he were a sword left lying in the middle of camp—useful, but dangerous if not handled carefully.
"How did you scare those wolves?" she asked suddenly. The question cut through the drift back into quiet like a thrown blade. "I've never seen them break like that. Not for my soldiers. Not for fire. Not even for guns."
Her frown deepened.
"What are you hiding, boy?"
Noctis knew better than to tell the truth.
Saying he had faced things worse than wolves across a billion cycles would sound like madness or blasphemy, depending on their beliefs. He also knew a flat lie would only sharpen Yara's suspicions.
He chose the middle ground: misdirection with a hint of truth.
"Maybe even monsters know when they're outmatched," he said. "Or maybe I looked hungrier than they were."
He flashed a brief, dark smile.
A few of the group huffed out uncertain chuckles. Yara did not.
"You don't talk like a wild man," she said. "But you don't act like any lord I've known either. If you've really lived here all your life, you must have seen more than you're saying."
Noctis watched the flames for a moment.