The forest accepted him without welcome.
Branches knitted overhead, blocking the newborn sun and pressing the air into something close and damp. Light filtered through in thin strands, pale and unreliable, illuminating patches of moss and broken leaves but never the spaces between them. Sound behaved strangely here—footsteps dulled too quickly, breath carried too far.
The footprints continued.
He followed them for several minutes without rushing, eyes tracing patterns others would have missed. The spacing was deliberate. Not scouts fleeing in panic, not bandits spreading wide to intimidate prey.
This was a net.
He adjusted his pace—slowing just enough to look careless, loud enough to confirm their expectations. If they were watching, he wanted them confident. Confidence made people sloppy.
Another branch snapped to his left.
Closer now.
He did not turn.
Instead, he reached inward—not deep enough to summon steel, not enough to let power surface—but to steady the accumulated weight of borrowed experience humming beneath his skin. His body responded immediately, posture shifting by instinct, balance settling into something older than conscious thought.
Seventeen years in shape.
Decades in memory.
The first arrow came without warning.
It cut through the air where his head had been a moment before, burying itself in the trunk ahead with a sharp, final crack. He moved as it flew—not dodging so much as no longer being where it expected him to be.
Shouts followed.
"Now!"
Footsteps exploded from the undergrowth. Five—no, six. Human heartbeats, quickened by adrenaline, not distortion. They burst into view armed with mismatched gear: spears, axes, shortbows, one sword worn thin by too many sharpenings.
Mercenaries.
Or something close enough.
He stopped moving.
That alone unsettled them.
"Don't move!" one shouted, voice breaking halfway through the command. "Hands where we can see them!"
He complied.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
He raised his hands, palms open, fingers relaxed. No weapon formed. No pressure radiated from him. Just a young man standing in the forest, dirt still under his nails, grey already threading his hair far too early for his age.
Someone hesitated.
"He's younger than they said," a woman muttered.
"They all look younger until they don't," another snapped back.
The man with the sword stepped forward. He had the posture of someone used to being listened to—not a leader by birth, but by necessity. His eyes never left the boy's chest, where the faintest sense of wrongness lingered if you knew how to feel for it.
"You're coming with us," the man said. "No resistance. No tricks."
"Where?" the boy asked.
The question was calm.
Too calm.
"That's not your concern."
The boy tilted his head slightly. "You buried me once already."
Silence fell.
Several of them stiffened.
"You climbed out," the woman said quietly. "Just like they said."
So they had stories already.
He nodded once. "Yes."
The leader's grip tightened on his sword. "Then you understand why we can't let you walk free."
"I do," he replied.
That honesty rattled them.
"You attract things," the man continued, words coming faster now. "Towns fall apart around you. Monsters follow. People die."
"No," the boy said. "People choose."
The arrow struck him in the shoulder.
Not deep. Meant to cripple, not kill.
He absorbed the impact with a sharp intake of breath, staggered half a step—sold the wound better than it deserved. Pain flared, bright and immediate, grounding him fully in the present.
Good.
Pain kept him human.
The forest erupted into motion.
Two rushed him from the front. One flanked left. Another circled wide, bow already being redrawn.
He moved.
Not explosively.
Efficiently.
A blade formed in his right hand—short, broad, utilitarian. Something meant for close quarters, not heroics. He met the first attacker's spear with the flat of the blade, redirecting it just enough to slip inside the guard and strike the haft with his elbow. Wood cracked. The spearhead buried uselessly in the dirt.
The second attacker swung an axe.
He stepped in instead of back.
The axe glanced past his shoulder, tearing fabric and skin but missing bone. He struck once—hard, precise—into the man's solar plexus. The impact emptied his lungs in a soundless gasp as he collapsed.
The arrow came again.
This one he caught.
Not cleanly—no flashy grab—but by slapping it aside mid-flight with the edge of his blade. It skittered uselessly into the brush.
That was when fear finally surfaced.
"This isn't normal," someone whispered.
The woman hesitated.
That was enough.
He disarmed her without striking—twisted her wrist, sent the blade spinning into the undergrowth, shoved her back hard enough to knock the wind from her. She fell but did not rise immediately.
Only the leader remained standing.
The man raised his sword with shaking hands. "Stay back."
The boy did.
He lowered his weapon.
"I don't want to kill you," he said.
The leader laughed—a short, brittle sound. "You already killed us the moment you walked out of that grave."
"No," the boy replied quietly. "You did that yourselves."
The man screamed and charged.
The boy ended it in one motion.
Not with a killing blow.
With the flat of his blade, striking the side of the man's head hard enough to drop him instantly.
Silence returned to the forest.
Birds did not resume singing.
The boy stood there for several seconds, breathing steadily, blade dissolving back into nothing as he released it. Blood soaked into his sleeve from the arrow wound, warm and real.
He let it bleed.
He walked among them, checking quickly—no fatalities. Unconscious. Injured, but alive.
That mattered.
Even now.
He retrieved the arrow from his shoulder and snapped the shaft cleanly before setting it aside. The wound would close on its own. It always did now—another quiet cost of the path he walked.
When he finished, he did not wait for them to wake.
He turned and left the forest by a different route, steps light, senses stretched outward.
They would tell others.
They always did.
By nightfall, stories would spread—of the boy who climbed out of the earth, who disarmed trained fighters without killing them, who carried something wrong inside his chest and walked toward danger instead of away from it.
Fear would grow.
So would interest.
That was fine.
If humans were going to hunt him—
He would let them.
Better them than the Sins.
Better blades meant for him than terror meant for villages.
As the forest thinned and the land opened once more, the distortion brushed against his awareness again—faint, distant, but unmistakably amused.
Something had been watching.
Learning.
He did not slow.
He did not hide.
He stepped onto the open road with blood drying on his sleeve and resolve set like iron beneath his skin.
The hunt had begun.
And this time—
He was no longer the only one being hunted.