He did not notice the change at first.
The road stretched onward through broken woodland and shallow ravines, the earth still scarred from older conflicts that had nothing to do with Sins or cards. Birds returned cautiously to the trees. Insects hummed in the tall grass. By all outward signs, the world had decided to keep moving.
That alone unsettled him.
After Sloth, after Lust, he had grown accustomed to the land reacting—air growing heavy, mana distorting, reality announcing the presence of something wrong. This time, there was none of that. No pressure against his senses. No pull guiding him toward a threat.
Just… normalcy.
He walked for hours beneath a sky that refused to darken prematurely. His steps were steady, measured, each footfall placed with care born from long habit rather than tension. The box at his side remained quiet. Rider and Caster slept within it, sealed, contained, as inert as they were ever likely to be.
Too quiet.
By late afternoon, he reached a crossroads. Three paths diverged from a single worn marker stone, its inscriptions eroded beyond recognition. One road curved toward low hills where smoke rose faintly in the distance. Another descended toward marshland, where fog clung stubbornly even under sunlight. The third continued straight ahead, narrow and overgrown, almost abandoned.
He stopped.
Not because he felt danger—
—but because he felt watched.
The sensation was faint, almost dismissible. No hostility accompanied it. No killing intent. If he hadn't already learned how thin the line between safety and death could be, he might have ignored it entirely.
He turned slowly, scanning the treeline.
Nothing moved.
No mana reacted to his awareness. No bounded field flared. Even his instincts struggled to find purchase, as though the world itself had decided not to betray the presence lingering just beyond his perception.
"…You're careful," he murmured, more to test the silence than to address anything directly.
The road did not answer.
He chose the straight path.
The farther he walked, the more signs of human passage appeared—boot prints pressed into soft earth, wagon tracks partially obscured by time, scraps of cloth snagged on thorns. Travelers passed through here. Recently.
That should have been comforting.
It wasn't.
As evening fell, he reached a small settlement—barely a village, more a cluster of homes built around necessity rather than comfort. No walls. No gate. Just people living because stopping would have meant surrender.
They noticed him immediately.
Not with fear.
With recognition.
A man paused mid-conversation when he saw him, eyes narrowing slightly as if trying to recall a face from a dream. A woman stiffened, then frowned, confusion knitting her brow. Two children stared openly, whispering to each other with excitement that didn't quite sound innocent.
"You're early," someone said.
He stopped.
"I don't think so," he replied calmly.
The man who had spoken blinked. "I—sorry. I thought you were someone else."
That happened sometimes. He had learned to accept it. Faces blurred together when people carried expectations stronger than memory.
Still, the man kept staring.
"You look like him," another voice added. "The one who passed through last winter."
"I haven't been here before."
The certainty in his voice should have ended the conversation.
It didn't.
They exchanged glances—quick, uneasy, threaded with something that wasn't agreement.
A woman stepped forward, offering a polite smile that did not reach her eyes. "You should stay the night. It's not safe to travel after dark."
The words were reasonable.
The tone was not.
He considered refusing.
Instead, he nodded. "One night."
Relief passed through the group—not relief that he had accepted, but relief that the choice had been made.
As though they no longer needed to wonder.
They gave him food. A place to sit. Space near the fire. People spoke around him, not to him, voices low and deliberate. He listened without appearing to, attention tuned to the spaces between words rather than their meaning.
Names came up.
Stories.
Someone mentioned a traveler who had saved a caravan from bandits months ago. Another spoke of a swordsman who had passed through and never returned. Each tale carried the same strange weight—admiration tangled with resentment, gratitude curdled into suspicion.
And always—
comparison.
"He wasn't as quiet as you."
"She smiled more."
"He didn't look at people like that."
The fire crackled.
He felt it then.
Not a presence in the air.
A presence in them.
Envy did not distort the world.
It distorted perception.
He remained still, breathing slow, heart steady. If he reacted now, if he confronted what lingered just beneath the surface, the thing watching would learn too much too quickly.
So he waited.
Night settled fully. Lamps were lit. Doors closed one by one.
When he was shown where to sleep—a small room at the edge of the settlement—he accepted without protest. He lay down without armor, without weapon drawn, eyes half-lidded as if surrendering himself to rest.
He did not sleep.
Footsteps approached long after midnight.
Careful.
Measured.
Someone paused outside his door.
Another presence lingered nearby—not hidden, not hostile, simply… waiting to see what would happen next.
The latch shifted.
He opened his eyes.
The door creaked inward, revealing a silhouette framed by lantern light. A man stood there, blade held low, expression tight with something that was not hatred.
"It should have been me," the man whispered.
He did not ask what he meant.
He already knew.
The blade rose.
And somewhere, unseen and satisfied, Envy smiled—because no matter how this ended, something precious was about to be taken from someone.
The man lunged.
And the night finally broke.