The bus hissed to a stop at the edge of a gravel road, dropping Mild off in a place where the air tasted of pine and silence. This was Oakhaven, a town so deep in the northern highlands that the cellular towers were sparse and the local newspaper still focused on the price of lumber rather than the scandals of billionaires.
Mild stepped off the bus, his legs aching from the eighteen-hour journey. He carried nothing but a small rucksack he'd bought at a transit station. Here, the biting wind didn't feel like a threat; it felt like a cleansing. To the locals sipping coffee on the porch of the general store, he wasn't "The Scandalous Doctor" or a "Diplomatic Crisis." He was just a tired traveler with kind eyes and a heavy coat.
