[Inn - Night]
Kael closed his eyes. The tiger. The merchants. The starving men. The woman. The fifty-four. Their voices overlapped—the same as the dream.
Outside, the town settled into night. Guards paced the walls. Voices drifted from the teahouse. Beyond the gates, the refugees lay in the dust.
He fell asleep.
---
The training courtyard. The stone platform in the middle of the yard. The ginkgo tree at its edge. The air still. Beyond them, the world ended in white.
A young man stood beneath the ginkgo tree.
Kael's hand moved to his sword before he'd finished looking. The stance felt familiar in a way he struggled to place—the angle of the shoulders, the steady balance in the spine. He kept looking. Something long buried in this body's memory began to surface. The figure and that buried presence drew closer, detail by detail, until the two impressions aligned.
The young man turned, and Kael's hand dropped from the hilt.
