The yard within the palisade was a testament to harsh utility. Hard-packed dirt, stained dark in places, bore the grooves of cart wheels and the scuff of countless boots. A central fire pit smoldered, a large iron pot hanging from a tripod, the smell of boiled grains and tough meat clinging to the smoke. The main structure was a longhouse of dark, unpainted timber, its roof steeply pitched and shingled with rough-hewn slabs of stone. A few smaller, cruder sheds leaned against the inside of the wall.
People had stopped to stare. A woman with a face like weathered leather, her hair bound tight, stood with her arms crossed, her eyes missing nothing. A younger man, all sinew and suspicion, leaned on a harvesting scythe, not a shovel. Two children, their faces smudged with dirt, peered from behind a rain barrel, their clothes patched and faded. Their world was a palette of mud-brown, wool-grey, and wood-smoke black. Against this, Ali was a violent splash of wrongness—the synthetic black of his hoodie, the garish, blood-red sigil of a demonic knight from no heraldry they knew.
Kaelen didn't lower his axe. He jerked his chin toward the longhouse. "Inside. By the fire. Sit."
Ali moved, his bark-wrapped feet whispering on the dirt. The heat from the fire was a physical wall, so intense after the forest's chill it made his skin prickle. He sat on a stump placed near the hearth, not a bench, and kept his hands on his knees.
Kaelen took a seat on a sturdy block of wood opposite, the axe still in his grip, its head resting on the ground between his boots. The woman brought two clay cups of water and set them down with a thud, her gaze lingering on Ali's stained sleeves and stranger's face before turning away. The circle of watchers said nothing.
"Drink," Kaelen said. It was an order to assess compliance, not hospitality.
Ali drank. The water was lukewarm and tasted of clay and ashes. It was ambrosia.
"Now," Kaelen began, his voice a low rumble like stones grinding. "Lost. From where? The high passes are choked. The river-folk trade at the ford, not here. No one comes from the deep wood alone and lives. Not unless they're cast out, cursed, or sent ahead of something worse." His eyes, pale as winter sky, held no curiosity, only a hard, evaluative gleam. "No pack. No boots. Half-starved. And wearing that." His glance at the hoodie graphic was swift, like touching a hot iron. "The mark. Speak on it first."
Ali's mind scrabbled for purchase. The pure truth was a death sentence here. He needed to graft his story onto the rootstock of their reality.
"I… do not know its meaning," Ali started, his words feeling clumsy and thin. "These clothes… were on me when I woke. I was… taken from my home. A place near the endless salt water. The ones who took me wore such… symbols. Then came noise, and light. A wrongness. I woke in the forest, alone. I have walked for two suns."
It was a poor tapestry, full of holes. Kaelen's expression didn't shift. He took a slow sip of water.
"Coastal slavers," the younger man, Bryn, muttered, his voice edged with contempt. "Would've stripped him clean, not left him dressed for a fool's festival."
"Or a ritual spillage," the woman, Elara, said, her voice flat. "The Seal-binders in Stonehaven poke at things. That mark… it has no balance. It's all sharp edges and hungry eyes. Unnatural."
Kaelen silenced them with a slight lift of his hand, his focus never leaving Ali. "You have a name?"
"Ali."
"Al-ee," Kaelen repeated, the sound foreign and dismissive. "You gabble our words, but you grasp them. You found the old snare-path. Followed the creek down. You've some scrap of wit, then. Or the spirits are bored."
"It was the path or die," Ali said, the bluntness surprising him.
A heavy silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the fire. Kaelen finally leaned his axe against his block, though his hand stayed near the haft. The move was not one of trust, but of a man deciding the immediate threat level had dropped from 'attack' to 'watch.'
"You stink of fear and fringe-berry vomit," Kaelen stated, a simple observation of fact. No praise for resourcefulness. "You saw the Ridge-Wyrm, then."
The name landed with the weight of local truth. Ali nodded.
"Aye. It keeps to the high rocks, mostly. We do not walk the ridge-line at dim-light. You kept to the valley. That's not wit. That's not being a complete lack-wit." He took another drink. "The berry was a desperate gamble. The bark-shods are idiot's work. You're no woods-runner. You're a babe tossed from a broken nest."
There was no insult in it, just a cold assessment Ali couldn't dispute.
"What happens to me now?" Ali asked, the core question.
Kaelen looked at Elara. A long, silent exchange passed between them, built on years of shared hardship. She gave a single, sharp nod.
"Blackridge is not a resting-house for waifs," Kaelen said, his tone final. "We break our backs to eat. We watch the tree-line to live. You are not of the Steading. You are a risk. Your tale is a sieve. That mark…" He flicked his eyes toward it again, his lip curling slightly. "…may draw ill luck, or worse eyes."
Ali's gut tightened.
"But," Kaelen continued, as if stating an immutable law, "the old way of the reach holds: to bar your gate to one who comes bare-handed, begging at your fire, is to sour your own hearth and invite the grey wanderer to your door. It is a shadow on the land."
Elara nodded again, firmly. This was superstition as solid as stone to them.
"So," Kaelen pronounced. "You'll have the night. You sleep in the wood-shed, where the door has no bar on the inside. You'll get a bowl. In return, you answer what I ask. Come the light, you work. If you work, and bring no trouble, you may earn the next day. If you are false, or if that mark sings a song we don't like… the gate opens the other way."
He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. He rested his hand back on the axe haft.
Elara brought a wooden bowl filled with a grey-brown gruel, chunks of unnamed meat and pale roots floating in it. She thrust it at him. The smell was greasy and robust. He took it, forcing his hands not to shake, and ate slowly, mechanically, under the weight of their stares. No one spoke to him. The children were ushered inside.
As he ate, the System's text scrolled, a sterile counterpoint to the grim reality.
[New Location Logged: Blackridge Steading - Frontier Homestead.]
[Social Context Established: Conditional Hospitality / Probationary Labor.]
[Immediate Needs Met: Hydration, Warmth, Caloric Intake (Adequate).]
[Warning: Social standing is precarious. Anomalous appearance ('sigil,' clothing) is a significant liability. Adherence to local norms is critical.]
[New Short-Term Objective: Fulfill labor quota. Maintain low profile. Gather actionable intelligence on locale and threats.]
Ali finished the gruel, the warmth sitting heavily in his shrunken stomach. He was a curiosity, a potential danger, a possible resource. He was inside walls, but the walls felt more like a cage than a shelter. The gate was closed, and he was on the wrong side of the community's trust.
For now, it was a ledge to cling to. Nothing more.