[Aurelius's POV]
I opened my eyes and the trees above me have been sheared clean.
For a split second, the scene is so symmetrical, so surgically precise, that I think maybe I only dreamed the massacre.
Maybe I'm twelve, maybe I'm just a boy who fell asleep on a moving wagon.
But then the rest of it comes in… the horses in their traces, legs folded beneath them like broken toys; the smell of hot resin and the silence, absolute and unjudging.
There are no bandits. There are no bodies. There is only aftermath.
I stood up so fast the world swayed.
My hands shook, not from fear but from a feedback that felt like tiny knives scraping the inside of my veins.
My first thought was for the body sprawled in the road.
Corwin laid face-down with blood pooling at the base of his scalp.
I knelt and pressed two fingers to his neck. Pulse: present, strong, but his chest fluttered too quick and shallow.
I rolled him over as gently as I could, repurposing my old battlefield triage to a twelve-year-old's frame.
His pupils were slow but matched, no glassiness. I poked and prodded, feeling for skull fractures, and—finding none—I let out a small, traitorous sigh.
For a moment, I considered healing him whole.
But with even a fraction of effort I could have erased the concussion, sealed the laceration, and left him as good as new.
But that brought attention. All the worst things in my two lifetimes had started with someone noticing something that couldn't be explained.
So I did the minimum: coaxed the sluggish blood vessels in his skull to clot, tempered the worst swelling, and dulled the pain.
He would wake up with a headache and a gap in memory, but he would wake up.
I left him cradled and breathing and turned to the horses.
Both were alive, but the closer one, a dainty bay with a white blaze, was shivering violently rolling in terror.
I let her sniff my palm, then stroked her muzzle, quieting her with a trick I remembered from a lifetime ago.
I checked their legs, flanks, looked for breaks. The gelding was unsteady but mobile unfortunately the mare's harness had twisted, but that's nothing a knife and some makeshift knots couldn't fix.
So I loosed both from their traces, walked them in slow circles, then hitched them again to the wagon.
In the silence, I could finally take stock of the mess I'd made.
The entire pass was a gallery of destruction.
The road was swept clean, not a twig or stone out of alignment, except for the absence of anything remotely human.
No blood, no boots, no weapons, not even a single bone or hair.
I remembered the way Marcus, in the old stories, would obliterate his enemies until their souls fled the world in disgrace.
Haah… good times.
UGGG…
Suddenly I felt the urge to vomit, but I bit my lip and forced myself to drag Corwin upright.
He was heavy and I could feel the awkward tangle of limbs, but I got him into the wagon and propped his head on a folded cloak.
I stuffed the crate of crystals beneath his feet. Then I climbed up to the reins.
The moment I sat, my mind remembered the old habits, how to hold the lines so the horses felt guided.
At the first jolt of the reins, the horses balked, but I coaxed them forward with a gentleness that felt both foreign and deeply remembered.
There's a knack to getting an animal to trust you in the long seconds after its world has come apart: you borrow their fear, hold it for them, and give it back as patience.
Clack…clack…clack…
The carriage rolled into motion, a little crooked at first, but better than I deserved.
ahh…
Behind me, Corwin groaned and the sound made my skin prickle.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that his eyes were fluttered, then squinted at the sky, then shut again, as if recalibrating his place in the story.
I let the wagon bump along for a hundred yards before I stopped.
I returned to Corwin, dripping water onto his lips and lifting his head just enough that he wouldn't choke.
He coughed, then grabbed my wrist with surprising strength.
"Where—" he croaked, "what…?"
I gave him the story I'd rehearsed only seconds before.
"There was a beast, Father. They came out of nowhere. Might have been a drake, or—" I let my voice tremble, "I-I don't know what It was… but it tore through the bandits. I hid under the wagon like you told me to." I stared at the ground and let the words break apart.
"I think the noise knocked you out."
He blinked, and for a moment I saw the calculation behind his confusion.
"A beast?"
I nodded and realized this might actually work.
"It was chasing something. Maybe the crystals? When I crawled out, everyone was gone. Even the horses were scared stiff. I thought we were…" I let the sentence die. People were always more eager to believe what you left unsaid.
He tried to sit up. I steadied him. He hissed and flinched, but his hands came away from his head only lightly bloodied.
"You kept us moving?"
"I didn't want to wait. In case it came back."
He watched me, searching my face for something to latch onto. At last, he nodded.
"Good thinking son. Lucky. Real lucky."
"Yeah," I said, "lucky."
I gave him more water, then made a show of checking the road ahead for signs of a returning monster.
In reality, I was checking for anything out of place like stray boots, a dark leaf that might be dried blood, or even a burnt edge on a tree.
Luckily there was nothing.
And so we limped the rest of the day, barely speaking.
I could tell he was replaying the fight in his mind, trying to plug memories into holes that weren't his fault.
Every time our eyes met, I softened my gaze and nodded, as if to say, "It's okay, I'm still your son, nothing happened here."
Most of the time I almost believed it myself.
The next eighty miles went by quickly, Corwin didn't mention the attack again, and neither did I.
He kept his head low, hands steady on the reins, moving us along at "recovery" pace.
The only thing that seemed to matter was distance from whatever had happened in the pass.
I spent the time watching the trees get thinner and the towns get denser.
Every hour, the horizon grew taller and more crowded.
Eterna's reach extended like a fungus over everything, and the closer we got, the more I understood how little of the old world remained.
The city had always been huge, but now it devoured the entire landscape.
New districts rose in tiers stacked on the bones of the old and by the time Eterna itself came into view, the sun was bruised and low, and the city glowed like a wound in the side of the world.
We made the final approach along the Grand Concourse, a parade route of white stone and gold inlay, lined with statues of men and women whose faces were designed not to be remembered, but to make you feel small.
On the bridges there were dozens with banners showing the king's sigil, the Bourne crest, and every other symbol of hierarchy you could imagine.
In the broad light, the city looked beautiful. Up close, it was like staring into the mouth of a lion.
Corwin found his voice again as we reached the outer ring, but only to warn me not to gawk.
"Eyes ahead," he said. "People here'll take you for a mark if you look lost."
I didn't argue. But I let myself watch. I watched the way the city's lower streets wriggled with street children and pickpockets, watched the way the guardsmen posted at the gates barely glanced at us before waving us through.