Sound changed before he noticed it had meaning.
At first, it was only volume—wind passing through leaves, water shifting over stone, insects cutting short arcs through the air. He let those layers move around him without engagement.
Then voices appeared.
Not close enough to understand. Not distant enough to ignore.
They arrived fragmented, torn by space and carried unevenly by wind. A rise in pitch here. A pause there. The shape of speech without its body.
He stopped walking.
In the cave, sound had been geometry. It returned what it was given. Here, sound traveled with intent it did not explain.
He turned slightly, adjusting his position until the voices sharpened, then dulled again. A step too far and they vanished. A step back and they returned as indistinct pressure.
Distance mattered—but so did angle.
He moved carefully, not hiding, but testing. Each adjustment changed what he could hear. Meaning assembled and fell apart with every shift.
Laughter—brief, unguarded.
Then a sharper sound. Metal against wood. A call raised, answered.
People were close.
Closer than he preferred.
His body reacted before thought aligned. Muscles tightened. Breath shortened. The instinct to withdraw surfaced, clean and immediate.
The Blood Sigil warmed.
Not to suppress.
To steady.
He recognized the difference.
He crouched behind a low rise, not for concealment, but to break line of sight if it became necessary. The ground there was dry, scattered with broken stems and pressed earth.
A path.
Used recently.
The voices grew clearer as the wind shifted. Words separated themselves from noise—not enough to form sentences, but enough to identify tone.
Casual. Unafraid.
These were not sentries.
They were people moving through their day.
That realization unsettled him more than hostility would have.
Hostility followed rules.
Normalcy did not.
A misstep on the gravel sent a soft click outward. Too small to matter inside the cave. Too large to be nothing here.
The voices paused.
Not abruptly.
Just enough.
He held still.
The pause stretched, then loosened. Speech resumed, slightly altered—quieter, but not alarmed.
They had noticed something.
Not him.
Just the possibility of interruption.
He adjusted his weight slowly, minimizing sound, and edged away from the path. The terrain forced a longer route, uneven and exposed in places.
He accepted it.
The Blood Sigil remained warm but did not intervene.
As he moved, sound continued to teach him. A shout carried farther uphill. Footsteps vanished in grass but echoed on stone. Wind could erase a voice entirely, then return it moments later with different emphasis.
Noise was no longer background.
It was information.
By late afternoon, he had crossed three paths without being seen. Each time required attention. Each time cost time.
Fatigue deepened—not in muscle, but in focus.
He found a place where sound thinned naturally—a shallow cut in the land where wind passed overhead and did not linger. He rested there briefly, letting the absence of voices settle his pulse.
He realized then that silence outside was not emptiness.
It was shelter.
When he moved again, he chose routes not by ease, but by how sound behaved along them. He began to listen ahead, not behind.
The world did not announce danger.
It suggested it.
As evening approached, voices faded into distance, replaced by the softer, more predictable sounds of insects and wind. He did not relax entirely.
He had learned enough to know better.
Sound would no longer be neutral.
Every noise meant someone, somewhere, could hear him.
And every silence meant he had been careful enough—
this time.