The ditch was cold. It was wet. It hurt.
Mind came back slow and wrong. He knew two lives at once. One ended with a gun. One ended with a fever in the mud. He was both. He was neither.
He opened his eyes. Rain. Grey sky. Pain in his leg, hot and deep.
A sound. A dog, skinny and starving, slid down into the ditch. It looked at him with hungry eyes. It smelled the sickness on him.
He should have been afraid. He wasn't. He was empty. He was hungry in a deeper way.
The dog lunged for his bad leg.
Something in him snapped. Not anger. Not fear. A need. A simple, clean need to not be eaten.
His hand shot out. Not fast, but sure. He grabbed the dog by the neck as its teeth tore into his calf. The pain was bright and sharp.
He looked into the dog's eyes. He didn't think words. He thought a feeling. A law.
*Your strength is mine.*
The dog stiffened. Its eyes went wide. It tried to pull away, but his grip was iron. He felt something flow from the dog into him. Warmth. Life. Strength.
The dog's struggle weakened. Its eyes clouded. Its body went limp.
He held on until the last of the warmth passed into him. Then he let go. The dog fell into the mud, dead and hollow.
He sat up. The wound on his leg still bled, but the fire was gone. The weakness was gone. He felt... fed.
He looked at his hands. They were steady. He looked at the dead dog.
He was hungry.
He dragged the dog's body closer. He didn't think about it. He just did it. He ate. Raw meat. Blood. Bone when he could crack it. It wasn't food. It was fuel.
With every bite, he felt stronger. The fog in his mind cleared. The two lives settled. He was Albrecht. He was Lysander. He was the man in the ditch who ate dogs.
When he was done, there wasn't much left. He felt full. Strong. The wound on his leg had closed to a red scar.
He stood. No shaking. No weakness.
The rain washed the blood from his face.
He knew things now. Things from Lysander. A name: Leofric, the Hero. A betrayal. A woman named Elara who hated him. A family that cast him out.
He knew things from Albrecht too. How the world worked at its bones. How to break it.
And he knew one thing more, deep in his gut: he could take strength from living things. By touch. By will. By eating them.
The more he took, the stronger he would get.
He climbed out of the ditch. Easy now.
In the distance, smoke. A village.
He started walking. His steps were even. Sure.
He was hungry again. Not for dog. For more.
The village would have more.
The village was a sorry thing. A handful of huts slumped together like tired old men. Mud. Smoke. The smell of damp rot and boiled grains.
He walked into the main lane. The rain had softened to a drizzle. Villagers stopped. A woman at the well froze, her bucket hanging. Two old men mending nets by a wall fell silent.
He saw the moment they recognized the face. Not him—Lysander's face.
"Gods," the woman whispered, making a sign against evil. "The traitor."
One of the old men stood up. His face was red and veiny. "Lysander," he spat. "Should've stayed dead. No one wants your filth here."
Memories that weren't his rose up—public shame, a ring in the dirt, Elara's turned back. They felt like reports. Data on social collapse. Interesting, but distant.
He needed things. Information. Better food.
He walked to the well. The woman backed away, leaving her full bucket.
"That water's not for oathbreakers," the red-faced man snapped, stepping forward. "You betrayed your own. Your house. Your woman. All because you couldn't stand the Hero's light shining brighter."
_Hero._ The word landed in his mind and unlocked more files. Leofric. Golden. Beloved. The architect of Lysander's ruin.
He drank from the bucket. The water was cold and clean. It washed the taste of dog from his mouth.
He looked at the old man. Really looked. The yellow in his eyes. The swollen belly beneath his tunic.
"You're dying," he said, his voice rough from disuse. "Your liver is rotting. In a year, maybe two, you'll turn yellow. Your belly will fill with water. You'll drown on dry land."
The man's bluster vanished. His mouth hung open. The other old man stared.
It wasn't a curse. It was a fact. Delivered like the weather.
"Witchcraft," the woman breathed.
"Medicine," he corrected.
He turned to her. "I need food. A roof for one night. What's the price?"
"We don't trade with devils," the red-faced man muttered, but the fire was gone from his voice.
His eyes scanned the poverty. The holes in the walls. The rat droppings near a storehouse. He saw a patch of weeds by a midden heap. Nightshade. Henbane. Familiar shapes.
He walked over, plucked a handful of leaves and seed pods.
"You have rats," he said, holding them out to the woman. "Boil these inside your grain store. The steam will kill them. Don't breathe it. Air the place for a full day after."
She stared at the poisonous plants in his hand. Then, slowly, she reached out and snatched them, careful not to touch his skin.
"The woodshed," she muttered, not meeting his eyes. "Behind the goats. It's dry in the back. There's a pot of yesterday's pottage on the stump. You take it and you're gone by first light. And you never got it from me."
"Agreed."
As he turned to go, the second old man spoke. His voice was thin. "Why'd you do it, Lord Lysander? They said you were jealous. That you tried to hurt the Hero."
He stopped. He looked back, rain dripping from his chin. He saw not an accuser, but a man trying to fit a story to a broken thing.
"The Hero," he said, the name feeling strange, "is a crack in the world's foundation. His existence requires other things to break. I was one of those things."
He left them with that—a puzzle they couldn't solve—and walked toward the shed.
The pottage was cold, greasy, thick with turnips and barley. He ate it slowly, savoring each bite. It was fuel. It was not enough.
The deep hunger, the one that had awoken in the ditch, still gnawed at him. It hadn't been satisfied by the dog. It had been _awakened_. It wanted more. Not just meat. The _life_ in the meat. The strength.
Outside, the village was silent, hiding from the ghost they thought they knew.
Inside, the man who was both Albrecht and Lysander finished the pottage and licked the bowl clean.
He sat in the dark, listening to the goats shifting in their pen next door. He could feel their warmth through the wall. Their heartbeats. Their simple, animal strength.
The hunger stirred.
_Not yet_, he told himself. _Not here._
He had a roof. He had information. He had a body that was healing, fed by something darker than medicine.
And he had a new understanding. This world had a Hero. A Goddess. A story that demanded certain people break so others could shine.
He was broken. But he was also hungry. And he had just learned how to feed.
Somewhere, in a castle warm with light, the Hero Leofric slept, beloved and blessed.
In a leaky woodshed, the man who would eat the world smiled, his teeth still faintly red.
Tomorrow, he would hunt.