Rath was twelve the first time the world failed to behave correctly.
He did not understand it that way at the time. He would not have had the words. All he knew was that something had happened, and afterward, nothing quite fit the way it used to.
It was a small thing. That was the worst part.
A job, barely worth calling one. A man in the lower quarter who hadn't paid his debts. Rath had been sent with two others, older boys, both of them loud with confidence and cheap knives. Rath was there because he was quiet, and because he listened when people talked as if he weren't.
The plan was simple. Knock. Scare. Take what was owed. Leave.
It should have taken minutes.
The door opened on the second knock.
The man inside was smaller than Rath expected. Older, too. He smelled of oil and damp wool, his hands already raised before anyone spoke. Relief flickered across his face when he saw how young they were.
"I can pay," the man said quickly. "Just– just not all at once."
One of the older boys laughed. Another stepped forward, already reaching.
Rath felt it then. Not fear. Not excitement.
Pressure.
Like standing too close to a fire you hadn't noticed until your skin began to prickle.
"Wait," Rath said.
The word came out sharper than he meant it to. Everyone looked at him. Even the man.
The older boy sneered. "What?"
Rath didn't know. He just knew something was wrong with the space between moments, the way the air felt too still, too expectant. Like the world had leaned in slightly, listening.
The man swallowed. "Please."
That was when it happened.
The knife slipped.
It was stupid. Clumsy. The kind of accident people later describe with gestures and apologies. The older boy would swear it wasn't his fault. That the floor had been slick. That the man moved.
The blade went in under the ribs.
The sound was wrong. Wet. Too loud in the small room.
The man gasped once, a sharp, broken sound, and folded in on himself. Blood spread fast, darkening the front of his tunic. His hands fluttered uselessly, like he was trying to catch something that had already fallen.
No one moved.
Rath stared.
He had seen blood before. Everyone had. This was different. This was… eager. As if the room itself wanted more of it.
The older boys swore. One backed away, pale. "We didn't–"
The man's eyes found Rath.
That was when the pressure broke.
Something clicked into place behind Rath's ribs, deep and certain. The stillness shattered. The world rushed back in all at once, too fast, too loud.
The man died.
Afterward, the story spread the way stories always do. Wrong place. Wrong time. A tragedy. No one blamed Rath. No one even mentioned him.
That was how he knew it had changed.
Because when he closed his eyes that night, he could still feel it- the moment just before the knife fell. The way the world had leaned toward him, waiting.
And for the first time in his life, Rath wondered, not what he had done- but what had been done through him.
The questioning came two days later.
Not immediately, never immediately. That would have made sense. That would have meant someone knew what had gone wrong.
Instead, the village settled first.
The broken fence was mended by noon. The blood in the dirt was covered with fresh soil, tamped down hard enough that nothing showed through. The men who'd been there spoke quietly to one another and loudly to everyone else, telling the same version of the story until it sounded practiced. An accident. A scuffle. Boys being boys. Nothing worth troubling the road wardens over.
Rath listened from the edge of things and said nothing.
No one looked at him when they told it.
When the questioning finally came, it wasn't official. No uniform. No writ. Just the miller and the reeve standing by the well while Rath drew water, their shadows long and uneven across the stones.
"You were there," the reeve said, not unkindly.
Rath nodded.
The miller cleared his throat. "And you saw it happen."
Rath hesitated. Not long— just enough to feel the air tighten around the space where words should go. "I saw them fighting."
"That's all?" the reeve asked.
"Yes."
The answer felt thin, but no one pressed it.
They asked him where he'd been standing. Who had thrown the first blow. Whether he'd heard anyone shout. Each question circled the same absence without touching it, like fingers skirting a bruise.
At no point did they ask what Rath had done.
At no point did they ask why the ground had split the way it had, or why the sound that came out of it still rang in their ears when they tried to sleep.
When it was over, the reeve nodded once and said, "All right, then," as if something had been settled.
Rath carried the water home.
After that, the silence began to organize itself.
It wasn't loud or sudden. No one barred doors. No one crossed themselves when he passed. Instead, conversations paused when Rath stepped too close and resumed once he'd gone by. Tools were lent to everyone else before they were offered to him. When bread was shared, he was handed the end loaf, the one already cooling.
Small things. Easy things to ignore.
He did not ignore them.
At meals, his mother watched him more closely than she used to, her eyes tracking his hands as if waiting for them to move on their own. His father stopped correcting him when he spoke out of turn. Stopped correcting him at all.
That hurt more than anger would have.
The other boys didn't fight him anymore.
They didn't fight near him.
When games broke out in the yard, they shifted instinctively away, forming a loose ring that never quite closed. If Rath joined, someone would suddenly remember an errand. If he spoke, the noise dipped— not enough to call attention to it, just enough to make him hear himself too clearly.
Once, he caught a boy staring at him with naked fear before the boy looked away and pretended not to have seen him at all.
That night, Rath lay awake and replayed the moment again and again— not the breaking itself, but the second before. The feeling he hadn't had words for then.
The tightening.
The sense that something had leaned forward inside the world, waiting to see if it would be allowed to finish.
He hadn't done anything. That was the worst part. He hadn't pushed. He hadn't wanted. He had only been there.
Three days after the questioning, the priest asked him to stay behind after service.
Not alone. Never alone.
The door to the chapel stayed open. Light spilled in. People passed close enough to hear if voices were raised.
The priest did not look angry. He did not look afraid. He looked tired.
"You're not in trouble," he said first, as if that were the important thing.
Rath said nothing.
"There are… weights," the priest continued carefully. "In this world. Some people carry more of them than others. It's not a sin. But it can strain the ground if you stand still too long."
Rath's fingers curled into his sleeves.
"I should watch where I stand," he said.
The priest nodded. "That would be wise."
That was all.
No blessing. No prayer. No explanation.
After that, people stopped asking Rath to stay.
Not just stay late— stay at all. Invitations drifted past him without landing. When work was assigned, his name was left until last, or not spoken at all. Not because he was untrusted.
Because he was unsettling.
Rath learned the pattern quickly. Learned how the world smoothed itself around him instead of confronting what he was. Learned that blame was loud, but avoidance was efficient.
He learned that when something went wrong near him, it went wrong quietly.
That night, standing alone at the edge of the fields, Rath felt it again— the tightening, the faint, expectant pressure beneath his ribs. Not acting. Not demanding.
Waiting.
He took a step back.
The pressure eased.
That was when he understood the rule he would carry with him for the rest of his life:
If he stayed still, the world bent.
If he moved away, it held.
So he began to leave places early.
He began to speak less.
He began to make himself smaller— not because he was afraid of what he might do, but because the world had already decided what it would do around him.
And somewhere beneath all of that learning, something patient took note.
Not because Rath had broken anything.
But because he had noticed.
The second incident happened somewhere that should have been safe.
It was mid-autumn, when the fields were half-harvested and the air smelled of cut grain and damp leaves. Rath was sent with three others to clear a fallen oak from the creek road—simple work, loud work, the kind that kept thoughts from wandering.
He almost refused.
That alone should have warned him.
They worked in rhythm at first. Axes rose and fell. The oak resisted the way old things do, stubborn but honest. Sweat ran down Rath's spine. For a while, the pressure stayed quiet, coiled low and distant, like an animal asleep under the ground.
Then one of the men- Jorren, broad-shouldered and impatient, laughed and said, "We'll be here till winter if we keep at it like this."
Rath smiled faintly, reflex more than feeling.
"I can push from the other side," he said.
It wasn't a boast. Just a statement.
Jorren shrugged. "Do it, then."
Rath stepped around the trunk, braced his shoulder against the bark, and pushed.
The moment he did, the pressure surged.
Not violently. Not sharply. It bloomed—fast and full—like breath drawn too deep. Rath froze, muscles locked, heart hammering. For a heartbeat he thought he could still pull back.
Then the ground shifted.
Not a crack. Just a subtle, awful give beneath the roots, as if the earth had decided to rearrange itself to make room.
The oak moved.
Not an inch.
A yard.
It slid sideways, roots tearing free with a sound like wet cloth ripping, and one of those roots snapped back hard enough to strike Jorren across the chest.
The man went down without a sound.
Everything stopped.
Rath staggered back, breath ragged, the pressure collapsing inward until it sat heavy and cold behind his sternum. He stared at his hands like they'd betrayed him.
"I didn't—" he started.
No one answered.
They rushed to Jorren, shouting his name, hands shaking as they rolled him onto his back. His eyes were open, unfocused. Blood darkened his shirt where the root had struck.
He was alive.
Barely.
They carried him back on a door torn from its hinges. Rath followed at a distance, not because anyone told him to—but because no one asked him to help.
The healer worked through the night.
By morning, Jorren was breathing steadily, ribs bound tight, color back in his face. He would live. Everyone said so.
No one thanked Rath for helping move the tree.
No one accused him either.
That was worse.
The reeve came again, this time with two others. They stood in the yard, hats in hand, eyes never quite settling on Rath's face.
"It was an accident," the reeve said. "You didn't mean it."
Rath nodded. "I didn't."
Silence stretched.
One of the others shifted his weight. "Still… things don't move like that."
Rath swallowed. "The ground was soft."
"Ground's always soft by the creek," the man said. "Never seen it listen before."
The word hung there, heavy and wrong.
The reeve cleared his throat. "We've decided it'd be best if you weren't assigned to shared labor for a while."
"For safety," the other man added quickly.
Rath looked past them, at the fence line, at the field beyond it. "Mine," he said. "Or yours?"
No one answered.
After they left, Rath stood alone in the yard until his legs began to shake.
That night, he didn't dream.
He lay awake, staring at the rafters, and felt the pressure of it moving not outward, not forward, but around him, like a hand testing the shape of a lock.
It wasn't reacting anymore.
It was anticipating.
The next morning, Jorren woke screaming.
Not from pain.
From certainty.
He refused water. Refused food. When the healer touched him, he flinched so hard the bedframe rattled.
"He's afraid," someone whispered.
Jorren shook his head violently. "No. I know."
They asked him what he meant.
He wouldn't look at Rath when he answered.
"It wasn't the tree," he said. "It was waiting."
That was when Rath understood the second rule, the one no one would ever say aloud:
It didn't need his anger.
It didn't need his intent.
It didn't even need his action.
It only needed him close enough.
And this time, there was no story that could make it small.
No version where it was chance.
The world had shifted because Rath had leaned into it.
And something.. patient, observant, and very old, had leaned back.
Nothing returned to normal.
Rath noticed it first in the smallest places—the pauses that didn't used to exist. The way voices dipped when he stepped close, not abruptly, not enough to accuse anyone of fear, just enough to thin the air. Laughter ended sooner. Questions went unanswered a moment too long. People looked at him and then looked past him, as if confirming something was still where it was supposed to be.
He tried to ignore it.
He helped where help was needed. He lifted, hauled, carried. He spoke when spoken to. He kept his hands visible, his tone even. The same man he had been yesterday. The same man he had been for years.
It didn't matter.
At the well, a woman he had known since childhood drew her bucket up quickly and stepped aside before he reached her, offering a tight smile that did not touch her eyes. At the smithy, the hammer paused mid swing when he entered, resumed only after he had passed through. Tools were rearranged when he wasn't looking. Tasks reassigned without comment.
No one told him to leave.
No one asked him to stay.
It was worse than accusation. It was administration.
He ate alone that night without meaning to. There had been space at the table when he arrived; there was none by the time he sat. No one had moved deliberately. Chairs simply filled. He finished quietly and stood, the scrape of his stool against the floor too loud in the hush that followed.
No one stopped him.
The next day, he was called aside.
Not summoned but asked. A gentle hand on the elbow. A voice kept low, respectful. The reeve stood with him near the edge of the square where the ground dipped and the noise thinned, hands clasped as if for prayer.
"This isn't a reprimand," the man said immediately, as though reading Rath's thoughts. "I want you to understand that."
Rath nodded. He said nothing. Silence had become a tool now; he was learning when to use it.
"You've done nothing wrong," the reeve continued. "That matters. I want you to hear that clearly."
Rath waited.
"But people are unsettled," the reeve said. "They're… watchful. They've seen too much lately. Things they don't have words for."
Rath felt something settle behind his ribs– not pain, not pressure. Alignment.
"I don't want trouble," the reeve said. "And neither do you. So for a while, it may be best if you keep to the edges. Let things cool."
"To the edges of what?" Rath asked.
The reeve hesitated. That was answer enough.
"Of gatherings," the man said carefully. "Of decisions. Of anything that might draw attention."
Rath studied his face. There was no cruelty there. Only fear carefully folded into responsibility.
"You're not being punished," the reeve added, too quickly. "This is temporary. Practical."
Rath nodded again. "Of course."
The reeve exhaled, relieved. "Good. You understand."
Rath turned away before the man could see what that understanding cost him.
The fracture came later, and it came quietly.
A child tripped near the granary, fell hard, skinning his knee. Rath moved without thinking, already crouching, already reaching for the boy's arm. He had done this a hundred times before. More. He knew how to set bones, how to calm panic, how to make pain smaller.
The child's mother reached them at the same moment.
She froze.
It was brief. Barely a second. But it was enough.
Her hand closed around the child's shoulder and pulled him back—not violently, not accusingly. Just instinct. Just faster than thought.
"I've got him," she said, voice tight with forced calm.
Rath's hand hovered in the space where the boy had been.
The child looked up at him, confused, eyes wet, mouth trembling. "It hurts," he said.
"I know," Rath replied. He lowered his hand slowly. "You'll be alright."
The mother nodded, already turning away. "Thank you."
She did not meet his eyes.
Rath stayed where he was until they were gone, then straightened and stepped back, careful to give the empty space its due.
That night, he began to change his habits.
Not consciously. That came later.
At first it was practical. He chose the outer paths. Stood near walls. Sat where collapse would travel away from others, not toward them. He waited before entering rooms, let crowds thin before passing through. When something heavy needed lifting, he asked if help was wanted instead of simply taking hold.
He told himself it was courtesy.
Then he caught himself measuring distances.
How far before someone noticed? How close before tension spiked? How many steps before a voice faltered?
He hated that most of all—that the calculations came easily.
He stopped sleeping near others. It was easier to be awake alone than to wake and see fear sharpen into awareness. When he dreamed, it was of standing in rooms that emptied around him without anyone leaving, of conversations that dissolved mid-sentence, of hands withdrawing from his shadow.
No voices spoke to him. Nothing whispered. Nothing guided.
And still, he knew.
The realization did not arrive like revelation. It crept in through repetition, through a hundred small adjustments made by other people until Rath understood that the world had not rejected him.
It had adapted.
He stood one evening at the edge of the fields, watching the lights come on one by one, distant and careful. The land looked the same. The stars did not rearrange themselves. Nothing cracked or burned or rose from below.
And yet the shape of his life had changed.
It wasn't that they believed he was dangerous.
It was that they no longer needed to decide.
Rath rested his hands on the fence rail and closed his eyes, feeling the steady rhythm beneath his ribs— not louder, not stronger. Simply present. As if it had always been there, waiting for the world to notice what it already knew.
He opened his eyes and stepped back from the fence, choosing the longer path home without thinking.
Behind him, the fields lay quiet, orderly, intact.
Ahead, the road waited— patient, inevitable, already making room.
Rath learned patterns before he learned fear.
At first, they were small. A cup cracking in his hand when his thoughts wandered. A nail bending wrong beneath his hammer. Dice that refused to roll cleanly when he played with the others, skittering off the table as if pushed. Once, twice—annoyances. The kind of things people laughed about and forgot by morning.
But repetition has weight.
The second incident happened three weeks after the first. Long enough for the edge to dull. Long enough for him to convince himself the earlier unease had been imagination, hunger, exhaustion. They were clearing brush along the eastern road, a dull task that left the air smelling green and raw. Jorren worked a few paces ahead, humming something tuneless, blade swinging in lazy arcs.
Rath felt it before it happened.
A pressure behind his eyes. A tightening beneath his ribs. The sense– not of danger but of anticipation. As if the world had inhaled.
He opened his mouth to say something. Nothing came out.
The tree split instead.
Not where the blade struck. Not cleanly. The trunk ruptured halfway up, fibers tearing with a sound like wet cloth, sending splinters screaming outward. One caught Jorren across the arm, shallow but bleeding. Another buried itself inches from Rath's face, still quivering.
Silence followed. The wrong kind. The kind that asks questions.
Jorren stared at the tree. Then at his arm. Then, slowly, at Rath.
"That's… not how that works," he said.
Rath nodded, because nodding was easier than speaking.
They finished the job in silence. Jorren wrapped his arm. Rath did not touch him. When they parted, Jorren hesitated, as if to say something else, then turned away.
That night, Rath lay awake counting breaths and listening to the world behave itself again.
It did. That was almost worse.
People notice when you stop joking.
They notice when you step aside instead of forward. When you flinch half a second too late. Rath felt their eyes on him more often after that day, though no one accused him of anything. Accusations require certainty. This was only discomfort.
Jorren changed first.
He still walked beside Rath, still spoke to him, still laughed at the right moments—but his body learned caution. He didn't stand as close. Didn't clap Rath on the shoulder anymore. When they sparred, Jorren pulled his strikes just a fraction early, eyes tracking Rath's hands instead of his stance.
Once, quietly, as they cleaned their blades, Jorren said, "Does this sort of thing ever happen when you're not there?"
He didn't look up when he said it.
Rath's mind went blank.
"I don't know what you mean," he said.
Jorren nodded, as if that answered something. He wiped his blade and stood. "Yeah," he said. "Me neither."
He left before Rath could think of a response.
After that, Rath paid attention.
He traced the edges of coincidence and found them thicker around him. Accidents clustered. Animals grew restless when he passed. Once, a child tripped and scraped her knee without being touched, sobbing as if something had shoved her. Rath apologized to her mother. The woman accepted it, but her smile didn't reach her eyes.
Rath stopped lingering. Stopped sitting near fires. Stopped touching people unless necessary.
Whatever this was, it didn't need encouragement.
Avoidance creates its own shape.
Rath began to measure rooms before entering them. He took the outer edge of formations. He volunteered for night watch, where distance was easier. When plans were made, he listened instead of offering suggestions, because suggestions led to responsibility, and responsibility put him too close to the center of things.
No one told him to do this.
That was the worst part.
If they had accused him– if someone had named it he could have argued, denied, raged. Instead, there was only a subtle rearranging. A step taken back here. A glance avoided there. Conversations that slowed when he approached, then resumed too brightly once he passed.
Jorren didn't confront him.
Jorren didn't leave, either.
That was the cruelty of it. He stayed nearby, orbiting, close enough to remind Rath of what was being lost but far enough to make the distance unmistakable. When they spoke, it was of simple things. Weather. Work. Rumors from the road. Never the space between them.
Rath learned how loud silence could be.
One evening, as they sat opposite the fire, Rath felt the pressure again- the tightness, the anticipatory pull. He stood so fast his chair tipped.
"I'll take first watch," he said.
Jorren looked up sharply. "You always do."
Rath opened his mouth. Closed it. Took his cloak and walked away before the feeling could bloom into something worse.
Behind him, the fire crackled louder than before.
The third incident removed doubt.
It happened when Rath was alone.
He had gone further into the hills than he meant to, following a deer trail through stone and scrub. The day was quiet, the kind of quiet that usually calmed him. For a time, nothing felt wrong.
Then the pressure returned, sudden and sharp.
The ground gave way beneath his foot– not collapsing, but shifting, stones rolling as if stirred from below. Rath stumbled, catching himself on a boulder that cracked at his touch. A fissure raced across its surface, deepening, spreading, until the stone split clean in two.
Rath staggered back, heart pounding.
No one else was there.
No blade had struck. No weight had been placed wrong. The rock had simply… failed.
He stood there for a long time, staring at his hands as if they belonged to someone else.
This wasn't chance. It wasn't proximity. It didn't require witnesses.
It was him.
The realization didn't come with panic. It arrived slowly, like cold setting into bone. Rath sat down and pressed his palms into the dirt, grounding himself, breathing carefully.
"I won't," he said aloud, to nothing in particular.
The world did not respond.
When he returned to camp, he said nothing. He didn't need to. Whatever followed him was patient. It could wait.
The third incident removed doubt.
It happened when Rath was alone.
He had gone further into the hills than he meant to, following a deer trail through stone and scrub. The day was quiet, the kind of quiet that usually calmed him. For a time, nothing felt wrong.
Then the pressure returned, sudden and sharp.
The ground gave way beneath his foot, not collapsing, but shifting, stones rolling as if stirred from below. Rath stumbled, catching himself on a boulder that cracked at his touch. A fissure raced across its surface, deepening, spreading, until the stone split clean in two.
Rath staggered back, heart pounding.
No one else was there.
No blade had struck. No weight had been placed wrong. The rock had simply… failed.
He stood there for a long time, staring at his hands as if they belonged to someone else.
This wasn't chance. It wasn't proximity. It didn't require witnesses.
It was him.
The realization didn't come with panic. It arrived slowly, like cold setting into bone. Rath sat down and pressed his palms into the dirt, grounding himself, breathing carefully.
"I won't," he said aloud, to nothing in particular.
The world did not respond.
When he returned to camp, he said nothing. He didn't need to. Whatever followed him was patient. It could wait.