They left the Chimeraan behind in pieces.
What hide they could salvage was lashed to saddles. The rest cooled on Irriton's roots, already drawing flies.
They rode on.
The path under them felt wrong for a wild forest—too smooth, too straight, slabs of stone half-swallowed by earth and moss. The canopy thickened until the sky vanished. Green light seeped through leaves. Rot hung in the air with a faint iron tang.
Felbeasts found them—wolves with too many teeth, boars with eyes that shone too bright—but after the night before, it felt almost easy. Quintil steeds crashed into them; hammers rose and fell; spears flashed. Most beasts broke and ran at first contact.
By rights, Deimos had said, there should have been more.
"Odd," he muttered after they rode down a pack of felwolves that had sniffed at the road's edge and fled at the first whistle of his whip. "We should be tripping over them here. This stretch is usually… lively."
"Maybe they smelled the Chimeraan on us," Rycharde said, half-joking. "I would run too."
"Or something bigger than them walked this way before we did," Phobos said under his breath.
Ezra listened with his eyes half-closed, feeling the group loosen with every uneventful mile.
Last night had been a knife edge—rage in his veins, blood in the air, hungry eyes in the dark. Compared to that, the road felt gentle.
"You mentioned other Chimeraans," Ezra said after a while, turning on Evan's saddle to see Deimos. "In this forest."
Deimos adjusted his reins. "Aye, my lord. I have crossed paths with them before. But not like that one. A beast that is both Chimeraan and Preacantae is rare. Usually, you get one or the other—mutated body or crystal-born magic. Not both."
"Oh?" Ezra's focus snapped in. "Where do the others live, then? Deeper in?"
"Usually the core," Deimos said. He tipped his chin toward the looming wall of trees farther south. "We're still skirting the outer belt. The inner Grove… that's where the real monsters sleep. Things like the one we met, only older. Meaner."
He grimaced. "My guess? That fellow wandered too far and got lost."
"But if there are treasures there," Ezra pressed, "why hasn't anyone claimed them? Or tried, at least?"
Deimos gave a humorless laugh. "Oh, they've tried, Lord Ezra. Plenty of would-be heroes, plenty of lords with more pride than sense. Legends say the inner grove sits on some hoard—old ruins, old magic, old something worth dying for. The beasts make sure it earns the stories."
His face hardened.
"Long before I was born, some of Blackfyre's vassals formed hunting bands to 'conquer' the core and bring back glory," he said. "Enough coffins came back that Lord Blackfyre's grandsire made it law: no more expeditions into the heart. The outer Grove is game. The inner is a graveyard."
Ezra nodded. "I see. Thank you, Sir Deimos."
"My honour, milord," Deimos said.
Ezra fell quiet.
So there's a dungeon in our backyard, he thought, giddy despite himself. Monsters, mysterious runes, forbidden zones. Of course.
He let the thought go.
Later. Survive Anticourt first. Survive Aerwyna first.
Aerwyna tightened his stomach in a way even the Chimeraan hadn't.
He could picture it: frost in the air, her eyes flat and bright, the quiet control as she said his name. Reitz would laugh first, then go still, then lecture him about responsibility until Ezra wanted to crawl under a table.
They would not blame Hearth or Caspian. They would look at him.
Am I really the same person I was before I died?
On Earth, he had avoided unnecessary risk. Danger was a variable to reduce, not sample for fun. Give him a lab or a decent apartment and an internet connection, and he could vanish for days.
Here, he jumped out windows, picked fights with mercenaries, ran into a cursed forest, and stabbed a felbear to death because his body chose violence over retreat.
Magic changes things. Bodies too.
The praise didn't help. For two years, everyone around him had said he was special, gifted, terrifying. Different. Destined. On Earth, nobody had looked at him like that, not even his thesis adviser.
Then came the smaller shifts: motion sickness he'd never had, temper spikes that felt foreign, moods that swung fast as if someone had grabbed his chemistry and twisted.
Hormones. Genetics. New hardware. Same software trying to run on it, he thought. I don't even know where "me" ends and "Reitz plus Aerwyna's bloodline" begins.
He snorted.
Lascivious war freak of a father. Overprotective killjoy of a mother. And somehow, between the two of them, this isn't the worst childhood I've ever had.
He remembered Aerwyna holding him after the kidnapping attempt—too tight, fingers trembling. He remembered Reitz's face going flat and murderous whenever anyone hinted Ezra was fragile, or a pawn.
Infuriating. Smothering.
He liked being theirs anyway.
So this is what it means to be a son, he thought, warmth spreading through his chest. I annoy them. They chain me to a crib. I break out. They chase me. And it never once feels like they want me smaller so they can shine.
He breathed out.
I am a pretty horrible son sometimes. I'll… try to behave. A little. Maybe.
He stayed in that spiral until the world ahead brightened.
First came thinner leaves. Then a gap. One more turn and the trees fell back, and the path spilled out of Irriton like a river leaving a canyon.
Sunlight hit him full in the face.
Ezra squinted and lifted a hand. The sky sat clear and blue. The air shifted—less rot, more dust and grass and horse.
Behind him, men laughed, the sound raw with relief.
"By the Flame," Evered breathed. "Thought I'd grown moss on my boots."
"That's the Grove behind us," Dynham said, turning in the saddle to spit toward the wall of trees. "And the sun ahead. I'll take this trade."
They slowed to a trot, hooves thudding differently on packed earth.
"What now?" Rycharde asked, looking to Deimos.
"We head for Anticourt," Deimos said. "Four hours' ride if the horses hold. But they need rest and water first. There's a stream near here." He glanced at Evan. "And you, Sir Evan? What are your lord's orders?"
"Lord Blackfyre tasked me to carry a message to Anticourt," Evan said. "We will spend the night there and return to Bren at first light tomorrow."
"Aye?" Deimos's grin came back, tired but genuine. "Then we share the road a while longer. The Order is always glad for good company that doesn't try to eat us."
They dismounted by a narrow stream running clear from the treeline. The horses drank hard, snorting and pawing. Saddlebags loosened. Bits came out. Feedbags appeared.
With no threat pressing in, the group settled. Armor loosened enough to breathe. Someone laughed at a joke that would have died back in the trees.
"Lord Ezra," Phobos said once the bustle eased. "If I may… how is it that you appeared to us in the forest at all?"
Curiosity, not accusation. Every ear turned.
Ezra swung his legs where he sat on a smooth rock. Evan stood close enough to catch him if he tipped.
"Well," he said, "I climbed out the nursery window."
Dynham made a strangled noise. Oswyn coughed.
Ezra recounted it plainly. The handholds carved into stone over months. The cloak. Bren's rooftops under pre-dawn light. Slipping to the South Gate, trading noble clothes for something plainer.
He told them about the supply wagon. How he timed the distraction with the cats, slid under the tarp, and rode out of the city with salted pork.
He told them about the wagon's sway and how his new body turned on him, about dampening his nerves with mana to keep from vomiting in the barrel.
He didn't hide the felhawk, or the felbear.
"I was up in the branches watching Deimos kill the first bear," he said. "Then one of those birds tried to eat me."
"What?" Evered blurted. "Alone?"
"I threw a stone at its beak," Ezra said. "Barely slowed it. So I jumped and put a dagger through its wing joint as it passed. We both fell. Very messy."
Silence.
"And the felbear?" Oswyn asked, like he regretted it already.
"Oh. That one I met later," Ezra said. "I was… not entirely in my right mind. The forest did something to my head at night."
His brow tightened as the memory surfaced: the hot rush of bloodlust, his thoughts narrowing to a single red point.
"I tried to run once and my body refused," he went on. "So I directed it at the bear instead. It knew how to charge and sweep. That was about it. I kept jumping onto its back and stabbing until it bled out. Very inefficient. I don't recommend it."
The knights shuddered.
They had seen him move—seen flashes of how he threaded through danger. Hearing it laid out like a lesson made their skin crawl.
For any of them as squires, killing a single felbeast had been a distant ambition. For a two-year-old to do it alone…
They traded looks over Ezra's head. Respect, yes. And something uneasy, settling into place.
"Well," Ezra added, almost apologetically, "Evan did teach me some things."
Evan cleared his throat, flustered. "Nonsense, Lord Ezra. If I taught other toddlers the same, they would be capable of… swatting flies. That is all. What you did was your own strength."
His words stayed modest. His face didn't. He smiled hard, chest puffed with pride.
Phobos watched them, then chuckled.
"Sire," he said, "no doubt you will be a Primarch someday. With a mind like yours and that kind of power at two summers? Fulmen may see an age of prosperity yet."
"It is an honour to meet a future Primarch," Deimos said, bowing slightly from where he knelt by a saddle strap. The others echoed him with varying reverence.
Ezra's shoulders drew in.
"No, no," he said quickly. "I can't even cast proper spells yet. Manipulating my body is… different. I don't know if I'll ever—"
"Sire," Deimos cut in gently, "with respect… from the way you speak of mana, you have already stepped where most knights never will. We look forward to seeing where you climb. Please," he added, humor in his eyes, "be kind to us when you stand above."
"O-of course," Ezra said, flustered. "You helped me too. Just… don't expect too much."
"Thank you, Lord Ezra," the knights answered in unison.
After the horses finished and the last feed was packed, they mounted again.
The afternoon cooled. The sun slid west and threw long shadows across the road. Anticourt waited ahead—stone walls, politics, messages—and then the ride back to Bren and the reckoning with his parents.
For now, the wind in his hair and the rhythm of hooves were enough.
They rode toward Anticourt together, leaving Irriton's trees behind.