"I'll miss you, Dad."
Mendriya stood at the grave and said it quietly, like a promise she was making to the ground.
A simple mound beneath a large tree. No marker. No ceremony. Just earth.
The three of them stood there for a moment longer. Then Linea turned and started walking.
They moved in silence through the dark.
Jhed had the bag on his back and Loane's sword at his hip. The jungle was deep and the path was uneven, but Linea walked like she'd memorized it years ago.
Around them — only footsteps, and the sound of leaves.
Behind them, somewhere in the village they'd left:
"Ha. There they were hiding."
A man in iron armor stood at the edge of the destroyed tent village, looking over the bodies with the mild interest of someone checking completed paperwork.
"What do we do with these?" another man asked.
"Mite." The armored man didn't even look up. "There's only one punishment."
He raised his hand.
The magic circle appeared again. The spears came again.
Whatever had survived the first attack didn't survive the second.
"Check if anyone's left."
"Yes, sir." The soldier moved through the tents.
There were more spears than people.
Jhed, Linea, and Mendriya stopped at a stream to rest.
He drank slowly, listening to the water.
"Mom." Mendriya looked at Linea. "Who did that to them? Why?"
Linea was quiet for a moment.
"Both of you need to listen carefully. What I'm about to tell you is not good." She sat down on a root. "In this country — children are killed at birth. Boys especially."
What? Sin thought, somewhere inside Jhed. They kill children? Why?
"That attack happened because you two were alive."
Oh. The pieces clicked. That's why the old woman came after me. She was sent because I'm a boy. But she didn't go after Mendriya — probably because Mendriya's a girl. Different rules.
"By now," Linea said quietly, "everyone back there is dead."
Mendriya's head dropped.
"You knew." Her voice was low. "You knew this whole time. Why didn't you warn them?"
"If I had—" Linea stood— "they would have followed us. All of us. The people who did this track movement, track noise, track rumors. If the village had known, they would have panicked, and the panic would have led those soldiers straight to us faster." She picked up her bag. "I made a choice. We're still alive because of it."
Mendriya said nothing.
"We need to keep moving."
They walked through the rest of the night.
I still don't understand it, Jhed thought as the trees thinned around them. Why kill children? What kind of world does that? And why are these people being hunted specifically? What makes them different?
Questions he had no answers to yet.
The sky was beginning to lighten at the edges when the jungle finally ended.
A city.
Jhed stopped at the gate and looked up.
Wooden buildings — real buildings, with walls and roofs and windows. Streets. People moving in the early morning light. The smell of something cooking somewhere.
I haven't seen anything like this in years, he thought.
Years.
The word landed strangely. Because in another life — in a cramped apartment, in a dark room, staring at a phone screen — this would have been nothing. Just another street.
But standing here now, at fifteen, after years of tents and jungle and running—
It looked enormous.
The three of them stood at the gate together, looking in.