The boy slept lightly.
That night, he woke up before dawn.
Nothing was wrong.
That was the problem.
The wind felt normal. The forest was quiet. His body felt fine. Yet his chest felt tight, like someone was watching from far away.
He sat up and looked at his wrist.
The thin band was still there.
He pulled at it.
It didn't break.
"…Strange," he muttered.
He stood and ran.
He ran through trees.
Across dirt paths.
Over rocks and shallow rivers.
Fast.
Faster than most people could even see.
Finally, he stopped on a high hill and looked back.
Nothing.
No sound. No movement.
But the feeling didn't leave.
Someone still knew where he was.
Later that day, trouble came.
A group of young men blocked the road ahead. They wore simple clothes but carried weapons. Not soldiers. Not bandits.
"Hey," one of them said. "You're fast, right?"
The boy stayed silent.
Another laughed. "Relax. We just want to see something."
The boy took a step back.
That's when they rushed him.
He ran.
The world blurred. Dust flew. In seconds, he was far away.
Behind him, the men stood frozen.
"…What was that?" one whispered.
The boy didn't stop running.
His heart pounded.
They knew.
That night, in a town far away, the trader smiled.
He placed a small stone on a map. It glowed faintly.
"There you are," he said softly.
He wrote something down.
And somewhere else, someone else read it.
The boy touched his wrist again.
For the first time, fear stayed longer than his breath.
End of Chapter 7