The morning mist still clung to the eaves of Lucas when Myne slipped beyond the last fence and into the forest, a small figure with a hunter's satchel and a future that had not yet decided whether it would starve him or spare him.
He was thirteen, which in this kingdom meant he stood on the narrow bridge between child and adult. Two more years, and the gods would look down, weigh his existence, and grant him his Skills. Two more years to endure with nothing but effort, memory, and the tools his father had left behind.
His name was Myne, and he had been alone since he was five.
The sickness had taken his parents in the same winter, like a fire that consumed both pillars of a house and left the roof standing only because the village gathered beneath it to hold it up. They bought his game for more than it was worth. Sold him bread and lamp oil for less than it cost. Spoke to him as if he were not a burden but a boy whose father had once stood beside them on hunts.
So every morning he went into the trees, because gratitude did not fill an empty stomach.
Five cages waited where he had set them the night before, their crude iron jaws open like hungry mouths.
Four were empty.
Myne let out a breath that vanished in the cold air.
"Nothing again…"
The forest gave no answer. It never did.
Even with the villagers' kindness, there was a limit to how far goodwill could be stretched. Coin thinned. Flour sacks lightened. Winter would come again.
If only I had a Skill.
The thought rose like a prayer he had repeated so often it had worn a path in his mind. In this world, power was not only trained. It was bestowed. Kings received Skills that bent the battlefield. Great hunters received Skills that turned arrows into certainty. In two years, the gods would speak his name.
Two years was an eternity when you were hungry.
He was turning to leave when he saw it: a small shape flitting between the branches, wings catching the light.
A Guruppi.
The bird was worth more than three rabbits, because it flew, and things that fled the earth were difficult to bring down. Difficult things fetched high prices.
If he could take it alive, he could live for days.
He crouched behind the trunk of a moss-laden oak, mind racing, and in that moment another voice rose from memory, warm and rough as worn leather.
"Listen, Myne," his father had once said, kneeling to meet his eyes. "There are blows that are stronger than others. Special attacks. You don't win a hunt by swinging harder. You win by striking where the prey is weak."
The boy he had been then had puffed his chest. "I'll remember. Special attack."
Now Myne pressed his lips together.
A flying enemy required a bow.
He could almost see his father's smile, could almost hear the approving grunt.
"Bird-types are weak to the dark," the remembered voice continued.
The dark.
Myne lifted his gaze to the north, where the trees grew thick and ancient, their branches weaving a roof so dense that sunlight drowned before it reached the ground.
Their eyes, he realized. They would falter where the light died.
He moved with care, retreating to his hut at the edge of the village, retrieving the bow he had practiced with every day until his fingers blistered and hardened. He returned at once, heart steadying into the rhythm of the hunt.
The Guruppi was gone from the clearing.
Of course it was.
Convenience belonged to people with Skills.
Myne knelt, closed his eyes, and listened.
The forest spoke in layers: wind through leaves, insects whispering, the distant creak of branches. Beneath it, a thin thread of chirping.
There.
He followed the sound to the shadowed grove where the sun never reached, and when he parted the ferns he saw them: a cluster of Guruppi hopping along the ground, their wings folded, their movements cautious in the gloom.
His breath slowed. His world narrowed to the weight of the bow, the roughness of the string against his fingers, the angle of the nearest bird's head.
If it took flight, it would veer left.
He loosed.
The arrow cut through the hush of the grove and struck with a dull, final sound. The Guruppi gave a broken cry and fell.
For a heartbeat Myne did not move.
Then the reality struck him all at once, bright and dizzying.
"I did it… Father, I did it."
The others scattered into the canopy, their wings beating a frantic storm of feathers.
He listened again, forcing himself back into stillness. There would be time for joy later. Joy did not fill the cooking pot.
When he retrieved the fallen bird, he slipped it into the storage bag his father had left him, a magic tool that accepted anything that no longer breathed. As always, the bag felt faintly warm, as if the hands that had once carried it still lingered.
"I'll bring sunflowers next time," he murmured, thinking of the graves on the hill.
The chirping came again.
He tracked the sound, found the flock regrouping deeper in the dark grove, and repeated the hunt. The second arrow flew truer than the first.
Two Guruppi.
Three rabbits' worth of coin.
Today, they would eat.
By the time he reached the Adventurers' Guild, the sun had climbed high enough to turn the town's stone walls gold. Inside, the air smelled of iron, parchment, and ambition.
Ansem spotted him at once.
"Look who it is. The orphan," the guildmaster's son called, leaning back in his chair with the careless ease of someone who had never wondered where his next meal would come from. "What are you selling today? Another sad little rabbit?"
Myne bowed his head, the motion automatic. "I brought Guruppi."
Ansem's laughter was sharp. "Since when can you hunt those?"
"Since today," came a deeper voice.
The guildmaster stepped forward, eyes already measuring the boy in a way that had nothing to do with pity.
Myne opened the storage bag and produced one of the birds.
The man's brows rose. "Fine work. I'll give you five silver."
Five.
For a moment Myne could not breathe.
"I wish my Ansem had half your discipline," the guildmaster added, almost absently.
The words fell into the room like a stone into still water.
Myne accepted the coins with both hands, bowing again, but inside something shifted.
Not pride.
Not yet.
But a realization as sharp as an arrowhead:
He had survived another day without a Skill.
He had turned memory into strength, darkness into advantage, hunger into motion.
And for the first time, the two years ahead of him did not look like an endless road.