The fire crackled softly in the pale dawn. Ash drifted in the breeze like sleep still clinging to the bones of the world.
Kael sat apart, legs pulled to his chest, watching the others stir. Elira was already awake of course she was—checking the tension in her bowstring. Ryall yawned and stretched, flipping a knife through his fingers with careless grace. Tessan chewed something raw and stringy. Drev, as always, simply watched the flames, unmoving.
They'd accepted him.
Sort of.
No one questioned why his shadow bent the wrong way sometimes. Or why, during the night, strange whispers sometimes rustled through the air near him like wind through dead leaves.
But he felt their eyes.
Kael still didn't know what had happened in Sector Delta. And he had no idea how to ask without sounding like a monster.
Instead, he listened.
He watched.
And slowly, he began to learn.
By midmorning, the group marched along a cracked trade path that wound through dead hills and hollowed shrines. Elira walked beside Kael, her pace measured.
"You're not asking questions," she said without looking at him.
Kael blinked. "Should I?"
"You're not in chains anymore. Curiosity is free."
He glanced up at her. "So what are you?"
She gave a slight smirk. "Whisperborn."
Kael hesitated. "Is that a kind of power?"
Elira stopped walking. The others slowed ahead, letting them lag behind.
"Echoes," she said. "That's what we all awaken to. Fragments of the world's first voices. Some awaken as Whisperborn tied to memory, sound, shadow. Some as Veilborn those who shift and step through the edges of reality. Others as Fathomwalkers deep-blooded, strange, touched by depths not meant for light."
She stared at him. "You don't know any of this, do you?"
Kael looked away. "We didn't have books in Sector Delta. We had whips."
She nodded once, then walked again. "Most don't awaken. And even among those who do… it's rare. Echoes don't choose kindly. They demand things in return."
"Like what?"
"Pieces of yourself," she said. "Memories. Blood. Pain. Sometimes names."
Kael didn't respond.
Later that day, Ryall showed him how to bind a cut with tree resin. Tessan taught him how to check if water was poisoned using mothfruit leaves. Drev… never spoke, but he handed Kael a tattered cloth once when the dust was thick, and nodded when Kael took it.
In quiet moments, Kael would ask a question here or there.
He learned that Veln was the nearest city-state, protected by sigil-fires and runes older than time. That adventurers worked in guilds, taking contracts to hunt twisted beasts, reclaim lost ruins, or guard traveling sages. That coin was earned by risk. And that the world was not kind, even to the strong.
Especially not to the strong.
"You'll need to learn to hide that mark," Elira told him that night, staring at the Scourged Kin brand on his neck.
"I tried scraping it off once," Kael muttered.
"Doesn't work. Magic brands root beneath skin. They're tied to who you are."
Kael touched it, fingers lingering. But I'm not theirs anymore.
Then act like it, she said.
That night, he dreamed again.
A door. A voice behind it soft, endless, wrong.
He stood in a corridor of mirrors, each showing a version of himself. All broken. All bleeding.
But one mirror was empty.
And behind it… something breathed.
He woke with sweat freezing down his back.
Drev was watching him again. Not judging. Just observing.
Kael wiped his face and lay back down. He didn't sleep again.
By the end of the week, Kael could skin a rodent-bird, patch a hole in a travel cloak, and even tell the difference between a cave that housed wind and one that housed something waiting to bite.
He didn't know who he was becoming. Or what lived inside him now.
But when Ryall clapped him on the back after a well-shot arrow, and Tessan grunted approval when Kael broke open a firestone with one strike he felt something stir.
Not power.
Not madness.
Something quieter.
Like… belonging.
Even if it was temporary.
Even if the mark still burned.
Even if the past hadn't let go.
Kael was starting to learn how the world worked.
And more importantly…
He was starting to learn how to move within it.
Even if he had to lie about everything else.