September 12, 540, from the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored
Pain was his new, constant state. It pulsed in the deep scratches on his shoulder and back, ached in his stretched muscles, drilled into his temples with a heavy, restless sleep. Dur lay on the hard bed covered with rough sheepskin, and through half-open eyelids watched the dance of shadows from the hearth on the low ceiling made of dark, time-blackened beams. The air in the hut was thick and rich—smelling of smoke, boiled meat, dried herbs, and something elusively wild, animalistic.
He was alive. This thought broke through the fog of pain and shame slowly, like a shoot through packed earth. He was alive not because of his own strength, cunning, or courage. He was alive by chance. Because this man, Torm, had happened to follow an elk trail that day and instead found tracks of despair.
Dur turned his head, overcoming the piercing pain in his neck. The owner of the hut sat on a stump by the hearth, cleaning a long, heavy knife on a piece of sandstone. His movements were precise, economical, unhurried. He was neither young nor old; his age was defined not by years, but by layers of endurance and knowledge etched onto his face, like growth rings on a tree cut. His hands, covered in a web of old scars and calluses, seemed carved from the same oak as his knife handle.
"Awake," Torm stated, not looking at him. His voice was low, like a distant rumble of thunder. "Drink water. Slowly."
A clay cup stood on a stool nearby. Dur struggled to raise himself on his elbow, and the world swam before his eyes for a moment. He took a small sip. The cold, clear water seemed like nectar of the gods. It didn't just quench his thirst—it washed away the taste of fear and defeat.
The silence stretched on, broken only by the crackling of logs and the grinding of stone against steel. Dur felt worthless. He remembered his dreams, his childhood maps, the oath sworn under the Old Pine. All of it crumbled to dust before the simple and cruel truth: he hadn't survived even one day alone. He had been a burden from the start. For Kaedan, who was already fighting with his spirit. For Ulvia, whose connection to nature was so natural. For Gil, whose mind was her main weapon. And him? He was just Dur, who was afraid of water and almost became prey for an old wolf.
Shame burned him from within hotter than any fire.
"Thank you," he rasped, his own voice sounding foreign. "You... you saved my life."
Torm finally looked up at him. His eyes, the color of dark walnut, were calm and penetrating. There was no pity, no judgment in them—only cold, indifferent assessment.
"I didn't save you. I'm no hunter of lost souls," he said abruptly. "I took my prey. The wolf was on my trail. You were an appendage."
He stuck the knife into the wooden tabletop next to him and gestured towards the opposite wall. There, on a nail, freshly cured, hung the gray hide of that very wolf. It was enormous. In the dim light of the hut, it seemed a ghost, a reminder of that night.
"Look and remember," said Torm. "This beast was old. Teeth worn, claws blunt. He was hungry and alone. Desperate. A strong wolf from a strong pack wouldn't have even glanced your way. To him, you are prey. Easy. Loud. Stupid."
Every word hit its mark like a sharpened arrow. "Easy. Loud. Stupid." It wasn't malice, but a statement of fact. The law of the forest. And Dur had broken that law. He was the one who didn't know the rules of the game he'd sat down to play.
Despair, cold and sticky, crept up from the pit of his stomach. What was he to do now? Go back to the orphanage with a confession? Tell his friends he couldn't even make it to the first village? The thought was more humiliating than dying from wolf fangs.
He looked at his hands. Thin, helpless. The hands of a child who thought himself a hero. Then his gaze fell on Torm's hands. Hands that knew how to hold a knife, how to draw a bow, how to survive.
And then the decision came. Sudden, clear, and the only possible one.
"Teach me," Dur breathed out, sitting up straighter on the bed. The pain receded before the onslaught of adrenaline. "I'm not asking for free help. I'm offering a deal."
Torm, about to return to his knife, froze. One gray eyebrow rose.
"A deal?" A barely perceptible mockery sounded in his voice. "You have nothing, boy."
"I do," Dur forced his voice not to tremble. "My hands. My work. All the prey I catch, all the work I do—will be yours. All of it. No share for me. In exchange... in exchange for shelter, food, and your knowledge. Teach me what you know. How to survive. How to hunt. How... not to be easy prey."
He had laid out everything he had. His "everything" was nothing, and he knew it. He was offering himself into slavery for crumbs of wisdom.
Torm looked at him for a long time. His gaze slid over his thin shoulders, over his pale, frightened face, lingered on his eyes. And Dur tried with all his might not to look away. He had let this man into his shame, his fear, his desperate resolve. He was naked before him, not physically, but spiritually.
An eternity passed. Somewhere outside the wall, a magpie shrieked.
Finally, Torm slowly nodded. Not approvingly, not encouragingly, but simply stating a fact.
"Fine," he uttered. The word was short, like the blow of an axe. "From today, you are my helper. Not an apprentice. A helper. You'll do what I say, when I say, and how I say. You'll keep quiet and listen. Questions—only to the point. Fail a task—you go without dinner. Understood?"
Dur nodded, his heart hammering wildly in his chest.
"Understood."
"Then we'll start with you learning to wash dishes," Torm jerked his head towards the sooty pot and wooden bowls in a basin. "Don't drop or break anything. I don't have much crockery."
It wasn't a heroic start, not the beginning of a great adventure. It was a fall from the heights of childhood fantasy onto the solid, uncomfortable ground of reality. But for Dur at that moment, the creak of the cabin door, behind which waited dirty dishes and icy water from the stream, sounded louder than any oath. It was the sound of his new path. A path that began not with a feat, but with washing plates.