The crows cried at the same moment.
Veil opened his eyes and did not move.
For a little while, he lay beneath the thin blanket and listened as the sound thinned into the cold morning air, spreading over the village before fading so completely that it left the silence behind feeling shaped, as though the cry had carved a hollow into it.
He stared at the ceiling.
Woven grass. Dark timber. A thin crack running across the central beam, bending near the end before splitting downward.
He did not know why that bothered him.
Only that it did.
The room was still dim. Dawn had not yet fully entered through the shutters, but the air already carried the damp chill of the hour before sunrise. It smelled faintly of wet earth, old straw, and something bitter that seemed to gather in the back of his throat every morning.
He sat up slowly, pushing the blanket aside. The mattress shifted beneath him with a soft rustle. Familiar. Too familiar.
For a moment, he remained there with his feet against the floor, listening.
A door opened somewhere outside.
Then another.
Then footsteps.
The village was waking.
He dressed by habit. Shirt, belt, boots. His hands moved without thought, each motion neat and practiced. It was only when he straightened that he noticed he had not once paused to decide what came next.
That, too, unsettled him.
Outside, the lane between the houses was washed in gray-blue light. Smoke rose in thin streams from a few chimneys. The first weak edge of dawn lay against the rooftops, too pale to warm them. People were beginning to move through the village with baskets, tools, cloaks pulled close around their shoulders.
Everything looked ordinary.
Veil stepped into the lane.
Old Maren stood outside her doorway, one hand resting on the head of her cane. The wind worried at the loose ends of her shawl, but she remained as steady as the post beside her.
"Good morning," she said.
"Morning."
He was already past her before the exchange fully registered in his mind.
The gravel crunched beneath his boots. Three steps, then the softer patch near the rain barrel, then stone again where the lane widened toward the market.
His pace slowed.
He knew that rhythm.
Not generally. Precisely.
The thought passed through him before he could seize it.
The market square opened ahead in layers of scent and sound. Bread from the eastern oven. Salt from the docks. Fish, smoke, damp wood, and the thin metal clatter of someone setting down hooks or tools. A butcher barked at an apprentice. Two women argued over onions. Somewhere behind the stalls, a child laughed.
Then a voice lifted above the rest.
"Fresh fish! A fine catch today!"
Veil turned toward it.
An old man sat behind a stall near the center of the square, cutting fish with slow, economical strokes. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow. The knife rose and fell in a rhythm so measured it might have been part of the morning bell.
Only after the third cut did the man look up.
"Would you like to try the bitter root drink?"
The question was ordinary.
The certainty behind it was not.
Veil hesitated, then gave a small shrug. "Sure."
The ceramic cup was already in the old man's hand.
Veil frowned faintly. He had not seen him reach for it.
He took the cup anyway. The clay was cool against his fingers. The drink inside was nearly black, reflecting only the weakest trace of dawn. He raised it to his lips and swallowed once.
Bitterness flooded his tongue, sharp and dry. It lingered too long, clinging to the back of his mouth with an almost deliberate stubbornness.
He grimaced.
The old man snorted softly. "You say that every time."
Veil looked at him.
The knife was already moving again.
Perhaps he had misheard.
The square carried on around him. The voices were the same. The movement was the same. Nothing in the old man's face suggested he had said anything unusual at all.
Veil set the cup down and turned away.
That was when he noticed the man by the wall.
He stood where the light thinned near the western edge of the square, half-shadowed, dressed plainly enough that nothing about him should have stood out. He was not tall. Not imposing. Not richly clothed. He might have been any traveler, any clerk, any quiet villager with no wish to attract attention.
And yet he drew the eye immediately.
Because while the market moved around him—buyers, sellers, children, dogs, swaying lines of hanging nets—he remained absolutely still.
Watching.
Their eyes met.
The man's expression changed so little that Veil might have imagined it, but a hint of recognition passed through it all the same.
"You noticed," he said.
Not a question.
Not curiosity.
Certainty.
Veil felt something tighten under his ribs.
He took a step toward the wall. A woman carrying warm bread passed between them, the scent of yeast and ash washing briefly over him.
When she had gone by, the man was no longer there.
Veil stopped.
He searched the square without meaning to. Faces. Stalls. Carts. Smoke. Nets.
Nothing.
Then his gaze caught on something at the far edge of the market, and he forgot the man entirely.
A cart stood there.
Simple. Wooden. Empty except for flowers.
Deep red. Burnished gold. Fresh enough to seem wet, though there was no dew on the stones around them. Their colors were too rich for the washed-out dawn, too alive for the village's gray timbers and weathered walls.
Veil was certain it had not been there before.
The noise of the square thinned.
Not vanished. Only softened, as though something had placed a hand over the mouth of the morning.
He stepped closer.
The flowers stirred in the breeze.
Then, behind him—
"Fresh fish! A fine catch today!"
The voice rang out again.
Same tone.
Same rhythm.
Same breath.
Veil did not turn around.
Something was wrong.