Goburo walked.
He did not run. Running drew attention. Running triggered the predatory chase instincts of the forest's denser inhabitants. Running was the behaviour of prey.
So he walked.
He walked with the stiff, mechanical gait of someone whose mind is elsewhere—back in the market square, back in the moment the root had pinned him to the wall, back in the moment he had looked into the blue-green eyes and seen nothing looking back.
He walked until the burned smells of the village faded, replaced by the loamy richness of the forest perimeter. He walked until the silence of the trees replaced the phantom screams of the healer.
He reached the edge of the market district—the clearing where traders had once gathered, where he had sold his potions, where his life had first intersected with the violence of the surface world.
He stopped.
He scanned the treeline. The shadows were long now, the sun having passed its zenith and begun the slow descent toward afternoon.
"Watabei?" he called out.
His voice was small in the vastness of the forest.
No answer.
He moved toward the spot where they had parted, the secluded hollow behind the crumbling wall. It was empty. The hammer was gone. The disturbed dust had settled.
She wasn't here.
He turned, looking for the one presence he knew lingered at the edges of things.
She was there.
The Moss Hag.
She stood near the base of an old oak, her bark-like skin blending almost perfectly with the trunk. She looked like a part of the tree, except for her eyes—milky, aware, watching him with the specific heaviness of old things.
"Grandma," Goburo said. The word felt strange in his mouth, a relic of the respect Thorn hollow had taught him to pay to elders, even those of other species.
The Moss Hag shifted, separating herself from the tree.
"You have the smell of death on you, little one," she said. Her voice was the rustle of dry leaves. "But it is not your death."
"I'm looking for the girl," Goburo said. "The human. Watabei."
The Moss Hag tilted her head. Her moss-hair swayed.
"The hammer-girl," she said. "She passed. Running. Fast feet for a human."
"Where did she go?"
The Moss Hag raised a gnarled hand and pointed deeper into the forest, away from the ruined village.
"She said she had to retrieve something," the Hag said. "She said she would be back."
"When?"
The old creature seemed to think, her eyes dimming as she consulted whatever internal clock ancient forest spirits kept.
"Soon," she murmured. "She said afternoon. The sun is moving toward that mark." She gestured to a gap in the canopy. "She will return when the light touches the third ridge."
Goburo looked at the sun. It would be an hour, maybe two.
"Thank you," he said.
He turned to leave, but the Moss Hag spoke again.
"The village is quiet now," she said. "The screaming stopped. The thing in the square... it is not moving."
Goburo stopped. His shoulders tensed.
"I know," he said, not turning back.
"It is waiting," she observed.
"I know."
"Where will you wait, little goblin?"
Goburo looked at the forest path. The market district was too open. The village was too dangerous. There was only one place left—a place he hadn't visited since the morning he had met the grandma, since he had started building the shack.
"The hut," he said quietly.
The Moss Hag nodded slowly.
"Go, then. The past is a safe place to rest, for a short time. But do not linger too long in memory. It has a way of keeping you."
Goburo nodded.
He left the market behind and headed into the forest, following a path his feet remembered better than his mind.
The hut was exactly as he had left it.
It sat in the small clearing, a ramshackle construction of sticks and mud and salvaged hope. It looked smaller now. When he had first found it, it had seemed like a fortress. Now, with the archive's knowledge of structural engineering in his head, he could see every flaw—the stress fractures in the support beams, the inefficient angle of the roof, the gaps in the insulation.
But it was still standing.
He pushed open the door—it stuck slightly on the uneven floor—and stepped inside.
The air was stale. Dust motes danced in the beams of light that filtered through the cracks in the walls.
He sat down in the corner.
His corner.
The spot where he had huddled for days after the fire, shivering, starving, waiting to die.
He closed his eyes.
And for a moment, the archive went quiet.
The calculations stopped. The threat assessments faded.
In the silence of the hut, he remembered.
He remembered Thorn hollow.
He saw the smoke of the morning cooking fires. He smelled the stew his mother used to make—thick with forest herbs and tubers. He heard the laughter of the other children, the specific sound of his little sister giggling as she chased a glowing beetle through the undergrowth.
He remembered the feeling of the sun on his face, warm and uncomplicated.
He remembered being happy.
It was a specific kind of happiness—the happiness of a life that made sense. A life where you woke up, you worked, you ate, you slept, and you were surrounded by people who knew your name.
He remembered the carpentry. The smell of sawdust. The satisfaction of a joint fitting perfectly.
"Look at that, Goburo," his father would say, inspecting his work. "You've got the hands for this. You're going to build things that last."
Things that last.
He opened his eyes and looked at his hands. They were scarred now. Dirty. Stained with the sap of the roots that had pinned him.
Nothing lasts.
The memory shifted.
The happiness blurred into the smell of smoke.
He saw the entity—the mobile plant that had come from the east. He saw it moving through the settlement, not with malice, but with the terrifying indifference of a forest fire.
He saw the vines.
He heard the scream.
*Goburo...*
He flinched.
A sound from outside.
A snap of a twig. The rustle of leaves.
The memory shattered. The archive snapped back online, flooding his vision with threat data.
*Sound source: 4 metres, north side. Weight distribution: light. Humanoid.*
Goburo held his breath. He pressed himself against the wall of the hut, his hand drifting to the knife on his belt.
The rustling moved away. A bird took flight from the canopy above.
Just the wind. Just the forest resettling.
He exhaled slowly.
He couldn't stay here.
The past was not a safe place. The Moss Hag was right. It kept you. It pulled you down into the dark.
He stood up. His legs were stiff.
He looked around the hut one last time.
"Goodbye," he whispered to the empty room.
He stepped outside.
The shack stood in the market square.
He had walked back, circling the village to avoid the centre, keeping to the perimeter where the system's detection radius would be weakest.
He approached the half-finished structure. It was a skeleton of wood and salvage—stronger than the hut, smarter than the first shack.
He sat down on the pile of debris that served as a step.
And he waited.
The afternoon sun moved across the sky. The light touched the third ridge, just as the Moss Hag had predicted.
The forest edge was quiet.
And then, she appeared.
She didn't sneak up on him this time. She walked out of the tree line with a heavy pack on her back, her face flushed with exertion.
She saw him immediately.
She stopped.
She stared at him, sitting there on the step of a half-built shack in the middle of a ruined village, surrounded by the echoes of a massacre.
Watabei walked over. She dropped the pack on the ground with a heavy thud. She stood over him, her hands on her hips, trying to catch her breath.
"You're still here," she said.
"I said I would be," Goburo replied.
She looked around, scanning for threats, her eyes lingering on the direction of the market square centre.
"Is... is it still there? The plant?"
"It's there," Goburo said. "It hasn't moved."
Watabei shivered.
"And you're just... sitting here?"
Goburo looked up at her. His face was blank, drained by the events of the day, but his eyes were steady.
"I was waiting for you," he said.
Watabei blinked.
"You were... waiting?"
"Yes."
"For me?"
"You said you would come back."
Watabei stared at him.
For a moment, her serious, hardened expression cracked. A flush of pink crept up her neck to her cheeks. She looked away quickly, brushing a strand of hair out of her face with a dirty hand.
"Oh," she said. "Well. Good. That's... efficient."
She cleared her throat.
"I brought supplies. And maps. And..." She kicked the pack. "Information. About the Vial."
She looked back at him, her face composed again, though the tips of her ears were still red.
"But we can't stay here," she said. "We need to move. Before that thing decides to finish what it started."
Goburo nodded. He stood up.
"Where are we going?"
"Away from here," Watabei said. "To find the cure. To find the Vial of God."
She looked at him, her eyes softening for just a second.
"And to find a way to get your friend back."
Goburo looked toward the market square one last time.
He turned his back on it.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go."
TO BE CONTINUED...