The village had no name, or if it once had, the name had been forgotten by the people who lived there. They were a scattered folk, trappers and hunters and the descendants of those who had fled the wars of the Skylords a generation ago. They lived in huts of stone and hide, huddled at the edge of the Frostfangs where the cold was not quite so killing and the wind did not howl quite so loud.
Kaelen had known places like this before. In another life, he had passed through them, sometimes leaving them in ashes, sometimes leaving them untouched. He had never stayed.
They approached at dusk, when the light was fading and the shadows were long and the people of the village were gathered around their fires, telling stories of the old days and the old wars and the things that lived in the mountains.
Theron walked beside him, his eyes scanning the huts, the fires, the faces of the people who watched them approach. He had learned to read a village the way his father had taught him—looking for the guards, the weapons, the exits. Looking for the signs of danger that could come at any moment.
But there were no guards. No weapons. The people who watched them were old, mostly, their faces weathered by years of cold and hardship, their eyes tired in a way that had nothing to do with age.
They had seen too much, these people. They had fled too far. And now they were just waiting for the end.
"Strangers," a voice called out from the darkness. "We don't get many strangers here."
An old man stepped out from behind one of the huts, his face hidden in the shadow of his hood, his hands wrapped around a staff that had been carved with symbols that Kaelen recognized.
Aethyr-runes. Old ones. The kind that had been used before the Skylords taught men to write their names in blood and bone.
"We're travelers," Kaelen said, his voice flat, careful. "Looking for shelter. Food. We can pay."
The old man laughed, a dry, rattling sound that had no humor in it. "Pay with what? We have no use for coin here. No use for anything that comes from the world beyond the mountains."
He stepped closer, and the firelight caught his face, and Kaelen felt something tighten in his chest.
He knew this man.
Not by name, not by memory. But there was something in the way he moved, the way he held himself, the way his eyes flickered over Kaelen's face, searching for something that he had seen before.
"You're him," the old man said, and his voice was different now. Quieter. Harder. "The one they called the Fist. The God-Killer. The man who burned the world and called it salvation."
Theron tensed beside him, his hand moving toward his blade. But Kaelen did not move. He had been expecting this, or something like it. The world was small, in the places where the Skylords held no power. News traveled on the wind, on the whispers of those who had nowhere else to go.
"I was that man," he said. "Once."
The old man studied him for a long moment, his eyes moving over the marks on Kaelen's chest, the scars on his hands, the weight of five years of running that had carved itself into his face.
"And now?"
Kaelen reached into his pack and pulled out the Echo. The light that pulsed from it was soft, warm, a contrast to the cold that had settled into his bones over five years in the wastes.
"Now I'm something else."
The old man stared at the Echo, his face unreadable. And then, slowly, he smiled.
"Then you're welcome here," he said. "Both of you. Come. We have food. We have shelter. We have stories, if you want to hear them. And I think... I think you have stories of your own."
He turned and walked toward the largest of the huts, his staff tapping against the frozen ground, the runes on its surface flickering in the firelight.
Kaelen looked at Theron, at his son's face, at the questions that were written there.
"Who was he?" Theron asked. "How did he know you?"
"I don't know," Kaelen said. "But I think we're about to find out."