Morning at the estate was unusually quiet. Pollux did not stand by the window to watch the horizon, but went looking for Orion. He found him in the stables, checking the hooves of his horse. The air here smelled of hay and the warmth of animals, a sharp contrast to the frosty silence Pollux had brought back from the north.
"Too much seriousness in your face today, brother," Orion spoke without looking up from the hoof. "Even for someone Fenryr tormented in the snow for over a month."
Pollux sat down on a low wooden bench.
"Orion, those roads you travel..." Pollux began quietly. "You always said they reach all the way to the borders. Where the mountains turn into plains."
Orion slowly straightened up. He set aside the hoof knife and wiped his hands on his apron. His mischievous expression slowly faded, replaced by something deeper, something only the two of them shared. "They reach everywhere there's someone waiting for a message. Why do you ask?"
"Because I am the message the South is looking for," Pollux replied, looking Orion directly in the eyes. "As long as I am here, Skeldar is not safe. Kyrios would defend me, Fenryr would die for me, and you... you would lie to every mercenary until your tongue fell off. But I cannot allow this mountain to become my fortress at the cost of your lives."
Orion sighed and leaned against the wall of the stall. "We thought the mountains would calm you enough to make you forget about that."
"The mountains taught me the truth, Orion. Snow is honest, remember? And the truth is that if I want the shadow chasing me to vanish from Skeldar, I must lead it away. Not in fear, but with the knowledge of where I belong."
They did not wait for evening. Pollux requested a meeting in the small hall where usually only the family met. Kyrios sat there with Filopsis, Fenryr stood in the shadows behind them. Aurora and Liberia sat at a small table in the corner of the room next to the library.
Pollux stepped before Kyrios. He did not come to beg; he came to announce his journey.
"Sir," Pollux began, his voice sounding firm in the hall. "You gave me a home when I had no name. You gave me a brother when I was alone. But if I am to be worthy of what you've done for me, I cannot hide here forever. Aethel will not stop looking for its 00001. If I stay, I bring a storm to your doors that these people do not deserve."
Silence fell over the hall. Aurora pulled her woolen cloak tighter around her. Kyrios watched him with interest that held no anger, only recognition.
"I want to go south," Pollux continued. "I want to lose myself in the cities below the mountains. I want to learn more about what I am, so that one day I can stand against those who think they own me. But I do not want to leave as a fugitive. I want to leave with your blessing, as someone who belongs to this clan."
Kyrios slowly stood up. He walked to Pollux and looked into his eyes for a long time. "I hoped the mountains would convince you to remain our secret, Pollux. But the mountains have clearly taught you more about honor than I anticipated."
He looked at Fenryr, who gave a brief, heavy nod.
"You shall go," Kyrios said. "But you shall not go alone. Orion will escort you to the southern passes. You will have a horse, supplies, and our word that if you ever decide to return, the gate of the Kyrios clan will be open to you. You were never a number. You are Pollux of Skeldar."
Pollux felt his throat tighten.
Three days later, two saddled horses stood in the lower courtyard. The air was humid and warm; spring was definitively preparing for summer. Pollux had his old leather backpack on his back. The pistol was deep inside, silent and invisible.
Fenryr checked the straps on his saddle. "Don't forget what we did up there, Pollux. When you start hearing the noise of the cities, the silence in your head will be your only rampart."
"I won't forget," Pollux nodded.
Then Aurora approached him. For three days she had been quiet, almost avoiding him, but now she blocked his path. She pulled her hand from her cloak pocket, clutching something small in her palm. It was a ring made of matte northern steel, simple and raw, as if someone had forged it directly from the rock.
"This one is from the oldest steel Hlyn found in the mines," she said with a trembling voice, but with her gaze fixed directly on him. When she opened her fingers, Pollux saw the ring. It was matte, simple, but on its inner side, a small inscription was engraved: The snow found your home.
Pollux felt that in that moment, he was bound to this land more strongly than by any promise.
"Find your way back, Pollux," she whispered so only he could hear. "I will be waiting for you. No matter how far you wander, you have your fire here."
Pollux could not speak. He only squeezed her hand firmly and then swung into the saddle. Orion was already sitting on his horse, his face wearing that typical expression—a mix of adventure and gravity.
"Let's go then, brother," Orion called out. "The South doesn't wait, and the roads won't travel themselves."
They rode out of the gate. Pollux did not look back even once. He knew that if he did and saw Aurora standing in the courtyard, he might lose the courage to leave. But the ring in his hand drove him forward. He was no longer number 00001. He was Pollux, who carried Skeldar within him.
The road from the Kyrios clan's estate toward the south was not as steep as the climb to the northern ridges, but it held a different weight. With every kilometer the horses traveled along the stony paths, the mountains at their backs seemed higher and more inaccessible.
Pollux walked beside his horse, saving its strength in sections where the mud reached up to his ankles. The ring in his hand was a constant reminder—cold metal that wouldn't let him forget the promise given to Aurora. Orion went a few meters ahead of him, whistling a quiet melody that Pollux didn't know, occasionally pushing aside overhanging fir branches with his staff.
"The air is changing here, do you feel it?" Orion spoke up and stopped his horse at a small resting point from where one could see deep into the valley.
Pollux took a breath. He was right. It was no longer that sterile air of the north. Something damp forced its way into his lungs, saturated with the scent of decaying leaves and... something else. Something artificial.
"I feel it," Pollux replied quietly. "It's like smoke, but not from wood. There's oil in it. And metal."
"The border isn't far," Orion jumped from the saddle and handed Pollux a water skin. "Another day, maybe two, and the mountains will open up. That's where my territory ends and a world begins where people ask for your name before they offer you a place by the fire. Are you sure you want to go this way? We can still turn around and tell Kyrios that the passes are blocked."
Pollux looked into his hand. The ring reflected the dull spring light. "We can't, Orion. We both know that if I return now, I'll just be waiting there for someone to invade us."
In the evening, they camped in a dense forest where the snow was almost gone. Pollux sat by a small fire and tried to concentrate. Fenryr's school of silence helped him block out the growing noise he felt in the distance.
It was no longer just his perception of technopathy. It was the sound of a world waking up. In the distance, somewhere below them, a trade route must have run, because at night, when the wind died down, he heard the muffled rhythm of engines—something heavy moving through the night. Aethel Biotech? Maybe. Or just a common trade convoy from Concordia heading toward the borders.
"Nervous?" Orion asked, seeing how Pollux constantly stared into the darkness toward the south.
"No," Pollux lied. "I'm just getting used to the fact that it's getting crowded in my head again. That peace from the mountains is harder to hold onto down here."
"You must be like water in a river, Pollux," Orion said seriously. "A river doesn't worry about hitting rocks. It just flows on. If you fight every sound you hear, your head will explode before we see the first customs post."
Pollux nodded. He tried to find that silence again, the one he had fought for in the north. He imagined the snow. He imagined Alina's face and Aurora's ring. Slowly, very slowly, the pressure in his temples began to release.
He fell asleep with his hand on the handle of the knife Fenryr had given him. The pistol in the backpack remained untouched. He promised himself that unless it was a matter of life and death, he wouldn't allow that metal to control him again.
The next morning, rain woke them. It wasn't mountain snow; it was a cold, persistent rain that turned roads into traps.
"Let's move," Orion commanded. "Tonight will be long. And if I'm not mistaken, we won't be alone on the road in this weather. Smugglers and bandits love the spring mist as much as I love fresh bread."
The rain didn't stop. The road turned into a slimy trap and visibility dropped to a few horse lengths. The mist clung to the trees like dirty wool. Orion went ahead, alert, with a hand placed on his staff, while Pollux led his horse by the bridle. He clutched Aurora's ring in his left palm under his glove; its coldness calmed him more than the warmth of a fire.
Suddenly Orion stopped. It wasn't a sharp gesture, but rather a smooth merging with the horse's movement. Pollux froze instantly. He blocked out the noise of the falling drops and concentrated.
Three figures emerged from the dense growth along the sides of the road. They weren't mercenaries in clean uniforms. They were men from the edge of the world—in torn leather, with faces marked by frost and hunger. They held long knives in their hands, and one had an old crossbow that rust had already bitten into.
"The messenger," the tallest one spat, with a scar across his jaw. "And his shadow. You have more than just letters in your pack today, Orion. We can feel it."
"You only feel your own hunger, men," Orion replied, shaken from his drowsiness, though Pollux saw his back muscles tense. "Step back. This message isn't for you."
"We don't care about messages. But we do care about those horses and what that boy has under his coat," the man with the crossbow took a step forward.
Pollux felt something break within him. A month ago, he would have panicked. Today, however, he saw their movement in slow motion. He saw the man with the crossbow tensing his finger on the trigger. He saw the weight of their bodies in the mud. Fenryr's training came alive in him with chilling clarity.
"Don't give them a reason," Orion whispered, but it was already too late.
The man with the crossbow fired. The bolt flew right past Orion's ear and ended up in a tree trunk. At that same moment, the remaining two lunged forward.
Pollux didn't wait and lightning-fast pulled out the knife from Fenryr.
The first attacker was upon him before Orion could jump off his horse. Pollux didn't attempt elegant fencing. He did exactly what Fenryr had taught him in the deep snow—he used the opponent's weight. Dodging to the side, he caught the man's wrist and, with a short, raw elbow strike, broke his arm. The knife fell into the mud. But Pollux didn't stop. Without hesitation, he drove the blade of his knife beneath the man's collarbone.
No hesitation. Before his eyes was Aurora's face and the clan's estate. Each of these men was a threat to the peace he had left behind. If he didn't stop them now, they would return.
The third bandit, seeing the speed with which his companion fell, hesitated. That was his last mistake. Pollux lunged from the mud with a ferocity he had awakened within himself on the northern ridges. His eyes gleamed with amber. He was silent as snow, but destructive as an avalanche. The knife cut through the air and immediately through the attacker's throat.
Orion knocked the man with the crossbow to the ground with a strike of his staff, but when he turned, he stood with his mouth slightly open. Pollux stood in the middle of the road, his hand dripping with blood that was immediately diluted in the rain. There was emptiness in his eyes—that frosty, impartial peace of the mountains.
"Pollux..." Orion exhaled and slowly walked up to him. "It would have been enough to drive them away."
Pollux looked at him, but did not lower the hand with the knife. "I'm not leaving to let them follow us, Orion. I'm leaving to end everything that could threaten you. Snow is honest. They are not."
Orion saw that the boy they had escorted north a month ago was no longer standing before him. Standing there was a man who had accepted his role with all its rawness.
"Let's clean this up," Orion said more quietly, realizing that Pollux was right. "And let's move. Blood in the forest attracts worse things than these three."
Pollux wiped the knife on the grass and returned it to its sheath. In his left hand under the glove, he again firmly squeezed the ring. His heart beat calmly. He did what he had to. For them. For the family he had just left in the safety of the mountains.
The rain stopped, but the cold remained. The forest below the pass was soaked and heavy; the bleak morning only slowly broke through the clouds. They reached the place where the mountains definitively broke. Before them opened a grey valley that no longer belonged to Skeldar—it was a no-man's-land, a buffer zone before the actual civilization of the South began.
They stopped at an old boundary stone that was almost overgrown with moss and lichen. Orion jumped off his horse and looked into the distance for a long time, there where the first telegraph poles loomed in the haze. To him, it was the end of the world. To Pollux, it was the beginning of the return.
"This is where our paths diverge, brother," Orion said quietly. "My messages don't go any further. If I go with you, the people from the South will notice a messenger from the Kyrios estate before you even have a chance to say your name."
Pollux nodded. He dismounted his horse and walked up to him. He felt the fatigue from yesterday's fight in his hands, but his mind was clear.
"Tell them..." Pollux paused. "Tell them that the shadow I carried away will not return to them."
Orion looked at him for a long time. He saw in his face traces of the blood that the rain had washed away yesterday, and he saw something in it that both terrified and fascinated him at the same time. "I won't tell them like that. I'll tell them that you went to fight for all of us. I'll tell Aurora that you wear that ring as if it were your honor."
Orion reached into the saddlebag and pulled out a small, sealed tube. "Kyrios sends you this. They are documents. False, but in Skeldar they carry weight. According to them, you are just a wandering clock repairman from the southern provinces. Choose the name yourself, but this will open doors to trade caravans for you."
Pollux accepted the tube. "Thank you for everything, Orion. If you hadn't found me then..."
"It wasn't me who found you, it was Alina," Orion corrected him and smiled again for the first time, though there was bitterness in that smile. "I only helped carry you into the warmth. And now I have to let you go into the cold. Promise me one thing."
Pollux waited.
"Don't forget the silence of our mountains in the noise of the South. When their machines start talking in your head again, remember the snow."
Pollux firmly shook Orion's hand. It was a short, manly gesture in which everything was said. Then he turned and stepped toward the valley. He did not look back. He walked on foot until his figure began to disappear in the spring haze.
Orion stood by the boundary stone until Pollux had completely vanished. Then he sighed, swung into the saddle, and turned his horse back toward the ridges. He had a long way home ahead of him, where he had to explain to the family that their brother had turned into a weapon they themselves had helped to forge.
Pollux walked forward and felt the noise of civilization intensifying. The ring in his palm was cold and heavy. In his backpack, the weapon from ancient times weighed on him, but he was no longer its slave. He was Pollux, who carried Skeldar in his heart and the promise of return in his palm.