Lysa sat on the cliff overlooking the river, knees drawn up, chin resting on them. The receding sunlight caught in her hair and turned it a darker shade of black and Grey found himself staring longer than he should have before he remembered to keep walking.
He had always done that. Looked at her longer than necessary when she wasn't paying attention.
She didn't look surprised when he sat beside her.
"So," she said. "You survived."
"Barely."
She smiled faintly. "What did you get?"
"A sound bat. Elite."
She nodded slowly, as if she had already settled on a response before he answered. "Good. Strong beasts suit you."
Grey looked sideways at her. He could feel something inside her, warm and heavy and ancient, nothing like the small beasts the other children had been showing off in the square.
Whatever Lysa carried it had weight to it. He could sense it from here.
But she was nervous. Her fingers twisted slowly in her skirt. Her breathing was too careful, the breathing of someone concentrating on appearing calm.
"What about you?" he asked.
"A moss fox," she said. "Common rank."
Grey said nothing. Just nodded and looked back out at the river.
She was lying and they both knew it and neither of them was going to say so. She would tell him when she was ready. Or she wouldn't. Either way it was her right.
They sat in silence, listening to the river below and the distant drums carrying faintly through the evening air.
Two people on a cliff with their respective secrets and the particular comfort of not needing to fill the quiet with noise.
Grey had always liked that about Lysa. She understood silence. She didn't treat it as something that needed fixing.
She nudged him with her shoulder. "You're thinking too hard."
"So are you."
They both laughed softly.
The sound of hurried, slightly breathless footsteps broke through their laughter from the path behind them. They turned to see a young boy approaching.
"Grey! The Chief wants you!" he called out.
Grey sighed. "I'm in trouble."
"You always are," Lysa said with a smile.
But there was worry underneath the smile, the kind that belonged to someone who knew him well enough to read the difference between ordinary trouble and the other kind.
He stood, dusted his clothes and headed back down the path behind the boy.
---
The Chief's hut stood at the center of Seaside, larger than all the others, its roof woven from thick bark strips and spirit-grass.
Grey had been inside more times than he could count, had eaten meals here, slept here during storms, sat by this fire listening to the Chief talk about the world beyond Seaside in the quiet way he had of teaching things without making them feel like lessons.
Tonight it felt different.
He stepped inside and the door closed behind him.
The Chief sat by the fire alone. No elders, no guards. Just him and the fire and the smoke rising slowly through the hole in the roof.
"Sit," the Chief said.
Grey sat.
For a long moment the old man said nothing, poking at the fire and watching sparks climb, his eyes distant in the way they got when he was deciding how to say something he had been holding for a long time.
Grey waited. His stomach twisted slowly.
'This is it,' he thought. 'He promised.'
He had wanted this for as long as he could remember. Had built a picture from the gaps, from careful avoidances and conversations that stopped just short of saying the thing.
Not the same as having the actual picture. And now the actual picture was apparently on the other side of whatever the Chief was about to say.
"You are old enough now," the Chief said quietly. "There is something I must tell you"
He reached into a wooden chest and pulled out two objects wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped them slowly.
A silver locket with a ruby stone set into it. And a small carved totem made of dark wood.
Grey's breath caught.
He reached for the locket before the Chief said anything. It felt familiar in his palm in a way that made no sense, the weight and temperature of it, like something his hands already knew.
He turned it over. On the back plate, scratched carefully into the silver, was a name.
Arcas.
The totem was stranger. A coiled creature with horns like branches and scales shaped like leaves, its tail curling around a tiny tree sprouting from its own back.
The carving was worn smooth from handling, the wood darkened with age.
He set both down and looked at the Chief.
"You were not born in this village," the Chief said.
Grey didn't speak. He wasn't surprised. He had always suspected it, carried the suspicion quietly for years without examining it too directly.
"Years ago, when I was still young and considerably more foolish, I went hunting alone near the eastern edge of the forest. I heard fighting, screams, and underneath everything, the crying of a child... So I quickly ran towards the sound thinking it was bandits."
The fire crackled between them.
"When I arrived, I saw Aberrants. Many of them. And a woman fighting them with beast arts I had never seen before. She carried a baby in one arm and fought with the other. She had a fierce expression on her face and I could tell that she refused to fall until the child was safe."
Grey leaned forward without realising.
"She was already dying," the Chief said, the words flat and careful, the sound of something rehearsed many times. "But when she saw me she crossed the distance between us and pushed you into my arms."
Grey's throat closed.
"She said her name was Callisto. She said powerful forces hunted her bloodline. That the current world powers wanted her dead." He paused. "And you too."
Grey frowned. Emerald Palace, Solaris, Neridia. The three powers that had divided the world between them for centuries, institutions so entrenched they felt less like organisations and more like features of the landscape. What kind of bloodline attracted all three?
"She told me to run. So I ran. But before I did she pressed the locket and totem into my hand." The Chief looked at him steadily. "She told me to give them to you when you were old enough. And to tell you one more thing."
Grey's voice came out quieter than he intended. "What?"
"She said; tell my son to find Arcadia."
The fire crackled louder this time.
Grey sat completely still.
Arcadia. The ancient kingdom from myths and half-burnt maps and stories old sailors told on long voyages, always prefaced with I heard from a man who heard from another man.
The place that supposedly existed before the current world order. The place that, depending on who was telling the story, had either never existed or had been erased so thoroughly that the erasure was the point.
'She wants me to find a place that might not even exist?' It was a bit ridiculous
"What happened to her?" he asked.
The Chief shook his head. "She ran back into the forest to draw the forces away. I never saw her again."
The hut was silent except for the crackling of the fire.
Grey looked down at the locket in his palm. His reflection warped in the ruby stone, small and distorted.
Callisto. Mother. Arcas. Arcadia. No mention of his father. He noted the absence and set it aside for later.
"I named you Grey because of your hair and your eyes," the Chief continued.
"Silver-grey like storm clouds. I thought a common name might slow your enemies down."
Grey laughed weakly. "You should have picked something less noticeable then."
The Chief smiled sadly. "You grew well. Better than I dared hope. Trouble follows you like a devoted animal but you always come home."
They sat quietly for a moment.
Then the Chief stood. "Think on it. The truth is yours now to do as you please."
He left quietly, pulling the door behind him, giving Grey the space he had always somehow known to provide.
Grey stayed by the fire.
He opened the locket again and again, running his thumb over the carved name until the metal warmed under his touch. He held the totem in his other hand and turned it slowly.
"I'll find you," he said quietly, to the empty hut and the fire and wherever his mother was. "If you're alive. I'll find you."
And Arcadia too. Whatever it was, wherever it was. He would figure the details out later. He was getting reasonably good at that.
Outside, the village had gone quiet, the celebration finally winding down, drums fading and voices dropping to nothing.
The night deepened and crickets filled the space the drums had left, loud and indifferent to everything that had happened today.
Grey didn't know how long he sat there.
Until a scream tore through the dark.
He was on his feet before the sound finished, locket and totem already in his hands.
Another scream followed. Then an explosion shook the ground hard enough that the fire leapt from its pit and the walls of the hut trembled around him.
More screams and shouts could be heard now. There was the crash of something large hitting the ground nearby then another explosion, closer this time, lighting the gaps in the hut walls in sudden terrible red.
Grey hurriedly ran for the door, the stirring in his gut telling him that something bad might happen.
Outside, the village burned in sudden, terrible light.