Kael considered his position.
He was alive, which was more than the prediction had allowed for. He had no energy points, no combat skills, no knowledge of local customs, language patterns, power structures, or geography beyond this forest and one damaged village. He was wearing stolen clothes that didn't fit properly and had a carved wound on his palm and a sentient eye in his skull. His curse would kill him in twenty-nine days and some hours if he didn't find a woman willing to confess her feelings for him.
To find that woman, he needed to be among people. To be among people, he needed a reason to exist in their world, a story, a role, a way in. He couldn't walk into a village as a stranger in ill-fitting clothes and expect to be welcomed. Not in a world where something had just fallen from the sky and incinerated a section of the settlement. The villagers would be terrified, suspicious, looking for explanations and threats.
Unless the stranger was a victim too.
The plan was already forming. It was the same instinct that had guided him at the store. The understanding that people didn't trust strength. They trusted need. A person who arrived competent and composed would be questioned. A person who arrived hurt and confused would be helped. And once you were being helped, you were inside. You belonged to the people who had saved you, and belonging was a form of access that no amount of competence could buy.
'You're going to pretend to be hurt.' Xi said it before he even moved.
'Not pretend. I am hurt.'
He held up his left hand, the one with the word "Endure" carved into the palm. It had stopped bleeding but the wound was raw, visible, dramatic enough to be convincing. He also hadn't slept. The circles under his eyes were real. The dirt on his skin was real. He looked, objectively, like someone who had been through something terrible, because he had been through something terrible. The only falsehood would be the story he attached to it.
—
Kael chose a spot on the outskirts of the village, near the path the villagers would use when they returned from the fields. He smeared additional dirt on his face and arms, not dramatically, just enough to obscure the fact that his skin was cleaner than anyone in this village had probably ever been. He lay down on his side, positioned the wounded hand where it would be visible, and closed his eyes.
Then he waited.
'What if they don't come back?'
'They'll come back. They have nowhere else to go.'
'What if they don't find you?'
'I'm on the main path. They'd have to step over me.'
'What if they think you're dead and bury you?'
'Then I'll have a very interesting conversation with whoever digs the grave.'
'That's not funny.'
'I wasn't being funny.'
'You were a little bit funny. I think that might be worse. Are you always like this?'
Kael didn't answer. The truth was that he didn't know. He'd never had someone inside his head to notice the way he talked to himself during a crisis
They lay there, Kael on the ground, Xi in his skull, for the better part of a several minutes. The sun moved. The smoke from the village thinned. Small insects crawled across Kael's arms.
Then footsteps. Distant at first, then closer. Voices, scattered, nervous, the sounds of people returning to a place they'd fled.
"Thank God, the thing that made the fire, it's gone, right? It's gone?"
"My house—oh no. Oh no, my house—"
"Barden! Barden, are you alive?!"
The name moved through the returning crowd like a stone dropped into water. Kael heard it ripple outward—Barden, Barden, has anyone seen Barden—and he lay on the ground with his eyes closed and let it pass over him the way weather passes over a rock.
Barden was dead.Bardenhad died wearing Kael's school uniform, burned to vapour by a column of fire meant for someone else, and the people calling his name would never know why.
The villagers filtered into the village in groups. Kael listened as the sounds shifted from panic to grim organization—someone with authority began directing efforts, assigning tasks, counting heads. Twenty minutes passed. The injured were pulled from rubble. Property damage was assessed. Then someone nearly tripped over him.
Kael listened with his eyes closed. The villagers were filtering back in groups of three and four, approaching from the fields to the north. He could hear them spreading out through the village—the sounds of doors opening, of wreckage being moved, of voices calling names and sometimes getting answers and sometimes not.
A few more minutes passed.
The sounds of the village shifted from panic to organization, the village chief, an older man whose voice carried the practiced authority of someone used to being obeyed, began directing the recovery effort. Injured survivors were being pulled from collapsed structures. Property damage was being assessed. The rhythms of communal crisis management, probably identical in every world.
Then someone nearly tripped over him.
"Hey! There's someone here! On the ground!"
Footsteps. Several sets, approaching quickly. Kael kept his eyes closed and his body limp and listened to them gather around him.
"Is he dead?"
"No—look, he's breathing."
"He's not from the village. Look at his face. Black hair, pale skin, no one here looks like that."
"Maybe he's from the town?"
"Town people don't come out here. And look at his hand, he's hurt."
"Why are you all standing around talking? Help him up. We need all the hands we can get."
A rough hand touched his shoulder. Kael let his eyelids flutter, then open. He looked up at a ring of weathered faces staring down at him, men and women, sun-darkened, dressed in homespun, their expressions cycling between concern and suspicion.
He blinked. He let his mouth open slightly, as if struggling to focus. He said nothing, because saying nothing was always the right first move when you wanted people to project their own narrative onto you.
The mind-reading activated.
It was seamless. No effort, no visible change. He looked at the nearest face, a woman, mid-thirties, holding a damp cloth, and the eye opened a channel, and her thoughts arrived in his mind like text on a screen.
——poor boy, so young. That hand looks awful. Could be from Luton Village, I heard the Crimson Marauders hit them hard.
Next, a heavy-set man with a suspicious expression.
—don't trust him. Strange-looking. Could be trouble. But if I say that out loud and the others think I'm heartless, it'll be the goat incident all over again—
A young man at the back. Twenty or so. Arms crossed. Staring.
—who IS this? Never seen hair that colour. Face is—I don't know. The girls are going to lose their minds when he cleans up. Great. Just what I needed—
Three minds. Three seconds. The village's social dynamics laid bare in a single scan: the cautious man, the compassionate wife, the insecure young man. These were simple people with readable fears and predictable kindnesses.
He let his eyes flutter open. Blinked. Let his mouth hang slightly open, as if focusing was difficult. He said nothing, because saying nothing was always the right first move when you wanted people to write the story for you.
"Water... water..."
His voice came out cracked and thin. He genuinely hadn't had water in hours. But the weakness in it was managed, the performance of a person barely holding on. He'd done this a thousand times. At the store, the display was warmth. Here, it was fragility. Different mask, same architecture.
"He's asking for water. Who has water?"
"Used all mine putting out the fire—"
"Mine's evaporated—"
"I have water at home! I'll get some!"
A voice from the back of the crowd—light, quick, already turning to run. Kael caught a glimpse through the shifting bodies: a girl, small, brown hair catching the light as she moved. She navigated the debris-strewn paths with the automatic ease of someone who'd walked them her entire life. Her clothes were smoke-stained but carefully mended, each repair nearly invisible despite the wear. The stitching of someone who understood fabric the way a musician understands an instrument.
The eye identified her before she'd taken ten steps.
Violet. Female, 16. Villager, Ella Village.
Production: Fruit Farmer — Lv 1.
Manufacturing: Tailor — Lvl 4.
Combat: None.
Kael read it. Then he read her surface thoughts as she ran.
—he looks so hurt, I need to hurry, the well bucket should still have water in it, I hope the rope didn't burn—
Simple thoughts. Direct. No calculation, no subtext, no hidden angle. Just a girl seeing someone in pain and running to help. Kael filed the information and felt nothing, and the feeling of nothing was so familiar it didn't even register as absence anymore.
—
Two men helped him sit up. A rough voice cut through the murmuring—the voice of the man who'd been directing the recovery effort.
"Boy. Water's coming. I'm the village chief here. Name's Woodall. What's yours? Where are you from?"
Woodall, Male, 54. Village Chief, Ella Village.
Production: Hunter — Lv2
Manufacturing: None
Combat: Archer — Lv2
Kael looked up at him. Woodall was broad, weathered, mid-fifties, with the bearing of a man accustomed to being the largest authority in any room. His hands were calloused in the particular way of someone who used a bow. A hunter. The eye gave him the full readout, but Kael was already reading the man's thoughts:
—young. Hurt. Foreign-looking but the clothes are local. If he's from Luton, he's been through hell. We need young blood after today. Four dead, two critical. Every hand counts—
Woodall wanted him to stay. Kael could work with that.
"I..." Kael let his voice falter. Swallowed. Started again, slower, weaker. "My name is... Barrow. I... I escaped... from Luton Village..."
Woodall's expression shifted. The suspicion didn't vanish, it rearranged itself into something more sympathetic, the way a guard lowers a weapon when the approaching figure turns out to be a child. His thoughts confirmed it:
—Luton Village. Damn Crimson Marauders. If I was twenty years younger, no, ten years younger, I'd have led a team to destroy them. How did things get this bad—
Woodall put his hand on Kael's back. Then his arm around his shoulders. The gesture was paternal, proprietary, the body language of a man claiming a new resource for his community.
"So you're from Luton Village. You had a hard time, kid." He squeezed Kael's shoulder. "Barrow, this is just a small village, but if you're willing to stay, everyone will treat you like family."
"Thank... thank you, village chief." Kael let his voice crack on the last word. "Thank you all... for taking me in."
The performance was flawless. Every stammer, every downcast eye, every tremor in his voice, all of it precisely engineered to activate the specific emotional responses he'd read in the minds around him.
The compassionate woman would feel validated. The suspicious husband would feel ashamed of his caution. The young man would feel a reluctant admiration. And Woodall... Woodall would feel the satisfaction of a leader who had made a generous decision that was also, conveniently, a practical one.
Violet came back with the water. She was out of breath, a clay cup clutched in both hands, held carefully so as not to spill. She pushed through the gathered villagers and knelt beside Kael and held the cup out to him, and her thoughts were:
Her thoughts:
—His hand's still bleeding, he'll need the cloth too. The cut looks deep but clean. My sister would have known if it needed stitching—
Kael took the cup. She'd already set the cloth beside his injured hand before he'd finished drinking—a quiet, practical gesture, done the way you put a tool where someone can reach it. No lingering. No eye contact held a beat too long. She was already scanning the crowd behind her, counting heads, checking who else needed help.
"Thank you," he said, and looked at her, and the look he gave her was warm and tired and grateful and contained exactly nothing.
She glanced back at him. A brief, assessing look, the kind a medic gives, checking if the patient is stable enough to leave. Then she nodded once.
"Wrap the hand. Make sure to keep it clean."
She stood up and was gone. Back into the crowd, already moving toward the next problem. Her thoughts trailed away from him:
—Maren's cabin took heat damage on the south wall. If it rains tonight that'll be a problem. Need to find thatching material—
Kael watched her go. She hadn't looked at him the way the women at the store looked at him, the way that told him he'd already won before he'd started. She had looked at him the way she looked at a damaged fence: something that needed attention, received attention, and was then released so she could move to the next thing.
He noted the Level 4 tailoring skill, the Level 1 farming, the absence of any combat ability. He noted her age. Sixteen. The same age his mother had been when she'd started working her first job.
He noted that she was the only person in the crowd whose thoughts, when she'd knelt beside him, had not been about him at all.
—
Woodall brought Kael to his cabin. His wife, a stout, quiet woman named Hilde, set out bread and broth without being asked, the efficiency of someone who'd fed unexpected guests before. Kael ate slowly, performing weakness, while Woodall talked and Hilde watched from the doorway.
Over the meal, Kael gathered information the village's demographics. Fifty-four people before the fire. Four dead. Two critically injured. Five with lesser wounds. Among the fifty remaining, twenty-six were women: eight children under fourteen, sixteen over thirty-one and married, and two between fifteen and thirty.
Two.
Violet. And a woman named Mary.
The curse didn't care about morality. It didn't care about age, or grief, or whether a person deserved what was about to happen to them. It cared about one thing: a sincere confession from a member of the opposite sex, delivered within thirty days, which Kael could not accept.
The children couldn't understand love well enough to confess it sincerely. The married women presented barriers, practical, social, and emotional, that would consume weeks he didn't have. Which left the two women in the narrow window between girlhood and settled life.
Mary was entangled with Barden. Barden, who had died wearing Kael's clothes. Pursuing Mary meant operating in the wreckage of a death Kael had caused, and the risk of that connection being made, however unlikely. was a variable he couldn't control.
Which left Violet.
The girl who had brought him water and a cloth and instructions to keep the wound clean, and then left without looking back. The girl whose thoughts, when she'd knelt beside him, had not contained a single syllable about him, just the next repair, the next task, the next person who needed something. She had looked at him and seen a problem to solve, not a person to feel things about.
Which made her, in terms of the curse's requirements, the worst possible target. A girl already drawn to him would have been easy. A girl who looked at him and saw a damaged fence would require him to become something she couldn't fix and walk away from. He would need to get under the practicality, past the competence, into whatever she protected underneath all that useful efficiency. He would need to find the wound, the thing that had made a thirteen-year-old learn to stop needing anything from anyone, and he would need to make her feel it again.
She was the only person in Ella Village who could keep Kael alive. And the tools he would need to use on her were the cruelest ones he had.
The math was the math. And the math said that the person least interested in him was the only person who could save his life, and the tools required to change that, to crack open a girl who had armored herself in usefulness the way he had armored himself in performance, were tools he knew how to use and wished he didn't.
He lay on the pallet Hilde had prepared for him and stared at the ceiling and let his mind work.