In the forest of massive trees, the evening light was failing. What little sun pierced the suffocating canopy came through in weak, bruised streaks, bathing the undergrowth in murky twilight.
Several orcs lumbered between the great trunks, their guttural calls rumbling like the growls of starved beasts beneath the roar of a waterfall.
Nearby, pressed flat in a small, moss-slicked hollow beside the cascading water, lay Lilly. She was perfectly still, her face half-buried in the damp earth, her wide eyes reflecting the silver churn of the waterfall through a small opening she had covered with branches.
For what felt like an eternity, she held her breath until her lungs burned, her ears straining to separate the orcs' brutish voices from the roar of the waterfall. Violent shivers wracked her small frame, paralyzing terror and two days of hunger colliding at once.
Every inch of her body ached. Her elbows and knees, raw and scraped from the rocks she had crawled over, pulsed with angry fire. The forest had torn at her in ways she couldn't see, wounds she hadn't stopped to count.
The minutes stretched into what felt like hours, but she persisted. Slowly, the guttural voices faded, swallowed by the dense trees and the relentless roar of the falls. Still, she did not move. She didn't trust her ears. It was a lesson the last two days had carved into her bones.
Now.
The word was a silent command to her failing body. She dragged herself out of the hole, each movement sending fresh spikes of pain through her torn, mud-caked skin. She rose into a crouch just high enough for her eyes to clear the damp ferns, her gaze darting into the creeping darkness of the night.
Nothing moved. Not like the last times, when she'd thought she was alone and the forest had proven her wrong. Now, only uneasy peace remained.
Without further hesitation, she bolted. West. Always west. It was the only direction she had allowed herself to believe in since the moment she had slipped away from them.
She ran through the undergrowth, her breath coming in shallow gasps, her body begging her to rest, even for a minute. But the thought of the forest's edge kept her feet moving. It has to be close now. It has to be. A mantra rose against the encroaching night, against the monsters that might lunge from anywhere. Brother will be waiting for me. Brother will be there.
She didn't look back. She couldn't. If she looked back, she might see how far she still had to go, or how close the monsters were following.
After what felt like an eternity of suffocating forest air, a sudden, sharp wind washed over her face. It carried the unmistakable scent of woodsmoke and livestock—the smell of the village she had known her whole life.
She broke through the treeline and her gaze locked onto a cluster of distant yellow dots flickering at the village gate. Torches. She took a single, instinctive step toward the light, her heart leaping with a desperate urge for safety.
Then she stopped.
The memory hit her like a physical blow: the men she used to call uncle, their calloused hands binding her wrists, the cold indifference in their eyes as they carried her toward the orc settlement. She understood now. Returning through the front gate was a destructive idea.
She wrenched her eyes away from the yellow lights, her gaze drifting toward the shadowed stretch of the western wall. She pivoted and ran, her movements low and frantic. The night seemed to reach out and swallow her, her small frame vanishing into the gloom until not even the pale moonlight could betray her.
••••
At the same time, Aris lay collapsed on his straw bed, the dry stalks rustling beneath him like dead leaves. Beside him sat the loaf of brown bread he'd bought with his last two copper coins. Near his left ankle, a clay cup of water rippled with every heavy thud of his heart, catching the flickering orange glow of the candlelight set into the walls.
He was starving, his stomach ached, but the sheer weight of his reality had stripped him of his appetite. For a long moment, his mind raced in desperate, frantic circles. Should I run? The thought died as soon as it formed. Earlier, he might have entertained the idea. But Rill's memories were a blank map beyond the village perimeter, the outermost forest, and the farm behind the village. Seventeen years of life confined to these few hectares of dirt and generational fear.
What's more, there were no maps or charts of the surrounding terrain. Such things didn't exist in a village where most were illiterate—except perhaps the chief and his family. More likely, they weren't permitted. The chief ruled through isolation and wouldn't risk outside human influence threatening his grip. Or perhaps the true masters indeed kept them as a ranch. And what would a sheep need a map for?
I can't fight. I can't run. Even if he slipped past the village walls, he would be a blind man wandering into a predator's den. The forest was a labyrinth, danger lurking everywhere. And escaping to the other side, to the endless stretch of plains beyond, he wasn't confident he wouldn't encounter something even worse.
He rubbed his forehead, his skin clammy with cold sweat. Is this it? His gaze fixed on the trembling water in the cup. Am I truly forced to hunt down this body's sister in that dangerous forest, just for a slim chance of surviving to see another sunrise?
Thud!
The sound broke the silence of the night, a small impact unnaturally loud in the still village air. Aris looked up, eyes darting toward the closed door, then slowly returned to his thoughts.
Thud!
Another one. He dismissed it—a stray animal, maybe. But after two more persistent strikes, he rose, his joints stiff and heavy with the day's dread. He stepped outside, and the biting night air cut through his vest. By the pale silver light of the moon, his gaze fell on four small stones scattered across the ground.
He waited, straining for the source of the sound, but silence returned. He shivered. The cold, he decided, was a greater threat than the mystery. He turned to retreat into the meager warmth of his house.
Before he could take a step, a fifth stone arced over the wall and clattered onto the ground. Aris snapped toward it, his pulse hammering. "Who's there?" His voice came low and cautious, a rough rasp. He moved closer. No powerful enemy would resort to this, and the force behind the stone had been weak.
As he neared the wall, he heard it: a faint, muffled whimpering from the other side. A meter from the rough wood, the sound sharpened into a desperate, frail sob.
"Brother... Brother Rill."
"Lilly?!" The name left his mouth before he could think. A tide of conflicting emotions crashed over him—Rill's raw relief at his sister being alive, tangled with a suffocating guilt for failing to protect her. But beneath those borrowed sentiments, Aris's own cold logic bled through, shocking him into momentary, icy stillness.
I'm saved. The girl walked right back into my hands.
He crushed the flicker of shame that followed and leaned his forehead against the rough wood. "Lilly," he whispered, his voice cracking before he could stop it. "Brother is here."
On the other side, the dam finally broke. Lilly let out a shattered sob, tears carving clean tracks through the grime on her face—tears she hadn't allowed herself during two days of desperate flight.
"You remember where you used to play with Aunt Hu's children?" Aris asked, his eyes tracing the three-meter wall. Scaling it with her in this state was impossible. Worse, it might alert others.
"Yes... brother." Her voice was paper-thin, trembling from cold and exhaustion.
"Good. Go to the other side. Stay in the shadows. Do not let a single person see you."
With that, Aris retreated into the house, his movements frantic but precise. He seized several of his dead wife's clothes, tore them into strips, and knotted them together into a makeshift rope. He yanked the knots hard, testing their strength against his own, then slipped back into the night.
He hugged the wall, his silhouette swallowed by shadow, and moved stealthily along its length. When he reached the designated spot, he scaled the wall with the practiced ease of a youth raised on hard labor, his exhaustion and hunger momentarily forgotten.
At the top, he looked down, and his breath caught. Lilly looked like a broken doll in the moonlight, her small, shivering frame huddled against the base of the wood. A sharp pang of genuine ache pierced his chest.
Not now. He forced the feeling down. Focus.
He lowered the rope. "Grab it, Lilly. Tie it around your waist. Double the knot."
He watched her numb fingers obey, then began to haul her up. Years of grueling farm work and her slight weight made the task manageable. When his hand finally found her arm and pulled her over the ledge, his skin went cold where it touched the thick mud caking her body.
He climbed down with her draped over his shoulder like a sack of grain. He didn't glance back. Every step toward the house, he felt the shiver of her body against his back.
Moments later, they slipped through the door. The heavy silence of the village remained undisturbed.
Aris lowered Lilly onto the straw bed with a gentleness that surprised even him. He gathered several scraps of clothing in the house and piled them over her, desperate to stifle the violent shivering that racked her small frame.
Then he pressed the loaf of brown bread and the clay cup of water into her trembling hands. She ate with fumbling fingers, the bread and water vanishing in seconds, though he knew it wasn't nearly enough.
But as a flicker of life returned to her dull eyes, Aris found himself smiling—a soft, unbidden expression that didn't belong to him. Without thinking, he reached out and stroked her mud-matted hair, his fingers lingering on the tangles for a heartbeat.
Then he snatched his hand back as if burned.
He straightened, his voice sliding into a distant, neutral tone. "Rest for now. We'll talk when the sun rises."
"Hmm." A faint nod was all the strength she had left. Within seconds, exhaustion claimed her, and she collapsed into sleep.
Aris stood over her for a long moment, his shadow stretching dark across the straw bed. He remained perfectly still as a war raged inside his mind, cold logic clashing against an unwelcome, rising empathy.
Hand her over tomorrow, the survivalist part of him whispered, and you live. One life for yours—and the rest of humanity. A simple transaction.
No, countered the lingering echo of Rill's soul, or so he told himself. If you do that, you become what you despised. She is the only family this body has left. Betray her, and you'll drown in a darkness you can never claw your way out of.
She is not your sister. The cold voice sharpened. She belongs to this body. You already proved what kind of monster you are in your last life. You ended your entire race's future for ambition and greed. Don't pretend you've suddenly grown a conscience.
He began to pace silently across the dirt floor, his eyes never leaving Lilly's sleeping form.
A third voice rose, heavier, weighted with the fate of a doomed species. Sacrificing her is the first step down the same path that destroyed everything. If you start compromising here, where does it end? How many more fall after her?
But how will the mission survive if you're dead? the survivalist roared back. A corpse saves no one. Martyrs are just fools who failed. One or two sacrifices in the grand scheme don't matter.
The room suddenly felt suffocating, thick with the scent of earth, stale sweat, and old guilt. Aris walked to the doorway and stopped, staring out into the night. He opened the door, and pale moonlight washed over him and the breeze brushed against his skin.
His gaze swept across the sleeping village, the houses nothing more than dark silhouettes against the starry sky. Silent streets. Inside, hundreds of people slept, their lives bought for another year at the cost of one small girl.
Is one person truly worth the lives of thousands? The question hung in the cold air, sharp and demanding. Is this why the chief's forefathers accepted it?
He caught the spiral before it could drag him down again. A long, slow breath forced the surge of adrenaline to subside. He needed to approach this grim dilemma from a point of pure, cold reason. The most logical path remained surrendering her.
But something in him resisted. Something wanted to find a better way. Part of him wanted someone to call family after years of being utterly alone.
He paused, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on the distant, larger shadow of the chief's residence.
"Maybe the breakthrough isn't in her," he murmured to the wind. "Maybe it's in him."
He checked the moon's position. Still far from dawn. The village lay at its quietest, but the air remained thick with the day's lingering tension.
He turned his focus inward, to the biochip's interface.
"Prime," he commanded silently. "Optimize the collected data. Refine the phonetic structures into a functional lexicon. I need to speak their tongue. Not just understand it."
A sharp chime resonated in the back of his skull.
[Optimization Initialized...]
[Calculating linguistic variance... Cross-referencing 21% dataset...]
[Estimated Time Remaining: 3 hours at current volume.]
"Three hours," Aris murmured as the interface faded from his vision. "It's enough."