He heard them before he saw them.
The creak of wooden wheels. The clopping of hooves — or something close to hooves. Voices, distant and indistinct, carried on the grassland wind from somewhere behind him.
Yuki stopped walking. His heart kicked up a gear.
People.
He turned and looked south along the road. A dust cloud was rising maybe a kilometre back — something large and slow moving in his direction. He could make out shapes through the haze. Wagons. Animals pulling them. Figures walking alongside.
A caravan.
Okay. This is it. First contact. Don't be weird. Don't be weird. Don't be—
He pulled his blue-metal sword from dimensional storage and clipped it to the belt loop of his mana-woven pants. Having a visible weapon made him look like a traveller rather than a lost kid. He straightened his jacket. Checked his appearance — dark clothes, clean, unremarkable. Nothing screaming I'm from another dimension.
Then he kept walking. Slowly. Like someone who'd been on the road for a while and wasn't in a hurry.
The caravan caught up to him in about twenty minutes.
It was smaller than he'd expected. Four wagons, each pulled by a pair of broad-shouldered animals that looked like horses if horses had thicker necks and cloven hooves. The wagons were loaded with crates and barrels, covered in oiled canvas. A dozen people accompanied them — drivers on the wagon benches, a handful of armed guards walking in loose formation alongside, and a few passengers sitting on top of the cargo.
The lead wagon slowed as it approached him. The driver — a heavyset man with a thick beard and sun-darkened skin — looked down at Yuki with the careful appraisal of someone who'd spent a career deciding whether strangers on the road were customers or problems.
"Oi. You lost?"
Yuki understood him perfectly.
The words landed in his brain as clear as if the man had spoken Japanese. No delay. No translation. Just immediate, effortless comprehension — like the language had always been there, waiting.
The summoning. Whatever they did to pull me here, it included the language.
He filed that away and focused on not looking stunned.
"Not lost," Yuki said. The words came out in the local tongue without effort, like his mouth knew what to do before his brain caught up. "Just travelling. Heading north."
The driver squinted at him. "North. On foot. Alone. In the grasslands." He said it the way someone might say swimming in shark-infested water without a boat. "You're either brave or stupid, kid."
"Maybe both."
The driver snorted. A laugh — or close enough. "Where'd you come from?"
"East. Over the mountains."
That got a different reaction. The driver's eyebrows went up. Two of the guards glanced over. A woman sitting on the second wagon leaned forward with interest.
"Over the Ashspine? On foot?" The driver's tone shifted from dismissive to confused. "That's a month's journey through monster territory. More, if the passes are snowed in."
A month? I did it in three days. Yuki kept his expression neutral. "It was a long walk."
The driver stared at him for a moment. Then shook his head and gestured at the road ahead. "We're heading to Millhaven. Two days north. You're welcome to walk with us if you want — safer in numbers. The grasslands aren't as friendly as they look."
"I'd appreciate that."
"Can you fight?"
Yuki glanced at the sword on his hip. "A little."
The driver grunted. "Good enough. Fall in."
Her name was Lira.
The merchant's daughter — he learned this within the first hour, because she came to find him almost immediately after he joined the caravan. She dropped down from the second wagon and fell into step beside him with the casual confidence of someone who'd grown up on the road and wasn't shy about talking to strangers.
"So you crossed the Ashspine alone?"
Yuki looked at her. She was maybe his age — seventeen, eighteen. Dark hair pulled back in a practical braid. Tanned skin, sharp features, eyes that were somewhere between green and gold in the afternoon light. She wore travelling clothes — fitted leather vest over a linen shirt, boots that had seen a lot of road.
She was, he noticed with a clarity that surprised him, really pretty.
Focus.
"Yeah," he said. "Took a while."
"A while. That range kills experienced expedition parties. You don't look like you've been through a mountain crossing."
"I'm resilient."
She studied him with an expression that said she knew he was being evasive and found it more interesting than annoying. "I'm Lira. My father owns the caravan." She nodded toward the lead wagon. "That's him driving. Varlen. He doesn't talk much but he likes you already — he let you join without negotiating a fare."
"Is that unusual?"
"For my father? Very. He once charged a priest for a ride to his own temple."
Yuki couldn't help it — he laughed. It came out rusty. He hadn't laughed with another person in months and the sound surprised him.
Lira grinned. It was a good grin.
She talked. Yuki listened. After months of silence, the sound of another human voice was almost overwhelming — he had to resist the urge to just close his eyes and absorb it.
He learned fast.
The continent was called Veranthos. The grasslands they were crossing were the Amber Plains — a broad expanse of open territory between the Ashspine Mountains and the settled western regions. Millhaven was a trade town at the intersection of two major roads, a common waypoint for caravans moving goods between the eastern frontier and the interior cities.
The world had kingdoms. Several of them, some allied, some not. There was a major power in the west — the Dominion — that had been expanding aggressively. Tensions were high. Trade routes were shifting as borders moved.
Magic existed and was practiced openly, though true mages were rare. Most people had no magical ability at all. Those who did trained in academies or served in military orders. Magic was structured — incantations, circles, formal spellwork. Raw talent was uncommon. Refined talent was rarer.
"Can you use magic?" Lira asked, watching him with those green-gold eyes.
"A little," Yuki said again.
She raised an eyebrow. "You say 'a little' a lot."
"It's usually accurate."
It was not accurate.