They made camp at dusk. The wagons circled up — a practiced formation, cargo inward, guards posted at the gaps. Fires were lit. Food was prepared — stew from a communal pot, hard bread, dried fruit. Simple stuff. Yuki ate two bowls and was grateful for every bite, not because he was hungry but because eating with other people was something he'd missed more than he'd realised.
Lira sat next to him. Close enough that their shoulders almost touched. She asked about where he was from, and he gave vague answers — a village far to the east, very isolated, no longer there. Not technically lies. She asked about his sword, and he let her look at it — the blue-metal edge drew a low whistle.
"That's quality work. Eastern forge?"
"Something like that."
"You're very mysterious, you know that?"
"I've been told."
He hadn't. There'd been nobody to tell him. But she laughed, and the sound of it made the grassland feel less empty.
The wolves hit on the second morning.
Yuki sensed them before anyone else — a cluster of mana signatures moving fast through the tall grass, converging on the caravan from the northeast. He counted twelve. Large ones. Predatory intent practically radiating off them.
He was about to say something when the lead guard shouted.
"RAZORBACKS! Northeast — incoming!"
The caravan erupted. Drivers hauled on reins, pulling the wagons tighter. Guards drew weapons — swords, spears, a crossbow. Lira scrambled up onto a wagon, pulling a short bow from somewhere.
The wolves came out of the grass like grey missiles.
Razorbacks. That's what the guard had called them. The name fit. They were wolf-shaped but wrong — larger than the ones Yuki had hunted near his homestead, with ridged spines of bone running along their backs and flanks. Built for speed and violence. A pack of twelve, fanning out to hit the caravan from multiple angles.
The guards met them head-on.
It went badly almost immediately.
The first guard — a tall man with a heavy sword — caught a wolf mid-lunge and drove it back. Good technique. Strong. But the wolf shrugged off the hit and came again, faster, and a second wolf hit the guard from the flank while he was committed to the first. He went down with a razorback on top of him.
Two more guards rushed in. They pulled the wolf off — took hits doing it. Blood. Shouting. A crossbow bolt thunked into a wolf's shoulder and it barely flinched.
They're struggling.
Yuki watched from beside the second wagon. Three wolves were engaged with the guards at the front. Two more were circling to the rear. The rest were probing the flanks, looking for gaps.
The guards were trained. Professional. But they were also clearly outmatched — the razorbacks were faster, tougher, and more coordinated than the guards could handle. Another guard took a claw across the thigh and staggered. A wolf got past the line entirely and lunged at the wagon where Lira was standing.
She put an arrow into its eye at three metres. It dropped. She nocked another, hands steady. Brave. But one arrow wouldn't stop twelve.
How weak is everyone here?
The thought was uncharitable and he pushed it aside. These people were normal. Baseline human. No mana reinforcement, no parallel thought, no months of hunting monsters that made these wolves look like puppies. They were doing their best with what they had.
But their best wasn't going to be enough. The lead guard was bleeding from two wounds and still fighting. Another guard was down — not dead, but out. The wolves were pressing in and the perimeter was shrinking.
Enough watching.
Yuki drew his sword.
He didn't use mana reinforcement. Didn't engage parallel thought. Didn't accelerate. He kept everything at baseline — his natural physical abilities, which were still far beyond human, plus the blue-metal blade in his hand.
He stepped into the gap where the injured guard had fallen and cut the first wolf across the chest as it lunged. The blade passed through its bone-ridged spine like paper. It dropped in two pieces.
The second wolf came from his left. He pivoted, let it sail past, and took its hind leg off with a backhand stroke. It tumbled and didn't get up.
Third. Straight on, jaws wide. He sidestepped — barely had to move — and drove the sword through the top of its skull as it passed.
Fourth and fifth came together. Flanking. Coordinated. He took the one on the right with a rising cut that opened it from belly to jaw, then reversed the blade and caught the one on the left across the throat.
The sixth wolf hesitated. It had been circling behind the wagon, looking for an opening, and now it was staring at the five dead wolves at Yuki's feet and recalculating.
Yuki locked eyes with it.
The wolf turned and ran.
The rest of the pack followed. Six wolves disappearing into the tall grass in seconds, leaving their dead behind.
Silence settled over the caravan. Broken only by heavy breathing and the groans of the injured.
Yuki cleaned his blade on the grass and sheathed it.
When he looked up, everyone was staring at him.
The guards. The drivers. The passengers. Lira, still standing on the wagon with an arrow nocked, bow half-drawn, mouth slightly open.
Varlen climbed down from the lead wagon. He walked over to the dead wolves, looked at them, looked at Yuki, looked at the wolves again.
"A little," Varlen said flatly. "You can fight a little."
"That was a little."
It was. It really, genuinely was. And that was the part he couldn't say out loud.
Varlen stared at him for a long moment. Something shifted behind his eyes — a reassessment, a recalculation, the same kind of practical evaluation that had let Yuki join the caravan in the first place.
"We've got two days to Millhaven," Varlen said. "I'd be grateful if you'd walk with us the rest of the way. As our guard, not our guest."
"I'm not looking for pay."
"Didn't offer any." Varlen's expression cracked — just barely — into something that might have been a smile. "I'm offering food, a seat on the wagon, and the knowledge that my daughter might actually be safe for the first time on this road."
Yuki glanced at Lira. She was climbing down from the wagon, bow slung over her shoulder, eyes fixed on him with an expression he couldn't quite read. Admiration, maybe. Curiosity. Something warmer underneath both.
Her cheeks were flushed.
Focus.
"I'll walk with you," Yuki said.
They treated the wounded guards — two with deep lacerations, one with cracked ribs from a wolf impact. Nobody had died, which the lead guard attributed to Yuki's intervention with a gruff nod that served as both thanks and acknowledgement.
The caravan resumed. Yuki walked beside the second wagon. Lira walked beside him.
She was quiet for almost ten minutes — a record, based on the previous day.
"You crossed the Ashspine alone," she said finally. "You fight like... like that. And you say you can use magic 'a little.'"
"Yes."
"Who are you?"
Yuki looked at the road ahead. The grassland stretched to the horizon. Somewhere up there was a town called Millhaven, and beyond it, a world he knew almost nothing about.
"Just a traveller," he said.
Lira studied him. She didn't believe him. But she smiled anyway — small, warm, and a little bit flustered.
"Well. Just-a-traveller. Welcome to Veranthos."