The moment Marcus stepped through the hut door someone in the crowd spotted him and the word spread before he'd taken three steps.
"Our saviour!"
It moved through the remaining villagers like a current, people gathering along both sides of the dirt path with the desperate energy of survivors who needed something to believe in after losing half their neighbors in a single afternoon. They pressed close, reaching out, calling blessings in foreign languages.
He walked through it with Liz at his side, raising one hand in a flat wave that was more acknowledgment than gratitude.
"Bye Liz come visit sometime we'll miss you and your stories" some random kids yelled from outside their huts.
We"ll do she said joyfully with a cute smile on her face miss you too "
The murmuring behind Marcus caught his attention.
"The stories Liz told us. About the Drauvens. They were real."
"Dra what?" Marcus said quietly, more to himself than Liz, a short sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Never mind. More important things to deal with."
A man near the stables stepped forward from the small crowd. Older, broad shouldered, with the calloused hands of someone who worked with animals daily. "You're heading out. Take the two horses as thanks. Least we can do."
"Thanks much," Liz and Marcus said at the same time, which neither of them commented on.
Marcus walked to the stable pen and stopped.
Two horses stood inside. The first was black all the way through, the kind of black that had weight to it, a coat so deep and clean it caught the afternoon light and gave it back as a faint shimmer along the muscle when the animal moved.
Big and solid, broad chested, with dark steady eyes that tracked Marcus's approach without a single step backward.
The second was white with a silver grey mane, light on its feet, built lean and quick. It held its head high and its ears forward like it was permanently expecting something interesting to happen.
Marcus walked to the black one and put his hand on its neck.
The horse didn't flinch. Didn't shift. Just turned its head and looked at him with large steady dark eyes that held something uncomfortably close to recognition.
"Dusk," Marcus said quietly.
The name of his horse from his previous life. The one that had carried him through years of war without complaint. He didn't plan to say it out loud. It just came out that way.
He swung up into the saddle and the horse settled under him like the fit was right.
Liz was already mounted on the white mare, adjusting the reins with the ease of someone who'd done it ten thousand times. She glanced across at him with something that was almost a smile.
"Nice pick."
"Felt like a connection," Marcus said. He looked back at the villagers still waving from both sides of the path. Then at the road ahead stretching east.
"Alright Mrs Guide. Where to first."
She smirked. "Somewhere that sells clothes that don't look like they came off a dead animal." She clicked her horse forward. "Follow my lead."
Marcus followed.
The road curved east into dense forest, trees pressing close on both sides, the canopy thick enough that the light came through in broken shifting pieces rather than anything whole. It filtered down in long pale columns between the trunks, catching the dust and floating seeds drifting through the undergrowth, turning the forest floor into something that looked almost painted.
Thick green moss covered the roots of the older trees. Wildflowers grew in the gaps where the light touched the ground, small and white and unconcerned with anything happening above them.
Birds moved through the branches in short bursts, quick and bright, and from somewhere deeper in the trees came the low sound of running water.
Marcus could see health bars floating above the small animals moving through the undergrowth. Green and small, tagged with names the system had assigned to creatures that had clearly never expected to be categorized.
Liz spoke without looking back, the comfortable tone of someone who had been carrying information long enough that sharing it felt like setting down weight.
"I'd like you to understand what kind of world you've landed in." She adjusted her reins.
"Veldrath has been at war for centuries. Not just with other kingdoms. With things that shouldn't exist. Corrupted creatures, abominations, beasts that don't follow any natural rule. Some kingdoms found ways to hold them back." A pause. "Holding back isn't the same as solving."
Marcus moved Dusk up until he was level with her.
"Across those centuries, summoners appeared at different points. Their existence alone helped balance the power in this world.
Each one rising when things got bad enough. Each one eventually disappearing without a trace, no record, no explanation, nothing." She glanced at him. "You're not the first. But the kind of summoner you are is different."
"How so." Marcus said. "So I'm that special."
She giggled. "Big head."
"Most summoners here conjure from imagination. Things they've seen or read about. What you do is different. You pull from somewhere that actually exists. Whatever you call comes already connected to you, like it was waiting specifically for you ." She looked at the road ahead.
"That's not something the system just hands to people."
Marcus thought about Malachar. The way the summon had turned and found him without searching. The certainty in those two words. My liege.
"From a knight to a summoner," he muttered.
"Quite the change."
"We're stopping at a friend of mine first," Liz said. "He runs a black market an hour east. Has an informant nearby who knows roads, factions, locations that don't appear on any official map." A pause. "He should still be there."
"Should."
"He has a habit of getting into situations."
"And the informant?"
"Jack. Travels constantly, talks less than he knows. Makes what he does say worth hearing." She looked at Marcus sideways. "We need gear before anything else. You cannot keep walking into fights dressed like that."
Marcus looked down at the animal hide clothing and said nothing because she wasn't wrong.
"Where are you from," he asked.
The question sat between them for a moment longer than questions usually did.
"Ashveil," she said. Her voice didn't change but something behind it did, like a door closing quietly somewhere inside the sentence. "I lived there until last year. Sigh.
The Hayates came through without warning. Took out a large portion of the population before anyone understood what was happening." Her eyes stayed on the road.
"My mother put me in a transport carrier before it reached us. Last thing she said was find a Drauven." She stopped. "Last thing I heard was her screams and then something tear…."
The forest filled the silence between them. Wind through the upper branches. The distant water. Birds moving from one tree to the next.
Marcus didn't offer condolences. She didn't look like she wanted them and he wasn't good at giving them anyway. He let the information sit exactly where she'd placed it.