Somewhere Far Away
Morning light filled the room slowly, spilling across the floorboards in long pale strips.
A figure stirred beneath the sheets. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and crossed to the mirror on the far wall.
It was Julius — but changed. Taller. His frame broader than it had been, his shoulders carrying more weight than before. He stood nearly at Dot's height now, as though his body had quietly decided to catch up with everything he'd been through.
He ran a hand along his jaw, down his arms, across his chest.
*Uhh.* Something felt different. Something felt more.
The door shrieked open.
A girl stepped in, arms full of folded clothes, eyes drifting downward before she could stop them.
Julius froze.
Then he yelped — a full, undignified sound — and lunged for the bed, dragging the blanket around himself like a shield.
The girl didn't flinch. Didn't look away particularly fast either. Her expression carried the mild patience of someone for whom this was not, apparently, the first such morning.
"Here," she said, setting the clothes down. "New ones. Change into them."
"What happened to my old clothes?" Julius asked from beneath his blanket fortress.
"They were tight," she said flatly. "Why would someone your size be wearing a child's clothes?"
*Child's clothes?* Julius looked down at himself, then back at her. He opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Hana!!"
The voice came from somewhere outside — sharp and carrying, loud enough to rattle the window frame.
"I can hear you!" Hana bellowed back without hesitation.
Julius winced hard, eyes squeezing shut. The sound hit him like a stone thrown at close range.
*His hearing. Something had changed there too.*
Hana turned to leave. Gnorm appeared in the doorway a moment later, filling it with his broad shape.
"You're awake," he said.
"Gnorm." Julius exhaled the name like something he'd been holding underwater. Relief, plain and unguarded.
"What happened to me?"
Outside — The Farm
Julius sat on a low fence post in full farmer's clothing — rough-spun, a little too wide at the shoulders — tossing torn bread to the birds that pecked and scattered at his feet. Gnorm sat beside him, the open fields stretching out ahead of them, quiet and gold in the morning air.
"I feel different," Julius muttered.
"I think the growth was an effect of your power," Gnorm said. "Your body accelerated to heal the wounds from before. Height, strength — both at once, most likely."
Julius was quiet for a moment.
"We have to keep moving. Before it's too late."
"You were in a coma for over a week," Gnorm said. "You need to rest."
"Then I've had plenty." Julius stood, brushing crumbs from his hands. "North of here — that's where we're heading?"
"Julius—"
"I can feel it." His voice dropped, certainty settling into it like weight into stone. "Surtr. In flesh. Walking among men. That's where we need to be."
Gnorm held his gaze for a long moment.
"One day," he said finally.
Julius looked at him. Then gave a single nod.
"One day. Nothing more."
He turned and walked back toward the farmhouse, leaving the birds to scatter behind him.
Nighttime — Inside the Farmhouse
The table was full.
Plates came and went. Wooden bowls scraped. The fire crackled low and warm against the walls. Julius ate with the focused, silent intensity of someone making up for lost time — which, in fairness, he was.
"Must be hungry," the farmer's wife said warmly, watching him.
"Eating for the weeks he missed," the farmer said, and both of them laughed — easy, genuine, the kind of laughter that belongs to people who have made a life out of small good things.
"Hana, bring more for our guest."
Julius paused long enough to mutter, "Thanks," before continuing.
He glanced sideways at Gnorm, still sitting untouched before his plate.
"Eat, Gnorm. You'll need it."
Hana returned with a fresh round and set it down without ceremony. Her mother caught her eye from across the table.
"Hana — sing the Wolf's Song for our guests."
Julius looked up at the word. *Wolf.*
"Yes, sing along if you know it," the farmer said, reaching over to pull his wife closer with one arm.
Hana made a sound of protest and lifted a plate to cover her face.
Her parents exchanged a look. Then began without her.
*Oh, the moon hung low on the harvest night,*
*And the fields were gold and still,*
*When old man Rook saw eyes of fire,*
*By the edge of the barley hill.*
*He said, "Lock tight your doors, my kin,*
*And bring the sheep inside,*
*For there walks something not of men,*
*Where the cold winds do hide."*
*Oh, the wolf in the barley fields,*
*With a shadow on his breath,*
*He walks where the sickle yields,*
*And he whispers like death.*
*The dogs they barked till morning light,*
*But none would meet his gaze,*
*For he moved like smoke through fence and stone,*
*And vanished in the haze.*
---
"Come on, Hana — sing along!" they called out.
Gnorm began to drum softly on the tabletop, a quiet steady rhythm that filled the spaces between the words.
Hana lowered the plate. Took a breath. Face tilted down, she took the lead.
*Young Mary swore she saw him once,*
*When the stars were pale and thin,*
*Not beast alone, but sorrow clothed,*
*Like a man who'd lost his skin.*
*Oh, the wolf in the barley fields,*
*He don't fear iron or flame,*
*He knows the songs the hunger yields,*
*And he knows each farmer's name.*
"Woooo!!"
The table erupted. The farmer clapped. His wife laughed and grabbed his arm.
Julius sat still through all of it, watching.
A quiet smile had settled onto his face — slow, almost involuntary. Like something surfacing from somewhere deep. Time seemed to pause around the table, around the warmth and the noise and the firelight, and Julius let it. Let himself sit inside it for a moment.
He had forgotten what this felt like.
A family.
Outside
The night air was cool and still. Julius lay flat in the grass, arms at his sides, eyes open to the sky above — vast and dark and scattered with light.
Footsteps approached. He didn't need to look.
Hana sat down beside him without a word, tilting her head back to look up.
"You're meant to be asleep," she said.
"So are you," Julius replied.
A pause.
"You're a really good singer."
She didn't answer. She just looked up.
"I've never seen the sky lit up like this," Julius said.
"Do you live under a rock or something?"
Julius's expression shifted into something caught between a frown and a laugh.
Hana raised one hand, finger tracing an invisible line across the dark.
"There — see? The Hunter's Belt."
"The Hunter's Belt? What's that?"
"It rises early this season," she said, her voice quieter now, almost to herself. "When it does, war comes before the harvest moon." She shifted her pointing slightly. "And that red star — the one burning in the west. It sits directly above the wolf's path."
Julius studied it. "How can you tell all that?"
"It's something I was born with." She sat up straight, drawing her knees to her chest. "I can read the stars the way an astrologer would."
"What's an astrologer?"
"Someone who reads the sky. Finds the future written in it."
*The future.*
Julius was quiet.
"See that one," Hana said, pointing again — slower now, more deliberate. "The dim one. The one that never quite manages to shine as bright as the others."
Julius followed her finger.
"That's the Fallen. An old star from an old prophecy — one most people have forgotten entirely. But it's always been there, if you know how to look." She paused. "It means the fall of men is not a question of if. Only when."
Julius sat up.
Hana turned to look at him.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I felt it from the first day. The weight you carry — not just on your back. In the way you move, the way you look at things. Like you're already counting the cost of every moment." She held his gaze. "It's you, isn't it. You're him."
"How do you—"
"You're Val—"
A crash shattered the silence.
They both turned.
"The sheep," Hana breathed, already on her feet. "They're loose."
"What—"
"Stay here. I'll get my parents." She was already running.
Julius stood.
From somewhere beyond the dark tree line — distant but unmistakable — he heard it. The frantic, rolling thunder of hooves. A herd in a full panic, moving fast. Moving toward the cliff edge to the north.
*No.*
He ran.
Inside — The Farmhouse
Hana burst through the door.
"Wake up!"
Her mother sat up in the dark. "Hana — what is it?"
"The sheep. They're gone."
The look that passed between her parents said everything.
Somewhere in the Woods
Julius crashed through the undergrowth, lungs burning, branches snapping at his arms.
Ahead — the sound of bleating, wild and terrified.
Wolves. A pack of them, driving the herd from behind, herding them toward the cliff edge with the patience of things that have done this before.
*I can't let them die.*
Julius stopped.
He drew in a long, slow breath. His chest stilled. The world narrowed.
He exhaled.
His eyes opened — golden, burning, steady as a held flame.
He moved.
The air split. Trees uprooted and spun outward in his wake, sent tumbling end over end into the dark. Somewhere nearby, a woman camping with friends yelped as the shockwave tore through her camp — her dress whipping sideways, the fire snuffed out in a single gust, her companions grabbing each other for balance.
Julius didn't stop.
The Farmhouse — Minutes Later
Gnorm stood in the yard with the farmer's family, all of them facing the same direction. The sun was beginning to rise, painting the sky in long streaks of amber and fading rose.
"Where did he go?" Gnorm asked.
"He was right here," Hana said. "I told him to wait."
*This is bad,* Gnorm thought.
The farmer's wife raised a hand, pointing at something cresting the horizon.
"What… is that?"
The farmer dropped to his knees. His wife followed. Neither of them spoke.
Hana smiled.
Julius descended slowly through the last of the light, the sun behind him catching his silhouette and holding it. Suspended in the air, his eyes still carrying the last embers of gold, he held the entire herd gathered beneath him — suspended in a wide net of woven force, every sheep accounted for, calm now, swaying gently.
The sight was quiet. Impossible. Majestic in the way only accidental things can be.
Gnorm stood still. Blind, but not without sense. He lifted his face toward the sky.
He could feel it — the calm that moved ahead of Julius like a tide returning to shore.
*Somewhere Unknown*
"I'll be back," Fourth said.
"Make sure you finish it this time." The voice in the dark carried no warmth. Only certainty. "Or it will be the last thing you do."
As Julius grew stronger, so too did the things moving against him — patient, deliberate, and no longer willing to wait.
To Be Continued…