The camp smelled like boiled roots and old sweat.

  Makeshift tents of vine and bone leaned between shattered stone ruins. Weapons hung from trees. Shoes hung from drying lines. Voices — too many to track — called out from shadow to firelight.

  Rell sat still. Back to a moss rock. Watching. Listening.

  [THOUGHTS]

  Too loud. But warm.

  He wasn’t used to people anymore.

  Especially not this many.

  There were eight of them total.

  And each one felt… different.

  Not just by look.

  By presence.

  Tesska was the first to bark at him.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  An animarph — wolf-kin.

  Fur like tattered warcloth over her shoulders. Sharp teeth. One ear missing.

  Cooked over fire like she’d done it since birth.

  Told dirty jokes to cover her nightmares.

  “Eat what you kill. Or what Grinsh don’t smash first.”

  Grinsh needed no intro.

  A hulking abyssmal brute — coral-shouldered, barrel-chested, and always shirtless.

  Built like a crab shell forged in a volcano.

  His laugh broke branches.

  “If it moves, it’s fightin’. If it don’t, I eat it.”

  Myla moved like she belonged in a garden, not a cage.

  Veyari-blooded. Soft freckles, luminous eyes.

  A healer who touched shoulders without flinching — but her gaze never rested long.

  When Selena passed, she flinched too.

  “Some wounds don’t want light. That’s okay. I’ll wait.”

  Ishro spoke only when the fire burned low.

  Dwarven-blooded — skin black as obsidian, arms inked in glowing runes.

  A monk. Heavy. Still. When he moved, the ground noticed.

  “Stone doesn’t rush. Neither should you.”

  Zariin almost never spoke.

  Diemos-born. Skin like dusk mist. Hair pale as frost.

  Never blinked. Never sat. Watched everything.

  “I whisper when truth is heavy. So most days, I say nothing.”

  Nerro smiled too easily.

  Animarph too — but serpent-blooded.

  Scales on his neck, slit eyes, fingernails clean like he was expecting a banquet.

  Fast hands. Faster tongue.

  “Trust is a tool. Use it or lose it.”

  Selena hated him. Never said why. Never got close.

  Rell noticed.

  And then… there was Selena.

  Still distant. Still fire and walls.

  But now, she sat near the group.

  Not part of it.

  Not alone either.

  Rell trained with them. Mimicked them.

  Fire bursts, wind steps, barrier palms. He copied without sigils, without chants.

  [THOUGHTS]

  Body know. Not me.

  Only one person noticed — Nerro.

  He smiled again.

  But not like a friend.

  That night by the fire, someone passed a flask.

  Grinsh made a joke that had Tesska wheezing.

  Myla pretended not to notice Zariin watching her.

  Ishro sharpened stones into tiny discs.

  And Rell?

  He saw it.

  A flicker.

  Blue light.

  The spirit.

  Only for a second.

  Then gone.

  [THOUGHTS]

  Still here. Still waitin’.

  He didn’t say anything.

  But that night, he slept easier than usual.