The village wasn’t beautiful.

  Not in the storybook sense.

  The roofs were crooked. Smoke coiled out of chimneys like tired sighs. The streets were a mess of frozen mud and stubborn roots, and the people looked through you more often than they looked at you.

  But it was real.

  And it was starting to feel… less like a dream.

  Khal walked the outer path behind the eastern fields, clutching a sack of chopped wood. The fox trotted beside him, tail high, as if escorting someone important.

  He didn’t know why he volunteered.

  He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t useful.

  But when the old man in the red scarf had limped past his tent that morning, grumbling about “backs giving out and no good knees,” something in Khal had stood up before his mind could stop him.

  And here he was.

  Doing something small.

  The Soul-Link hadn’t said much.

  No glowing glyphs or phantom voices. No dramatic new powers.

  Just… a presence.

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  The fox felt closer. Sharper. Like they shared a thread now, pulsing quietly between them. Sometimes Khal felt a flicker of emotion that wasn’t his — hunger, alertness, calm. Once, after nearly tripping on ice, he felt a pang of irritation so clear it made him laugh.

  The fox had glared at him.

  Still no name.

  Khal wanted to earn that moment — the one where it felt right to name something. Where he wasn’t just some scared boy projecting meaning onto the first creature that didn’t run from him.

  He hadn’t earned that yet.

  He reached the firewood hut behind the apothecary and dropped the sack with a sigh.

  The old man wasn’t there.

  Instead, a girl with straw-colored braids sat cross-legged on a crate, reading aloud from a tattered book to a few kids who couldn’t have been older than six.

  Her voice was clear. Confident. Magical in a way Khal could never be.

  He didn’t speak. Just turned to leave—

  “Hey!”

  He froze.

  “You helped with this?” she asked, rising from the crate.

  “…I just carried it.”

  “That’s still something.”

  Khal shrugged, unsure how to stand under praise.

  “Thank you,” she said simply, and smiled before going back to her reading.

  He left in a daze.

  That night, he sat with the fox beneath a crooked tree near his borrowed shelter. Stars blinked above — cold and unbothered.

  The wind rustled, carrying the scent of pine and smoke.

  Khal leaned back and stared at the sky.

  “Why am I still here?” he murmured. “What’s keeping me here?”

  The fox didn’t answer. Of course not.

  But it stayed.

  [SYSTEM NOTICE: Soul-Link Stability: 5% → 9%]

  [Heart of Becoming – Development Note: Persistence Validated]

  [New Trait Recorded: Quiet Resolve (Passive – Minor resistance to mental debuffs)]

  He wasn’t strong.

  He wasn’t ready.

  But he wasn’t gone.

  And maybe — just maybe — that counted for something.