The conversation continues; the last person who wanted to speak was a girl, younger than Signe. She had thin wrists and a face that hadn't quite lost its childhood roundness. When she stood, she swayed slightly, like standing took effort.

  “Myn An.” Her voice came out soft, almost swallowed by the sounds of the surrounding forest. “I'm a priest of the goddess of the Living Cycle. I can… I can offer guidance. Spiritual counsel."

  A man near the edge of the circle, someone who hadn't introduced himself yet, leaned forward. “Which goddess? Hella or Líf?”

  Myn An's jaw set. “There's only one true goddess of the Living Cycle: Líf.”

  The temperature in the circle seemed to drop.

  The man stood. He was older, with a beard that hadn't been trimmed in weeks. “Líf is a pretender... Hella has governed death and rebirth since the beginning. Your New Order propaganda doesn't change that.”

  “Propaganda,” Myn An's voice gained strength. “Líf brought light to the cycle. Hella only knows darkness and rot.”

  “Hella knows balance,” the bearded man shot back. “Your goddess is a child playing with forces she doesn't understand."

  Another woman spoke up, this one closer to Materlyn's age. "My grandmother worshipped Hella. She said Líf's followers are cowards who can't face the truth of death."

  "Your grandmother was wrong," Myn An said. Her hands had curled into fists. "Líf teaches us that death is not an end but a transformation. Hella just... just hoards souls like a dragon hoards gold."

  The bearded man took a step forward. "You want to say that again?"

  Skuggi watched them. Saw the way bodies angled toward each other, aggressive. Looking from the dark at Myn An's chin lifting despite the tremor in her hands, she was confrontational but clearly scared. Watched the bearded man's weight shift onto the balls of his feet.

  He could stop this. One word, one movement.

  He didn't.

  Instead, he observed. Catalogued how they each believed they were right…. The bearded man valued tradition, legacy, the old ways. Myn An valued change, transformation, hope for something better than what came before. The woman who'd spoken about her grandmother cared about family, lineage, honoring the dead.

  Different values... Different priorities. All of them willing to fight over abstractions they called gods.

  In the lab, there had been no gods. Only handlers and subjects and the things they made subjects do. Skuggi knew hierarchy early in life, which was how he defined strength by power and knowledge. He knew punishment and reward. But these people… arguing over which invisible force controlled invisible processes… this was new.

  "You're both fools," Hilde said. She hadn't stood, but her voice cut through the rising argument. "You're fighting over which god loves you more while we're all sitting in the dirt like beggars."

  "This matters," the bearded man said.

  "It matters when we're safe. When we're fed. When we have roofs over our heads." Hilde pointed at the darkening sky. "Right now, it's a waste of breath."

  The bearded man opened his mouth to respond, but Aionel stood.

  He didn't raise his voice. Didn't put himself between the arguing parties. He just stood, hands loose at his sides, and waited until people looked at him.

  "Hilde's right," he said. "We can argue about our belief once we're not one bad night away from dying. Currently, we need to focus on surviving. All of us. Together."

  The bearded man's jaw worked. "This is important."

  "So is living long enough to practice your faith." Aionel looked around the circle, making eye contact with each person in turn. "We've all been through something terrible. We're exhausted, we're scared, and we're dealing with that fear in different ways. But turning on each other won't help. It'll just make us weaker."

  He let that sit for a moment. To let people around him absorb it.

  "We don't have to agree on gods. We just have to agree not to kill each other over them. Can we do that?"

  Silence. The bearded man sat down slowly. Myn An's fists uncurled. The woman who'd mentioned her grandmother looked at the ground.

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  "Good," Aionel said. "Then let's focus on what we can control. Skuggi, you mentioned watch rotations?"

  Skuggi studied Aionel. Studied the way he'd defused the situation without making anyone feel defeated. Without dismissing their concerns, just reframing them. Without asserting dominance, just... leading.

  Born to it, or trained to it. Either way, useful.

  "You and Torsten take first watch," Skuggi said. "Wake Bjorn and Egil for second. We rotate every three hours."

  Aionel nodded. "I'll organize it."

  And just like that, the leadership question resolved itself.

  Skuggi could fight. Could survive. Could make hard decisions when required. But managing people, smoothing over conflicts, keeping morale steady… those skills belonged to someone else.

  He stood and walked to the edge of camp again. Let Aionel handle the details of who slept where and who kept the fire going. Let him be the one person whose people come to with problems and complaints.

  Skuggi would be the one who kept them alive.

  That division felt right…. Clean and kind of sustainable.

  Freia appeared behind him again, placing her hand on his shoulder. She'd made a habit of it over the last few days, drifting into his space when the group settled for the night.

  "You're giving him power," she said.

  "He already had it. I'm just acknowledging it."

  "Some leaders don't like acknowledgment. They like control."

  Skuggi glanced at her. "You think he's dangerous?"

  "I think he's smart." She paused. "Smart people can be the most dangerous kind."

  "Can you tell if he's lying? About wanting to help?"

  She watched Aionel across the clearing. He was talking to Materlyn now, gesturing as he explained something. His face was open, earnest.

  "No," Freia said finally. "He believes what he's saying. Whether that makes him safe or not... I don't know yet."

  Skuggi filed that away too. Aionel was genuine, but genuine didn't always mean harmless.

  "Keep watching him," Skuggi said.

  "I was planning to."

  She walked away again, back toward the fire where Myn An sat alone, still looking shaken from the argument. Freia sat beside her. Didn't speak, just sat close enough that the younger girl wouldn't feel isolated.

  Skuggi leaned against his tree and watched the group organize itself. Watched Aionel move through them like water, smoothing rough edges. Watched Jurgen demonstrate a few signs to Kalf, who mimicked them with clumsy enthusiasm. Watched Materlyn start organizing their meager supplies into some kind of system.

  Watched Freia stay on the periphery, always watching, always separate.

  Blue blood. Whatever that meant, it had made her an outsider even among outsiders.

  He'd figure it out eventually. For now, he had a group that might actually survive more than a week if he played this right.

  Skuggi waited until the camp had settled into its rhythms: Aionel and Torsten taking positions at opposite ends of the clearing, Materlyn banking the fire, others spreading out bedrolls or claiming spots near trees. Then he followed the path Freia had taken into the darker edges of the forest.

  She'd gone farther than necessary for privacy. Past the first line of bushes, past the fallen log that marked where most people stopped. He found her crouched behind a thicket of low branches, her back to him.

  "Are you actually this clueless," she said without turning around, "or do you just not care about boundaries?"

  The sound of liquid hitting dirt answered the question he hadn't thought to ask.

  Skuggi stopped walking. Stood there.

  Freia looked over her shoulder. Her face was flat, unimpressed. "Well? Are you going to stand there and watch, or are you going to give me a moment?"

  He should leave. That would be the normal response. The expected one.

  He sat down instead, just outside the thicket, his back against a birch tree.

  "I'll wait here."

  "Of course you will." Her voice was dry, resigned. The sound of her adjusting her clothing rustled through the branches. "Because why would you do anything the normal way?"

  She emerged a minute later, brushing leaves off her pants. Her hair had come loose from the strip of cloth she used to tie it back. She didn't bother fixing it.

  She sat on a root a few feet from him. Not close, but not fleeing either.

  "What do you want?"

  Skuggi looked at her profile. At the way her shoulders stayed rigid even when she was sitting. At the careful distance she maintained even now.

  "Your full name," he said.

  Her head turned. "What?"

  "Everyone else gave their full names. You only refer yourself as Freia, how about the rest of it?."

  "Freia is enough."

  "Is it?"

  She was quiet for a moment. Above them, branches creaked in the wind. Something small moved through the undergrowth nearby, too quick to identify.

  "Why does it matter?" she asked.

  "Because you're different from the others. You talk differently. You move differently. You hold yourself like someone who had something to lose."

  Her jaw shifted. "Had. Past tense."

  "So tell me what you lost."

  "Why should I?"

  Skuggi considered this. He had no good answer. There was no compelling reason she should trust him with information she clearly wanted to keep private. He'd fed her for a few days. Sat near her. That didn't buy a confession.

  “???????? ??? ???????... ?????? ???? ?? ???????? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ?????????...”

  “Monsters are mirrors... showing only the darkness we refuse to see in ourselves...”

  How was it??