It was late afternoon by the time I made it back to the house. My father was just returning from the road, his expression as tight and cloudy as the sky had been earlier. I hesitated, unsure whether to press him or avoid him entirely, but curiosity won out. If he had gone into town, I wanted to know what he’d learned.

  With a few quick words, I persuaded Abragale to distract mother. As she darted off, I approached my father, catching him before he disappeared into the house.

  He barely glanced at me before waving me off. “Not now, Vidal. I’ve got enough to deal with as is. There are fools in the village convinced Nana Glob’s promises will lead them to a better life than here. I need to stop them from making a mistake they can’t undo.” His voice was heavy with frustration. “She’s stirring up trouble again, putting hope where it doesn’t belong. Any time I’ve seen a promising youth follow her…” He shook his head, dispelling the last of the thought. “The last thing I need is you complaining about staying home.”

  His words stung, but I filed them away. If the caravan was heading to the Capital, they might just gain another hopeful fool.

  I pushed aside my pride and spoke up. “I found something. There’s a predator out by the untamed woods. One of the neighbor’s cows is dead.” I hesitated, unsure whether to mention the more unsettling detail. “It had bite marks, but… no flesh was eaten.”

  My father stopped cold. His sharp gaze locked on me, and the weariness in his face evaporated. “A predator?” His voice was different now, clipped and urgent. “What else did you see? What color was the blood? Were the wounds deep or shallow? Fang marks or teeth? Burns?”

  The shift startled me. His disinterest was gone, replaced by an intensity I rarely saw. I let the moment hang a bit longer than necessary, enjoying the rare feeling of holding the upper hand. My anger from this morning simmered, but it didn’t quite boil over.

  “It was fang marks. No burns,” I said slowly. “The body was old, though—days at least. It was hard to tell much else.”

  “Wait here,” he said abruptly. He strode to the storage shed and emerged moments later, carrying a pitchfork and two pairs of gloves. One he tossed to me with more force than needed. “Lead the way.”

  I stared at him, stunned. My father was a man of rigid routines, a creature of habit. Changing plans wasn’t just unusual—it was unthinkable. It took weeks of pleading to get him to accompany me on a simple outing to town. And now, at the mere mention of a dead cow, he was armed and ready without a second thought.

  “What about your emergency in the village?” I asked, cautious.

  “It can wait,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “This cannot.”

  We reached the hill as the sun dipped lower, shadows pooling around the base of the forest. My father’s pace didn’t falter, and I felt a new tension creeping into my chest. This was no ordinary chore. Whatever lay in the woods had unnerved him more than he was letting on.

  When we reached the corpse, my father halted abruptly, his expression hardening. Without a word, he picked up a stick and jabbed the body with deliberate force. Thick, black blood oozed from the wounds, pooling sluggishly beneath the mangled remains. The sight turned my stomach, and the rancid smell clung to the air like a curse.

  I found myself staring at the forest’s edge, its shadows dark and impenetrable.

  “Pa,” I said, my voice steady but my body betraying a prickling unease. “We should head back. It’s nearly dinner. Mother’s been looking forward to our tradition of Lafta dinner tonight. She thinks she is strong enough to make it to the tavern. Surely this can wait until morning?”

  I tried to sound composed, but a cold knot of fear twisted in my gut. There was something out there, something watching. I didn’t know how I knew—I just did.

  My father, crouched beside the cow, seemed oblivious. He prodded the carcass with grim determination, inspecting its head, peeling back patches of decayed flesh, and even digging through the maggots writhing in the wounds. My stomach churned, but I couldn’t look away.

  “How old are you now?” he asked abruptly, his tone distant.

  “Fifteen. You know that.” My confusion deepened. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He didn’t respond right away. Instead, he traced his fingers over the cow’s hooves, then the twisted remnants of its hide. “You’ve never seen a nest burned out before,” he muttered, almost to himself. “I remember it like it was yesterday. The dead—”

  He cut himself off, glancing toward the forest, his expression partially hidden due to the shadows. For the first time, I thought I saw fear flash in his eyes. He stood quickly, brushing dirt from his knees. “Forget it. Just an old man rambling. Let’s head back. We need to ring the town bell. Can you track down Ludwick for me?”

  The sudden shift left me reeling. My father never dismissed a task halfway through, never forgot a plan, and certainly never left anything unexplained. Yet here he was, rattled and rushing to leave.

  “What about the fence pole?” I asked, pointing toward where it lay, only a few paces away.

  He hesitated, his gaze darting toward the forest again. It felt closer now, the shadows pressing against us, hiding things I didn’t want to imagine. I pictured those dog-sized shadows from earlier, swarming from the underbrush, their fangs snapping like bone needles. The image sent a shiver down my spine, and I instinctively took a step back.

  My father gave the corpse one last jab with his stick, then tossed it aside. “We’ll grab it tomorrow. No sense risking a twisted ankle stumbling around in the dark.”

  His casual tone didn’t fool me. As we turned to leave, his pace quickened, and I found myself matching it step for step. Neither of us said it aloud, but we both knew: something was out there. And it was watching.

  It was unspoken knowledge that Riftspawn never escaped the blockade in the Northwest. For all the “hunts” I had done, I had never seen even a hint of abnormality. I mostly viewed them as training for the real thing when I eventually would patrol north of the Claw.

  There was a good reason the kingdom rested easy. Three Claws guarded each section of the Northwest front, filled with some of the Hound’s best men. Red cloaks and volunteers assisted as well. Some of the hardiest slaves could earn their freedom in a few short years with their service.

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  The most logical conclusion was that this was a reaction over some large hunting cat. I doubted my father had ended up at that conclusion.

  My father had two years worth of food in the house. He locked the doors at night. He listened to the tinkers when they shared their stories about the road and stayed up late at night, staring at the road. He was overly cautious but at that moment, I could not have loved him more. I took one look behind me and could have sworn I saw a small shape scurry amidst the trees. Telling myself it was my mind playing tricks on me, I took off after my father.

  I ran off to find Ludwick as my father headed for the town bell. The village was a small, weathered cluster of buildings—a blacksmith, a bakery, an inn, and a few other modest shops flanked by a handful of squalid houses. Most of the villagers lived scattered across surrounding farms, so even if the bell stirred them, it would take at least half an hour for the first to arrive. But they would come. They always did when the bell rang.

  Ludwick was a peculiar figure in our town, one who seemed to have stepped out of a tale spun by Nana Glob herself. Tall, wiry, and angular, he moved with an otherworldly grace, his limbs too long for his frame, his face sharp like the edge of a blade. When I first met him years ago, wandering near the forest, I mistook him for a tree, the way he stood so still and silent among the shadows.

  When I’d asked what he was doing out there, he replied without hesitation, "Testing if a person’s essence can be tracked across miles." That was Ludwick: strange, deliberate, and endlessly fascinating.

  Since then, he had settled in the village, bartering his skills—scribing, teaching, and occasionally offering guidance on arcane matters—for room and board. He taught anyone under sixteen who would listen, though his lessons often spiraled into bizarre tangents about faraway lands and strange magics. Ludwick was a man of endless stories, and I found myself increasingly drawn to him, even if he unsettled me at first. Now, I could barely go two days without seeking him out.

  I knocked on the warped wooden door of the hut he was borrowing, but, as usual, there was no reply. Pushing the door open, I found him hunched over his desk, carefully dissecting a butterfly under the faint glow of a lantern.

  “Close the door properly, Vidal,” he said, not even glancing up.

  I shoved it shut, the wood groaning in protest.

  “Shall we continue discussing the theory of will-jacking an opponent’s magic?” he asked, his voice calm and unhurried. “Or shall we instead talk about what’s bothering you?”

  “How do you always know everything, Ludwick?” I muttered, more frustrated than I intended. “You act like you can read minds.”

  “You wear your emotions so openly, I don’t have to.” He glanced at me briefly, a hint of amusement in his sharp eyes. “The slamming of the door was also a clue.”

  I frowned, folding my arms as I watched him work. With the precision of a surgeon, he slid the butterfly’s remains onto a glass plate and capped it with another pane, securing it neatly. He held it up to the weak candlelight from his desk, tilting it this way and that before nodding in satisfaction and placing it aside.

  Then, without a word, he rose from his chair, grabbed the well-worn jacket that hung perpetually on a post near his desk, and threw it on in one fluid motion.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he said, his voice soft but firm.

  As usual, Ludwick’s suggestion was more a command than a request.

  I stood there as Ludwick left, wishing I could pretend nothing had happened today. That I hadn’t fled the forest like a coward, that there wasn’t some dangerous creature lurking near our home. For a moment, I wanted to stay behind, to lose myself in Ludwick’s world of butterflies and quiet dissections. Let him diagnose and fix everything like he always did. But he didn’t stop or turn back. He even closed the door behind him.

  It frustrated me how well he knew me.

  I broke and followed him, obediently falling into step like always.

  “We need to head to the village,” I said quickly, the words spilling out in a rush. As if to emphasize the urgency, the bell’s peals echoed across the valley. “I found a dead cow, and I think my father believes it was killed by a Riftspawn.”

  “All in due time,” Ludwick replied, his voice calm, almost amused. “The villagers will take time to gather. No sense repeating yourself to fearful minds when we have this perfectly good moment to talk. Or not talk.”

  That was Ludwick. Always moving at his own pace, dragging others into it whether they liked it or not.

  We climbed the ridge overlooking the village, the landscape stretching out before us. I watched as the bell’s sound gradually faded, replaced by the low murmur of villagers making their way toward the square. Small figures darted to and fro, scurrying like insects across the patchwork of fields and roads.

  This day is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I thought suddenly, the realization both thrilling and bittersweet. My doubts from earlier vanished. This was the most amount of excitement I had ever been a part of. I had yearned for years for a day like this, yet it caught me by surprise and my first instinct was fear. The human brain was a strange thing.

  “Why do people look like ants from up here?” Ludwick asked, pulling me from my thoughts. It was the start of one of his lessons—I could feel it.

  I sighed, knowing there was no escape. “Because… they’re tough to see from a distance?”

  “True…the word is perspective. Perspective makes big things seem small and small things big. Humans excel at it, though not always in helpful ways.” He gestured toward the bustling village below. “Why do they look like ants from up here?”

  “Because our brains trick us into thinking they’re smaller than they are?”

  “Exactly. It’s useful, but it also makes us forget things—or misjudge. For instance, down there, those people are just as tall as you.” He smirked. “Well, maybe as tall as me. Now, tell me: why are you angry at your father?”

  I froze, realizing too late the trap I’d walked into. “I’m not angry at my father. Why would you think that?”

  “You slammed the door earlier, for one,” he said, tilting his head. “And you’ve been carrying that stormy look the whole climb. You barely remembered to tell me I was wanted in the village.”

  I said nothing. I could have sworn he hadn’t looked back a single time that whole climb.

  “Hmm,” he hummed, letting the silence stretch.

  Finally, the words spilled out. “Because he’s always afraid. He tried to stop me from getting unofficially tested today. He judged me for running in the forest, looking for Riftspawn. He never listens!”

  “Would it surprise you to hear that I’m afraid too?” Ludwick said casually.

  I blinked, caught off guard. “What? But you’re—”

  “Different?” He cut me off. “Fighting has never solved a problem, only created bigger ones to focus on. The reason I’m here, in this quiet little village, is because I’ve run away from conflict. Again and again.”

  I stared at him, unsure of what to say.

  “Think about why your brain is tricking you,” he continued, his voice softer now. “What hidden reason is shaping your perspective? Only when you find that can you see things clearly.”

  I looked out at the village again, the anger inside me unraveling thread by thread. “I love my father,” I admitted quietly. “But… I’m not sure he loves me.”

  Ludwick rose, brushing off his jacket. “Apologize to him. Family is the one thing that should always stand firm together but often doesn’t. Remember, he was young once, too. He probably thought he was just as invincible as you do now.”

  He was always right. It frustrated me to no end. Ludwick didn’t just go straight to the heart of the matter—he tore it open and made me look inside.

  As I followed him into the village, I turned his words over in my mind. I realized I wasn’t angry at my father. Not really. I was angry at how quiet, how small my world was. I wanted adventure, recognition, something more. But I also knew, deep down, that I wasn’t ready. Not yet.

  Still, as I walked through the gathering crowd, I made a decision. Tonight, I would apologize to my father. And tonight, I would convince him that I was ready to come of age.