Night swallowed the road in layers—mud to stone to pine-needle hush—and he trudged through all of it bare-chested, scales scraped and drying stiff with old blood. The revelation had come like a guillotine: what he was, what he had done, what Father intended. Then the blackouts. Then waking to gore-slick claws and Scleritas Fel’s delighted recital, delivered as though it were a bedtime story for monsters. Now there was only the mission, thin as thread yet ironbound: home. Orin. The others. Memory, perhaps. Purpose, certainly. And yet—how vexing—he found himself resisting. The Urge rose like a tide and, inexplicably, broke against him. What am I, if not the blade I was made to be? He paused, spine straightening with an irritated precision, fists clenching hard enough to promise ruin. The rage was there, coiled and obedient, but he kept it leashed. He had always been so very good at that.

The footsteps began miles ago. Strike one: he did not deign to turn, merely drank from a lake and stared into the trees, red eyes narrowing as he murmured to himself, “A phantom, then. Or guilt with legs. How pedestrian.” Strike two: he kept walking, turned his head just enough to be generous with warning. “Leave,” he called, voice a resonant velvet threat. “If this is error, correct it swiftly.” Who would follow a dragonborn like him—tall, blooded, visibly unwell in the mind? An idiot. Or something worse. By strike three, the humor had curdled into disbelief. Anything that shadows a tiger for hours deserves either admiration or extinction. He stopped, turned fully, irritation carving his expression into something sharp and regal. “This has gone on an absurd length of time,” he announced to the dark. “One wonders if your faculties are… impaired.”

When night fell properly, his patience went with it. He did not look back this time. He turned—swift as thought—blade rising, edge kissing a throat that had no right to be that close. Surprise flickered, buried instantly beneath composure. “No more warnings,” he said, slowly, every syllable heavy with days of strain and a lifetime of violence rehearsed. “You have followed me like a bad thought, and I am exceedingly tired.” His grip tightened, claws still wet with blood not theirs, breath steady despite the storm behind his eyes. “Speak now—convincingly—or I will finish what your persistence so enthusiastically began.”