The room was too full.

That was the first thing — before the gold, before the unfamiliar faces, before the words that poured over him like water over stone, leaving no trace. Too many people, too many feelings pressing in from every side: the sharp copper edge of someone's anticipation, a thick smug warmth radiating from the man who held his arm, and somewhere beneath it all — something quiet, something that felt different from the rest. Aert did not know what to do with that yet.

He had been washed. Dressed. Someone had touched his horns — briefly, with a kind of calculating reverence, the way you handle something expensive — and he had gone very still and let it happen, because stillness was the only thing left to him. The fabric against his skin was softer than anything the forest had ever given him, and he did not trust it. Lord Krayt spoke. The words meant little — Aert caught the edges of them, single stones breaking the surface of a fast-moving river. Gift. Rare. Extraordinary. He understood those sounds the way you understand thunder: something is happening, and it is large, and it is not yours to stop.

Then the quiet thing looked at him.

Not the loud curiosity of the others — the poking, the leaning-in, the eyes that measured. This was different. The child of the ruler of this land — young, composed, carrying something heavy behind the eyes that Aert could feel like a stone dropped into still water — looked at him, and for one unsteady moment Aert looked back.

He did not run. He wasn't sure why.

His hands, hidden in the folds of the pale unfamiliar fabric, found each other and held on.