Chapter 1 — The Day I Stopped Counting
The fire was low.
It always got like this at the end of the night — the logs burning down to orange teeth, the warmth pulling back from the edges of the camp, the shadows coming in to fill the space it left behind. Cidd had learned a long time ago that if you wanted the fire to last through the cold hours you had to feed it yourself. Nobody else would remember.
Nobody else ever remembered.
He was sitting apart from the others. He usually did. Not because anyone told him to — it had just sort of happened over two years, this slow gravitational drift where his bedroll ended up a little further from the center each week and nobody noticed and eventually the gap became normal and the normal became invisible and the invisible became him.
Elara was laughing at something Aldric had said.
Cidd didn’t look up.
He was sharpening his sword. The same motion he’d done a thousand times — slow drag of the whetstone from base to tip, angle consistent, pressure even. His hands did it without him now. His eyes were on the blade but his ears were everywhere, the way they always were at night. Wind direction. Distant animal sounds. The particular silence that meant something large was deciding whether or not to approach.
Two years of that. Two years of being the one who listened while everyone else slept.
"Cidd."
He looked up.
Aldric was standing at the edge of the firelight. Golden hair catching the orange glow like the world had painted him specifically for moments like this. Tall, easy in his body, the kind of handsome that made people trust him before he’d said a single word. He was smiling — but it was the specific smile Cidd had learned to recognize. The one that didn’t reach anything.
"We need to talk."
Cidd set the whetstone down.
Behind Aldric, Elara and Lynia were standing together. Elara with her silver hair and her white robes and her gentle hands folded in front of her like she was about to say a prayer. Lynia with her dark robes and her glasses and that composed expression she wore like armor. Both of them watching him.
Cidd looked at their faces.
Something cold moved through him.
"Alright," he said.
He stood up. He was shorter than Aldric, leaner, the kind of build that didn’t announce itself. Two years ago when he’d joined the party he’d been a twelve year old orphan with quick hands and a sharp mind and absolutely nothing else. He still looked young. He knew that. He’d learned to use it.
"We’ve been talking," Aldric said. "The three of us. And we’ve come to a decision about the party’s direction going forward."
Cidd waited.
"You’re not contributing enough."
The fire crackled.
Somewhere in the dark a night bird called once and went silent.
Cidd said nothing.
"I mean look —" Aldric spread his hands, that easy generous gesture that made everything he said sound reasonable. "We appreciate what you’ve done. We do. But the reality is that Elara and Lynia and I have developed real synergy together, you know? And you’re — I mean, you’re fine. You’re just not at our level anymore. The quests we’re taking now, the enemies we’re facing — we need someone who can keep up."
Cidd looked at Elara.
She didn’t meet his eyes.
"Elara." His voice came out quieter than he intended. "You agree with this?"
She folded her hands tighter. "I — yes. I think Aldric is right. I’m sorry Cidd. I really am. But we’ve all felt it. You’ve been holding us back."
Holding them back.
He thought about the cave three months ago. The ambush. Six B rank monsters and a terrain that funneled them into a killbox and Aldric standing frozen because even heroes freeze sometimes, and Cidd moving without thinking — three spells in four seconds, a sword technique he’d spent forty nights practicing until his arms gave out, positioning himself between the party and the teeth of something that wanted to end them. He thought about the look on Elara’s face afterward. The way she’d said thank you like she actually meant it.
He thought about every campfire he’d kept alive. Every supply count. Every scouting report he’d written out in full because if he didn’t do it nobody would and if nobody did it people died. He thought about the sword wound on his left side that had never quite healed right because he’d kept moving after taking it because the alternative was letting Lynia take it instead and he couldn’t do that.
Holding them back.
"Lynia," he said.
The mage finally looked at him. Behind those sharp eyes something moved — something complicated that was there and then wasn’t, like a window shutting. "It’s not personal," she said. "This is just the practical choice for the party."
Not personal.
He almost laughed.
"So that’s it," he said.
"We’ll give you your share of the last quest’s earnings," Aldric said. Generous. Reasonable. That smile. "And of course you can keep the equipment you’ve accumulated. We’re not trying to be cruel here Cidd. We just have to do what’s best for the party."
Cidd looked at him.
Really looked at him.
And then he looked past him at Elara and Lynia, at the way they were standing slightly behind Aldric, at the way their eyes kept drifting to him and away, at something in their posture that was — wrong. Had always been slightly wrong and he’d told himself he was imagining it because he didn’t want to know.
He knew now.
The way they looked at Aldric when they thought no one was watching. The way the tent arrangements had shifted six months ago and he’d told himself it was for warmth. The way two people he’d trusted completely had just stood here and told him with their own mouths that he was useless, and neither of them had flinched, and that wasn’t — that wasn’t Elara. That wasn’t Lynia. He knew them. He knew the way Elara laughed when something actually surprised her and the way Lynia’s composure cracked at the edges when she was genuinely worried and this — these two people standing here saying these words — this was something else wearing their faces.
Something clicked into place.
Something horrible.
Aldric put a hand on Elara’s shoulder and she leaned into it without thinking and Cidd watched it happen and felt the last two years rearrange themselves into a shape he didn’t want to look at directly.
His fist closed.
The rage came up so fast it almost blinded him — two years of it, every sleepless night and every thankless morning and every wound he’d taken quietly and every time he’d told himself it was fine, they were his party, this was what you did for the people who mattered —
He pulled his arm back.
Aldric watched him. Didn’t even flinch. Confident, like he already knew how this ended.
And Cidd stopped.
Hand in the air. Trembling.
He looked at Aldric’s face — that perfect, golden, unbothered face — and he understood that hitting him would change absolutely nothing. Elara wouldn’t remember herself. Lynia wouldn’t suddenly see clearly. The two years wouldn’t unhappen. The punch would be for Cidd and Cidd alone and he was so tired, so deeply tired, of doing things that didn’t matter.
He lowered his arm.
He picked up his pack. His sword. The whetstone he’d set on the ground. He took his share of the coin from the pouch Aldric held out with that same generous smile and he put it away without counting it.
He looked at Elara one more time.
She was looking at the ground.
"Okay," Cidd said.
That was all.
He walked away from the fire and into the dark and didn’t look back and the night closed around him like it had always been waiting and the camp sounds faded and then it was just him and the road and the cold and the specific silence of a person who has absolutely nothing left to lose.
He was fourteen years old.
He didn’t cry.
He walked.
And somewhere behind him the fire burned low and nobody fed it and it went out before morning.