One week later
The iron hinges groaned. My heart stopped as the massive gates swung closed, cutting off the only home I'd known. Not that it had been much of a home. The sound echoed across the empty field, final as a coffin lid.
"And stay out, gutter rat!" The guard's voice carried over the wall.
I touched the bruise on my jaw where he'd struck me. All for an apple. One wrinkled, browning apple that the merchant would have thrown to his pigs anyway. But they'd been waiting for an excuse. Street rats like me made the noble folk uncomfortable, reminded them of what they could become.
The wind cut through my thin clothes. Behind me lay the wilderness - leagues of untamed forest and rocky hills where wolves howled at night. Ahead... nothing. No villages for days of walking. They'd planned it that way, sending me out at dusk. If the cold didn't kill me, the beasts would.
My feet wouldn't move. Stupid. I'd survived worse. But the city, harsh as it was, held familiar corners. I knew which baker left old bread by his door, which wells still had clean water, which alleys offered shelter from rain.
Out here, every shadow could hide death. Every rustle in the undergrowth might mean teeth and claws. The trees loomed ahead, their branches reaching like grasping fingers in the fading light.
A rock struck my shoulder. I spun around. Another guard had joined the first on the wall.
"Still here? Want us to give you some motivation?" He hefted another stone.
My legs finally moved. Pride forced me to walk, not run, even as more rocks pelted my back. Their laughter followed me toward the treeline.
The forest swallowed the sound of the city, leaving only my ragged breathing and the crunch of dead leaves under my feet. Darkness crept in between the trees. The temperature dropped with each step, and the first stars appeared through gaps in the canopy.
I was alone. Truly alone.
Three days of walking had left my feet raw and bleeding. The first village I stumbled into, hope had lifted my spirits. That hope died fast.
"We've got our own to feed." The innkeeper blocked the doorway, his bulk casting a shadow over me. "No room for strays."
My stomach cramped. The smell of roasted meat and fresh bread wafted from behind him, making my mouth water. "I can work. Clean, fetch water-"
"Get lost before I call the guards." He slammed the door.
The pattern repeated in every settlement. Doors locked. Windows shuttered. Children pulled inside by worried mothers. The lucky ones tossed scraps, like I was some mangy dog. The rest pretended not to see me.
In Millbrook, a farmer's wife left bread on her windowsill. When I reached for it, her husband appeared with a pitchfork. I ran until my lungs burned.
"Times are hard enough," they'd mutter. Or "The Empire takes everything as is." Always excuses, always reasons why they couldn't help.
The road stretched endless before me. My world shrunk to the next step, the next meal, the next safe place to sleep. Villages became blur of rejection. Riverdale. Ashton. Elmsworth. Names without meaning, places without welcome.
At night, huddled under whatever shelter I could find, the cold seeped into my bones. The darkness pressed in, filled with rustling leaves and distant howls. Sometimes I dreamed of warm beds and full bellies. Those dreams hurt worse than hunger.
One morning, I caught my reflection in a stream. A stranger stared back - hollow-cheeked, dirt-streaked, eyes old beyond their years. No wonder they turned me away. I hardly recognized myself.
The Iron Capital's walls had meant safety once, even if it was a cruel safety. Out here, there were no walls. No rules. Just survival, day after endless day.
"Keep moving," I whispered to myself. The words became a mantra, pushing my feet forward when they wanted to stop. Because stopping meant giving up, and giving up meant death.
So I walked. Past fields and forests, through rain and wind. The Empire's reach extended everywhere, its shadow falling on every village and town. But its grip felt looser here in the countryside, where people scraped by on what little they had.
Not that it mattered. To them, I was just another mouth to feed. Another beggar at their door. Another reminder of how quickly fortune could turn.
Time lost meaning. Days bled into one another like watercolors in the rain. I marked their passage by the gnawing in my stomach, by the changing leaves, by the gradual wearing of my shoes until holes appeared in the soles.
Another tavern door slammed in my face. The warmth and laughter inside mocked me through thick windows. I pressed my back against the rough wall, sliding down until my legs gave out.
"Get up." I spoke the words through cracked lips. My voice sounded strange - deeper, harder than I remembered. "Get up."
But my body refused. Exhaustion settled into my bones like lead. The wall supported me as my eyes drifted closed.
A kick jolted me awake. "No vagrants." The tavern keeper stood over me, face twisted in disgust. "Bad for business."
I stumbled to my feet, pride forcing my spine straight despite the weakness in my limbs. The streets blurred as I walked. My feet carried me without direction, one step after another.
The world had shrunk to simple equations. Movement meant warmth. Stillness meant death. Each breath was a victory, each sunset survived another battle won.
In Blackmere, I found work mucking stables. Three days of honest labor, of feeling almost human again. Then the stable master's coin purse went missing. They didn't even bother asking - just threw me out with fists and boots.
Ravencross offered shelter in exchange for chopping wood. My arms ached, blisters burst and bled, but the work felt good. Real. Then winter came, and with it fewer travelers. "Can't afford to feed you anymore," the innkeeper said. At least she'd given me a day's warning.
The rejection hurt less each time. Like calluses forming over tender skin, my heart hardened. Hope became a distant memory, as faded as the faces of my parents.
"You want soup?" A woman's voice broke through my haze. She stood in a doorway, bowl in hand. Steam rose from it, carrying the scent of vegetables and meat.
My mouth watered. But experience had taught cruel lessons. "What's the catch?"
"No catch. Just soup." She set it on her doorstep and retreated inside.
I approached slowly, expecting a trap. The bowl was real enough, its contents still hot. As I reached for it, the door burst open. A man charged out, club raised.
"Thought that'd work, didn't you?" He swung. "Filthy thief!"
I rolled away, soup forgotten. My body moved on instinct, ducking another blow. Their laughter followed me down the street.
Such tricks grew common. People made sport of the desperate. Some offered food laced with poison that left me retching for days. Others set their dogs loose for entertainment. The lucky ones just ignored me.
I learned to trust nothing. No kindness came without price, no shelter without strings. The world revealed its true face - a grotesque mask of indifference and cruelty.
Yet something in me refused to break. Each morning found me on my feet, moving forward. The spark of life burned low but steady, fueled by spite as much as survival.
A long day's walk brought me to an ominous forest.
This forest is different from any I'd seen before. Shadows twisted between the trees like living things, defying the setting sun's natural light. My feet ached from days of walking, and my empty stomach cramped, but something about these woods made me pause.
Normal forests had birds, insects, the rustle of small animals. This place held nothing but silence. The trees grew too close together, their bark black as coal, branches intertwined like grasping hands frozen in place. Even the air felt wrong - thick and stale, like breathing through wet cloth.
"Can't be worse than another night in the open." My voice sounded small, swallowed by the unnatural quiet.
The first step past the treeline sent a chill down my spine. Temperature dropped instantly, as if I'd walked into a cave. My second step crushed something underfoot - not leaves or twigs, but something that crumbled like ash.
Darkness closed in faster than it should have. The dying sunlight barely penetrated the canopy, creating weird patterns on the ground. Every shadow seemed to reach for my feet. Each tree trunk looked identical to the last, their surfaces smooth and cold to the touch.
I'd lost count of the forests I'd sheltered in, learned their patterns and paths. But this one... this one felt alive. Aware. The deeper I walked, the more the sensation grew - eyes watching from every direction, waiting.
My foot caught on something. I stumbled, caught myself against a tree trunk. The bark felt slick, almost wet. When I pulled my hand back, it came away stained with something dark. Not sap. Too thin, too cold.
Logic screamed at me to turn back. But back meant another night exposed to the elements, another day of hunger and rejection. At least here I might find shelter, maybe even food. Some of the twisted branches bore what looked like fruit, though their shapes were wrong somehow.
The path - if you could call it that - wound deeper into the gloom. Each step carried me further from the normal world, into whatever realm this forest belonged to. The air grew colder, heavier. My breath came out in visible puffs despite the season.
Shadows moved in my peripheral vision. When I turned to look, nothing was there. But the sensation of being watched intensified. The silence pressed against my ears until they rang with it.
"Just trees," I whispered. "Nothing but trees."
A branch snapped somewhere behind me. I spun around, heart hammering. The path I'd followed had vanished, swallowed by the darkness. All around, the black trees stretched into infinity, identical in every direction.
I was lost. The realization hit like a physical blow. Lost in a place that shouldn't exist, where shadows moved on their own and the very air felt wrong.
But I couldn't go back. There was nothing left for me in the world of light and warmth. So I pressed on, deeper into the heart of this impossible forest, where the darkness waited with open arms.