The stink of the beast clings to everything, sharp and sour, but worse is the hollow gnawing in my belly. One of the men wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, still pale from retching.
“Harlan,” he croaks, voice rough, “we can’t just leave it. Meat’s meat. Cut deep enough, maybe the flesh inside’s good.”
The other—Harlan—rounds on him with a scowl.
“You’re mad, Joran. Did you see what came out of its mouth? You’d put that in your gut?”
“Better that than nothing. You think our bones won’t show by tomorrow?” Joran asks, straightening, jaw clenched.
Their words grate against each other, louder, sharper. Hunger speaks through both of them, but fear digs its claws in, too.
The younger Zmaj circles the carcass in measured steps, wings twitching. His lip curls as he squats low, claws scraping lightlyagainst one of the beast’s plates. He lifts them, stained dark, then flicks the residue aside.
“Poison rides its blood. Even carrion beasts wouldn’t touch it,” he says.
“Easy for you to say,” Joran snaps, teeth bared in something too desperate to be real anger. “Your kind eats less than we do.”
Before the younger Zmaj can flare back, the scarred warrior moves. He steps forward without hurry, lowering to one knee. The lochaber slides into the carcass with a clean, practiced push. He pries a strip of meat free with the blade and tosses it onto the bare ground.
We watch in silence as the chunk sits there, heavy and raw. For a breath, I think maybe Joran’s right—maybe it will stay solid, maybe there’s a chance?—
The strip smolders, flesh breaking down into a blackened smear.
Every voice dies.
The silence is broken by Harlan swearing under his breath as he takes a stumbling step back. Joran curses, too, this time without conviction. Their argument is gone, hollowed out in an instant.
The scarred warrior wipes his blade on the dirt and rises. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. The younger Zmaj inclines his head, voice rough.
“Dead thing’s no food. We leave it.”
I exhale slowly, tension bleeding out of my shoulders. Relief and despair tangle in my chest until I can’t tell them apart. My belly feels like a pit, raw and empty, but at least we know. Starvation is slower, but it doesn’t rot you from the inside out.
The argument dies with the smoldering flesh, and in the silence that follows, I hear their names echo in my head.
Harlan. Joran.
I hadn’t known them before now. I’ve walked beside them for a day, shared water and fires, yet they were just“the humans”to me. Faces blurred together by exhaustion, voices I only half-heard when they complained. It startles me to realize that I hadn’t cared enough to listen until they shouted their names at each other.
And the younger Zmaj… I still don’t know his name. He’s been restless, pacing, snapping when hungry. A weight I resented. But now I can’t unhear the way he defended me, the heat in his voice when he told Joran I’d struck first.
Names matter. They anchor people in the world.
Without names, they’re shadows, easy to ignore and easy to step around. That’s what I’ve done—walked among shadows, all of them blurred shapes at the edge of my struggle. Maybe it was easier that way. Easier to stay inside my own skin, my own hunger and hurt. Easier to think I was alone, but I’m not.
My gaze drifts to the scarred warrior, rising to his full height, lochaber balanced across his back. He didn’t need to say a word to end the argument. Didn’t need to defend me like the younger Zmaj did. His certainty fills the air all on its own, a silent command that bends the world around it.
He isn’t a blur. He never has been.
Every other face fades into the press of the crowd or the weight of survival. His doesn’t. I don’t know his name, but I know him in a way that sinks deeper than sound. He’s the only one whomakes me feel like the trap of being unseen, unheard, unwanted isn’t permanent. The only one who’s pulled me into focus, without trying, without asking.
A flush creeps up my neck, shame and something hotter tangled together. I’ve been so busy carrying my anger—at Amara, at Rosalind, at the camp, at the way everyone looks through me—that I didn’t notice the people beside me were carrying things, too. Hunger. Fear. Desperation. And still, he held the watch all night. He cut down the beast that would have ended me. He bound my arm with careful hands.
Confidence rolls off him—not arrogance, not noise, just… certainty. The kind that steadies instead of smothers. I want to stand taller because of it, not shrink away.
I flex my fingers, testing the bandage, the ache throbbing steadily beneath. My pride still burns hotter than the wound, but one thought nags at me. Maybe it’s time to see more than just my own reflection in everyone else’s eyes.
We leave the carcass behind. No one says it aloud, but every step away feels like abandoning a chance we can’t afford to waste. Even poisoned, even deadly, it was meat, and the ache in my belly gnaws sharper with every stride.
