Everything was a dream after all.

Nafan sighed loudly as he gazed forlornly at the pale green canopy above his head. Back under the bamboo and cypress, trekking along on stinging blisters with the itch of sweat dripping down his back… last night really did feel like a piece of his imagination now. During the past two hours that he’d spent hiking through the barely visible dirt path, Nafan had already conjured several relatively logical explanations for what had occurred.

The most obvious one being that he’d just been dead drunk, and everything had been a part of his imagination. Khyriel was probably some ordinary brat with strange blue eyes and sharp teeth. It wasn’t like weird kids were more uncommon than lycan. In fact, he was probably more uncommon than a lycan. Chances were, they’d taken him for some insane foreigner and had played with his antics for some rare entertainment. People had done that to him before. How thoroughly embarrassing…

Chagrined, Nafan hung his head and paused for a moment to catch his breath. Two hours… if Tianxi had been telling him the truth about that, at least, then he ought to be near the main road. There, the path was much easier to walk, although there was also less shade and more people to give him strange looks. If he was extra unlucky, he might even run into soldiers travelling to Zhao. They seemed to like interrogating him for some reason.

I should have stayed at the inn for one more night. Nafan sighed and reached into his garments for a drink. He checked his other belongings too, while he was at it – just in case he’d dropped something important. He did that periodically while travelling, because the things he carried were too precious to be carelessly left behind.

But everything was intact. His money, his notebook, and the dagger that he carried but didn’t really know how to use. At the very least, that strange Khyriel boy hadn’t stolen anything from him while he was asleep. That had happened to him before, too.

Taking a deep breath, Nafan set off again. He’d barely taken a step before something small and black flashed across the trail in front of him. Yelping, Nafan jumped back and stared at the wildly shivering undergrowth where the creature had disappeared. It took him a couple seconds to realize that it had just been a rodent of some sort.

Heart thumping, Nafan laughed shakily to himself and stumbled forward again. But his suspicious thoughts kept trailing off in scary directions. The animal had been evidently spooked by something – no, more than just spooked, it looked like it had been running for its life from a known threat. A… A fox, maybe, or a snake…

Hopping delicately over a dark, twisted object on the ground that he belatedly realized was a twig, Nafan clenched his jaw and told himself to look ahead. He’d be at the main road soon, he told himself. At least humans would be the only things he’d have to deal with, there…

Thankfully, the narrow trail opened up soon and Nafan was back on the main road within an hour. The sun was relatively low in the horizon by then – he reckoned it was about late afternoon, which gave him four or so hours before it would start getting dark again. If his memory served right, he should be able reach the next small town by tomorrow, so he could take it easy for now and walk at a comfortable pace.

At the very least, it was a peaceful day of travelling. He encountered several ragged families escaping the war, mostly old men with their daughters and granddaughters, but they were too frightened to cause trouble. At one point, a wagon of soldiers did pass by. They pointed him out, laughing curiously and calling him imaginative words, but they passed without incident.

When the sun began to set, Nafan took a break by the side of the road to eat the bread and dried fruits that Tianxi had given him. He’d sat facing the road at first, but after hearing multiple rustling sounds in the undergrowth behind him, he’d turned his back to the road and stared warily instead at the green shrubs in front. There was nothing, of course… bigger animals knew not to come this close to the noisy road. But he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was being hunted by something.

… He couldn’t be, right? Nafan set off again to cover a little more distance before nightfall, totally preoccupied by his own thoughts. There was no way a human would be able to keep up with him if they were hiding off-trail. The ground was too unstable, the undergrowth too thick, and the risk getting a snake-bite way too high. And even if he hadn’t been dreaming totally insane things and Khyriel really was a lycan, then he would have been killed long before reaching the main road. So… it had to be his imagination. Right. Definitely.

Satisfied, or rather, too tired to think about it anymore, Nafan finally veered off the trail to find a place to camp for the night. He didn’t need to go too far to find a clearing, where the ashes of somebody else’s old campfire and the deteriorating bones of their dinner were scattered in the grass. It looked a couple days old – they had probably left by now. Taking the site himself, Nafan plopped down on the grass with a huff. He thought about reviving the fire, but after a few seconds spent staring at the dark ashes, decided that he wouldn’t really need it. It was still early autumn and temperatures were warm enough, even at night. He would be fine…

Managing to convince himself, Nafan ate the rest of his bread, saved a couple slices of dried mangoes for the next morning, and then found a softer place in the grass to sleep. In the next town, he reminded himself drowsily, he would buy a small blanket. He was usually too exhausted at the end of the day to care about the pebbles digging into his back, but still, the thought gave him some motivation to continue. Releasing a heavy breath, Nafan closed his eyes and let his tired body drift off into a light sleep. Soon… everything would be back to normal soon…