I shifted away from him and dismounted the wagon myself. I didn't enjoy being dismissed so readily by someone who knew nothing about me. "Senvia has hired Kindred urgently before, and sent runners to Eaden Helm to summon them to war. That's about the same distance as Senvia to Bell Haven. It takes a single Kindred runner four days to reach the city, and they don't run until they collapse."

"That's not possible," he said.

"Not possible for a human."

"You are human! You're just... born with a few extra gifts."

"Right," I said caustically. "Strength, speed, endurance, that sort of thing. Including the ability to—"

"No!" he yelled over me, "Not including that level of stamina and speed! You would need to run... what, five times faster than me? And I'm not that slow."

I leaned back at the forceful volume in his voice, taken aback by his insistence, then forced myself to laugh. "You're that slow," I said. I was becoming increasingly annoyed, despite my laughter. "You're human. It's not your fault. I'm just... better than you."

"I'm human, and you're crazy," he said in defeat. With that, he bent over to gather some fallen branches. He laid them out in a half circle and kneeled down in it.

I peered at him in curiosity over his seemingly random actions. "Is this how you end all arguments? Just gather some sticks and stones and claim that my words won't hurt you? You're missing the stones."

"I'm meditating," he said.

"With sticks?" I looked around, almost expecting him to pull out something else to complete the puzzle, but there was nothing. Just the sticks. He didn't even take up a particularly meditative pose, he just kneeled in them.

"Do you have a problem with that?" he asked.

"No," I said innocently. "I just didn't think meditation included sticks."

"It's part of my Path."

"Sticks...?" I didn't know much about Pathoticism. In my opinion, it was a stupid religion. It was the only religion even legally permitted throughout most of the empire, but still, it was stupid. There were no gods, no greater powers at all. At the very least, I could understand theistic religions. Gods were an explanation for the mysteries of the world, and a destination for prayers to beings who could help you when all seemed lost. It didn't matter if they were real or not. They were an answer to people who had nothing left but those prayers.

Pathoticism had no prayers. It had meditation. Three core Paths, and a zenith Path, each one associated with a cardinal point, part of the self, and each with its own answer to enlightenment and ascension.

The Windward Path, following the eastern star, taught the way of the body, truth, and trust. As much as I disliked the religion, that one was my favourite. It wasn't suited to me, not by any means. It was far too much about going with the flow. Each of the Paths had a ritual that pilgrims could take. For the Windward Path, it was a walk through steep mountain cliffs, passing through a valley of rocks and shale and harsh winds, and emerging out to the warm light of an endless grassy plain. To navigate the mountains and harsh winds along exposed cliffsides, you had to trust yourself and your body, and know that each step you took was true.

I never thought I'd do very well in living by the words "wherever you go, any way the wind blows." It was never quite me.

The philosophy of the ritual was different from the ritual itself. Not everyone had a set of mountains with grassy plains in their backyards. Most would never set out on the journey of pilgrims. Most would never do the ritual at all, and those who did rarely did more than a simple hike on a windy day.

Then again, most would never ascend.

Nobody ever had. Not since Torin, the ancient warrior who had saved the continent of Avengard so many centuries prior with his sacrifice. And he followed the zenith path, the path of the warrior.

My Path.

The Path I was raised to follow, as Kindred and as a warrior. It was expected of me. The other three weren't good enough. I was supposed to achieve ascension like the great Torin, by dying on a battlefield, breath spent and sword drenched in red.

It was a stupid religion.

But from what I knew, none of the Paths used this ritual. None of them even asked for actual meditation from followers.

And yet, Eskir meditated. I heightened my senses, and I could hear the soft rise and fall of his chest. I could smell his breath passing in through his mouth and out through his nose, gentle and consistent.

"What are you doing?" I asked him. "Even your heart rate has slowed. How do you do that?"

"Practise," he grumbled. "And silence."

I stopped talking, but the curiosity drove me mad. It hurt my ears to talk while my senses were so sharp, but I had to ask. "Okay, but how though? Your body is almost acting like you're asleep."

He opened one eye. I was behind him, but I could hear his eyelid shlick open. "I would rather be in a proper glade with fallen leaves, of course. But this works. Provided I have some silence. All you have to do is sit down in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and listen to the world. Quietly. Without speaking."

"That doesn't look very comfortable," I blurted.

He sighed. "The kneeling is. The noise is not."

"What Path do you follow?"

"Any Path," he said in frustration, "as long as it's the one that gets you to shut up!"

I knelt beside him, held my breath, and listened to the world, as he said. My senses were so much better than his while I focused.

He sat there in a seiza, eyes closed, and breathing deeply and quietly.

I tried to do the same thing, but my body didn't want to listen. My clothes scraped against each other and the dirt. My feet got numb, and I had to reposition myself cross-legged to get comfortable. I felt an itch in my leg, and my hand shifted instinctively to scratch it, my fingers tingling in a light breeze that happened to pass through as I did. My hair ruffled, sounding like something between grass and a rough, rusted wire carved out too thin to stay still.

Nothing worked. The world wouldn't be quiet enough to submerge me in the silence I was hunting.

I could hear the scrambling of a mouse in a thicket fifty paces away. There was a light trickle of water from a stream falling down old leaves and water-licked stones, that would eventually join up with crashing white waves that struck against an empty pit as the river vanished underground until it reached a small and mostly underground natural reservoir that sourced Ghost Lake.

There was a trail line of ants, following the scent of their leader as it led them around a fallen twig, all announced by the shuffling of six legs, dozens of times over.

Behind me, a songbird ruffled its feathers. Beads of sweat formed on Eskir's skin from the midday heat, and their erratic, irregular droplets slammed against the ground with such fervour, those ants may have mistaken it for rain.

Everything made so much noise.

And then I heard it. Something I never would have heard normally, had I not been sitting in silence with heightened senses.

It was a snap in the trees.

Not from an animal. I could tell by the sound and the motion, even with my eyes closed, that it came from something that didn't exist. Not a mythological creature or something impossible, but literally from a source that produced no sound.

The snapping of a twig was the exception, a freak accident in defiance of the anomaly.

Somewhere in the forest, something without a shape was moving.T