Color drained first from the sky, then from conversation. Merchants traveling through reported price hikes on salt and iron—war materials. Villagers responded by tightening belts and minds. Akio’s experiments gathered dust: wax-coated reed pontoons cracked in frost, ink-testing jars soured, notebooks yawned half-empty. Days blurred into chores. He shored tool handles, counted nail inventory, and filed orders for plow repairs. Each task felt like reading the same page aloud when no one listened. Some evenings he climbed the tower but stars offered no fresh geometry—just glimmering reminders of vastness he wasn’t touching. Western winds carried the scent of wood-smoke mixed with minerals—distant forges working overtime. He imagined thousands of blacksmiths repeating hammer strokes not to craft solutions but to arm quarrels. The thought curdled his stomach. Freyr noticed his slumped cadence, tried spurring conversation about festival costumes. He answered politely yet distantly, fearing that if he voiced the weight his shoulders bore, he might crumble and bury her under failing resolve.

The duel recurring in his sleep changed: instead of steel singing death’s swift arrival, the older warrior simply sheathed his blade, bowed again, and stepped back. Snow melted to puddles; koi surfaced, gulping. They waited. Akio—still kneeling—couldn’t rise. Wakefulness brought muscle aches as if he truly knelt all night. He sketched the tableau: two men frozen by indecision, season shifting around stagnation. On the sketch border he wrote, Inertia wounds deeper than steel. The parchment stuck to his desk for weeks, mocking him. Vesta stumbled upon the drawing, asked why the fighters looked sad. He answered, “Because neither one knows the next move.” Vesta—ever decisive—picked up charcoal, drew a third figure extending a hand between the duelists. “Now they can dance instead,” she declared. Akio laughed, partly in admiration, partly from the sting of a child solving what plagued him. He still burned the sketch in the forge, but he kept her addition inside his mind like a lantern shielding the flame’s dignity in draft.

Exactly three months after Liora’s cart rolled east, Akio awoke to a metallic clink: a steel spiral balanced atop the only invention he hadn’t yet disassembled—the reed float. Frost haloed both. Touching the steel stung with chill, yet it steamed as if freshly quenched. He stormed outside in socked feet, breath whitening. “Enough puzzles!” he shouted into dawn fog. “Show yourself. Teach me or leave me!” Echoes answered. Cottages kept shutters closed, though a rooster paused mid-crow, perhaps curious which farmer cursed the emptiness. He feared he’d wake Freyr, yet when he stepped inside she was already at the hearth, kneading dough with unusual vigor. She didn’t mention the shout, but her eyes brimmed quiet empathy that made him want to rail harder. Instead he helped shape loaves, working frustration into dough until it sighed beneath palms. Later, tokens safely boxed, he sat on the forge threshold watching sun evaporate frost. Steam curling off grass resembled ghosts leaving earth. Maybe that was it—his future self leaving phantom breadcrumbs. If so, he needed to catch up.

Three days without dreams, one sky clear as polished copper: he chose. Before sunrise he climbed the watchtower with ink, quill, and steady heart. Paper fluttered, but he wrote a single mandate—Leave at eighteen or become another silent stone. Signing in ink pressed from the nightmoth crest on his arm felt ceremonial; for a moment the mark tingled, acknowledging covenant. He folded the sheet into the cedar box, nested among spirals. Breath steamed. Wind rose carrying distant chimney smoke and barn-hay sweetness. It smelled of endings blended with beginnings. He whispered his vow to each direction—east for opportunity, south for caution, west for memories, north for mystery—then descended. From that hour forward he noticed the village’s cracks less like irritations and more like indicators on a departure map. Even small injustices lost sting; they became proofs that his path diverged from Rathvale’s. Freedom tasted faintly of sadness, but flavor matured to resolve.