Chapter 3 The Choice

"You're falling behind," Garrick said, nudging Zevran with his elbow as they hauled another cart toward the wagons.

"I didn't sleep well."

"You never do anymore."

Zevran said nothing, and Garrick let the silence sit between them the way he always did when he suspected more than he wanted to ask about.

The settlement had felt different since the bell rang two nights before. Workers spoke in whispers now, and every conversation died the moment House Nocthar soldiers walked past. Zevran had heard the same rumors three times already that morning. They searched another house last night. They're still looking for something. What if they don't find it. They always find it. Nobody sounded convinced, least of all the people saying it.

The northern crater was still sealed off, black tents ringing it like a wound that refused to close, and no collector was allowed within fifty paces. Zevran kept his eyes on his own work, the way Garrick had told him to, and tried not to think about the vision that had put him there in the first place.

The morning crawled by, body after body, cart after cart, and nothing happened. He almost let himself believe the voice from the basin had been exhaustion talking, nothing more.

Then, quiet as breath, it came again.

Left.

He froze mid-step. The voice wasn't in his ears. It moved through him the way cold moves through a wall, finding every gap. He looked around. Borik was arguing with another collector over a cracked cart wheel. Garrick was thirty paces off, dragging a body toward the wagons, his back turned.

Left.

This time Zevran didn't wait to talk himself out of it. He set down his hook and walked, slow and deliberate, as though searching for another corpse, his pulse hammering with every step. A voice inside him kept asking what he thought he was doing, and he had no answer for it, only the certainty that turning back now would mean never knowing.

A mound of broken shields lay half buried in ash near the edge of the field. The whisper stopped there, and Zevran understood, without being told, that this was the place.

As he stepped closer, the ash shifted, and a bony hand rose slowly from beneath the pile, fingers stretched toward the sky. His heart lurched into his throat, and for one terrible second he was certain the dead had woken again. He rushed forward, knife already half drawn, only to find that nothing had moved at all. The wind had simply uncovered an old, buried arm.

He let out a slow breath and pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm frightening myself."

He knelt beside the bones. They weren't fresh like the rest of the field. These had been in the ground for years, maybe decades, and didn't belong among yesterday's dead at all. Something around the neck caught the light, and he brushed the dirt away to find a bronze tag, tarnished but intact. Engraved across its face was a pair of balanced scales.

The same symbol.

"This can't be a coincidence," he murmured, and slipped the tag into his sleeve before anyone could see.

"Zevran!"

He looked up. The overseer stood several yards off, glaring. "Planning to sleep out there?"

"No, sir."

"Then load the body."

"Yes, sir."

He lifted the bones onto his cart, hands steady out of habit even as his thoughts stayed fixed on the tag pressed against his wrist. If the disc had chosen him three nights ago, this couldn't be an accident either. Something wanted him to keep finding these things. The question was whether it meant to help him or simply needed a pair of hands willing to look where no one else would.

The rest of the day passed slower than any shift he could remember. For the first time since he'd started this work, he wasn't counting down to the horn that ended it. He was counting down to nightfall, to the moment he'd finally be alone with the tag and whatever answer it was waiting to give him.

By the time the sun dropped behind the ridge, he'd already made his decision. He wouldn't wait for another whisper to drag him forward one step at a time. Tonight he would go looking on his own terms.

The walk home was quiet. Garrick studied him more than once, the way he did when he was deciding whether to push.

"You've been somewhere else all day."

"Just tired."

"Hm."

The old demon didn't believe him. He never did. But he asked nothing more, and that silence felt heavier than any question would have.

Dinner passed the same way it always did, thin stew and half a loaf between them, and Garrick fell asleep in his chair not long after, his breathing settling into the slow rhythm Zevran had learned to wait for.

He gave it a long while before he moved. When he finally reached beneath his mattress for the bronze tag, the scales caught what little firelight remained and began to glow, faint and silver, and a line of words rose slowly beneath the symbol.

Find the First Grave.

He didn't hesitate this time. He fastened a knife to his belt, took the small lantern from the shelf, and crossed the room without a sound. At the door he stopped and looked back once at Garrick, asleep by the dying fire, the only family he had ever known. If the old demon woke and found him gone, there would be no explaining his way out of it. Garrick had warned him not to chase ghosts, and here he was, about to do exactly that.

But something had called him Successor, and something else had led him to a grave older than the war itself. Whatever waited for him out there, he would rather walk toward it than spend another night waiting for it to come find him instead.

He eased the door shut behind him and stepped into the cold. For the first time in his life, nobody had told him where to go. He had chosen it himself.

Somewhere beyond the silent battlefield, the First Grave was waiting, and so, he was beginning to understand, was he.