The gate closed behind him with the same heavy sound as before.
Ares stood inside the walls, the pack still on his back, the rebar in one hand.
A few people had stopped what they were doing to look.
No one came forward.
No one asked if he was hurt.
The watchman on the wall above only nodded once toward the command building and turned away.
He walked through the yard.
Faces watched him from doorways and from the edges of the gardens.
Some looked away when he met their eyes.
Others did not.
The same calculation was still there: he had been sent out, and he had come back.
That was not what most of them had expected.
Mara was waiting near the command steps.
She looked at the pack, then at him.
“You found something.”
Ares set the two boxes of rounds on the low wall beside her.
She opened one, checked the contents, and closed it again.
“How many left out there?” she asked.
“Enough for a short fight.”
She did not thank him.
She only nodded toward the armory and said, “Put them there.
Then eat.”
He did as he was told.
In the mess area the talk quieted when he sat down.
A plate of thin stew was pushed toward him without a word.
He ate it.
Across the table Marek kept his eyes on his own food.
Lina was not there.
The girl from the wall watched him from a distance, then disappeared between the buildings.
No one asked about the night.
No one asked what he had seen.
Later he stood near the east wall and looked out through a gap in the steel.
The open ground was empty.
The tree line was a dark band in the distance.
He could still see, in his mind, the size of the wolves and the way the ground had sunk under the bear’s paws.
He could still feel the tremor that had run up the trunk when the animal passed.
Behind him the camp went on with its work—people moving between the gardens and the workshops, voices low, tools striking metal.
They moved like people who still believed the walls were enough.
Ares rested the rebar against his shoulder and watched the tree line a little longer.
If the wolves came in numbers, or if the bear ever turned this way, these people would not hold.
The walls were high, but the things outside had already grown past what the walls were built for.
The camp had sent him out alone because it was easier than facing that truth.
He turned away from the gap and walked back into the yard.
No one stopped him.
No one spoke his name.
Ares found Mara in the command building after the yard had gone quiet.
She sat behind the desk with a map spread open and a short list of names beside it.
She looked up when he entered but did not invite him to sit.
“You saw more than the ammunition,” she said.
Ares nodded.
“Wolves.
Horse-sized.
Nine of them under the tree I slept in.
Then something larger.
A bear.
Shoulders higher than the lowest branches.
It followed their trail and never looked up.”
Mara listened without writing anything down.
“The ground sank under its paws,” he added.
“The claw marks it left on the trunk were wider than my hand.”
She folded the map slowly.
“We know the world has changed,” she said.
“We try to survive one step at a time.”
Ares stood there a moment longer.
One step at a time meant waiting for the next threat to decide the next move.
It meant letting the walls and the stores and the slow thinning of food set the pace.
If he were the one behind the desk he would already be looking for something stronger—an old bunker, a place with deeper walls and fewer open approaches.
Somewhere the size of the animals outside would matter less.
But he also knew what happened to people who left alone and kept walking.
He had done it once.
The dark and the hunger and the things that moved in the trees had nearly finished him.
Here he had a roof.
A place to put his back against at night.
Rations that still arrived, even if they were thin.
He nodded once.
“Understood.”
Mara watched him for a second longer, then returned to the list of names.
Ares left the building and walked back across the yard.
The east wall stood against the darkening sky.
Beyond it the tree line was already losing its shape.
He found an empty cot in the barracks, set the rebar on the floor within reach, and lay down.
For now, this was enough.
The next morning four of them stood near the east gate.
Mara’s order was short.
Food was low again.
They were to search the near woods and the old fields west of the orchard.
They could move as a group or split.
No one was forced to stay together.
Ares said nothing.
Two of the men glanced at each other.
One of them muttered, “Same as last time?” The other gave a small nod.
Neither looked at Ares or at the fourth person—a young man, maybe seventeen, thin, carrying a scavenged spear that still looked too long for him.
The two men turned and walked toward the gate without another word.
Ares understood the choice.
Taking the young and the unskilled meant watching them instead of the trees.
It meant slowing down, explaining, pulling someone out of trouble.
Out there that kind of weight could end the day for everyone.
The young man looked at Ares, then at the ground, then back at Ares.
“We go different ways,” he said.
His voice was flat.
He did not wait for an answer.
He adjusted the spear and followed the two men at a distance, already separating from them as well.
Ares watched him leave.
The boy had decided Ares was bad luck—someone had died the last time people moved with him.
That was fine.
Ares felt no need to correct it.
He was glad.
No one to slow him down.
No one to protect.
No one whose mistakes could become his last day.
He checked the rebar, the half-empty water skin, and the small bag of dried meat they had given him.
Then he stepped through the gate alone and turned toward the tree line, moving at his own pace.