A week folded past the way weeks do when nobody’s trying to survive anything larger than tomorrow.
The abandoned hunter’s cottage slowly stopped feeling like it was.
The roof still leaked whenever the rain came hard enough, the shutters still rattled whenever the sea wind found them, and the hearth smoked if Wick forgot which way the wind was blowing, but little by little the place became theirs.
Not home.
Not yet.
But something close enough that nobody reached for a weapon every time the floor made a sound at night.
Three jobs came first, and small ones at that.
A shepherd had to have a half-feral dog put down after it started killing sheep.
A smokehouse owner paid them to clear a fox den that had become too comfortable stealing winter stores.
An old wolf, thin with age and hunger, had driven half the village indoors before Cael and Nessa finally tracked it into the hills.
None of the jobs were difficult, and all of them paid.
More importantly, people started saying their names.
“Those hunters finish what they’re paid to do.”
“They don’t cheat.”
“They don’t drink away their wages.”
On Bear Island, reputation traveled faster than horses.
By the third day they’d all settled into routines, though nobody would have called them that out loud — it happened the way habits always do, one repeated choice at a time, until the choosing stopped.
Wick’s habit was the docks.
He found the old man most mornings hauling nets that were mostly too heavy for him now, and fell into helping without being asked twice — one hand on the rope, the other steadying the basket, the kind of help that didn’t need thanking and so never got any.
“Knee’s worse in the cold,” the old man said, apropos of nothing, the way old men said most things.
“Always is.
My father’s was the same.
Said it started the winter he lost two fingers to a line, and I told him that made no sense, a knee’s nowhere near a hand, and he said pain doesn’t need to make sense, it just needs somewhere to live.” He grunted, hauling the net another foot.
“Prices are worse too.
You seen what Ferrin’s asking for rope now?
Robbery.
Plain robbery.
Though I suppose she’d say the same about my cod.”
“Everyone’s short on something,” Wick offered, mostly to keep him talking.
“Everyone’s always short on something.” The old man squinted at the grey sky as it owed him an apology.
“Weather’s not helping.
Nor is old Brenn, mind — man owes Ferrin six silver he’ll never see, and everyone on this harbor knows it but Ferrin.
He’ll sell that spare boat of his cheap before winter, you watch.
No other way he clears the debt.”
Wick filed it away without comment, the way he’d learned to file most things, and helped haul the last of the net up onto the stones.
“Harbor master’s girl’s out here every morning before the sun, you know,” the old man added, apparently done with rope prices.
“Feeding the gulls.
Rain or no.
Strange little habit for a girl her age.” He said it like gossip, which it was, and like it mattered, which — Wick was beginning to suspect — it usually did, eventually, in ways nobody expected until it did.
By the time he walked back up the hill that evening, he had four more threads just like it, none of them worth much on their own.
He mentioned as much to Vesper over supper.
“You’re better at learning people than I ever was.”
Wick grinned.
“I just let silence do most of the work.
People hate a silence.
They’ll fill it with anything.”
Rolf’s habit was the bow, and Vesper’s was correcting him.
“Again.” Another arrow.
“Too high.” Again.
“You pulled before you settled.” Again.
“You watched the target.”
“I was supposed to.”
“You watched where it is.
You should watch where it’ll be.”
The rabbit bolted from the treeline before either of them finished the thought.
Rolf loosed without settling — no time to — and it tumbled once into the grass and lay still.
Vesper looked at it a long moment, then at Rolf.
“Again.”
That was as close to praise as he gave, and Rolf had learned to take it as such.
They were still at it, an hour later, when Cael and Nessa came back down through the tree line with a brace of rabbits of their own and a story about a fox that had nearly outrun both of them.
Vesper glanced up from Rolf’s next arrow just long enough to take in what they’d brought back, and something in his face — not quite a smile, but adjacent to one — suggested he approved.
“You’re keeping up,” he told Nessa.
“I’m keeping up with him.” She nodded at Cael.
“He’s the one getting faster.”
“You’re the one getting cleaner,” Cael said.
“I just don’t slow down enough to notice the difference.”
Nessa didn’t dignify that with anything but a look, and Rolf, mid-draw, laughed hard enough to miss his next shot entirely.
The raven, watching from its branch, made a sound that could only be described as disappointed.
Only Vesper’s nights stayed apart from the rest of it.
Day belonged to everyone else; night belonged to him.
Once darkness settled over Bear Island, he vanished into the forests alone, and by dawn he always returned — sometimes with a deer, sometimes with a boar, and once with a full-grown shadowcat that took all five of them to skin.
“You keep showing us up,” Nessa muttered.
“I have unfair advantages.”
“You certainly do.”
Cael wiped the blood from Rolf’s wrist and pressed a smear of his own against the cut.
He’d stopped making Rolf drink it days ago after discovering the blood healed the cut just as well through the skin, without wasting any more than a drop.
The same small ritual it had become every night that week, and the familiar blue window opened before he’d even finished the thought.
Bloodline Assimilation
First Men +1%
Current Progress: 6%
The next day it was +3%.
Then +1%, then +4%, then +1%, then +2% — and once, unexpectedly, +7%.
There was no pattern he could find in it.
The amount gained changed with every feeding, as though the System wasn’t measuring blood itself, but fragments of something hidden inside it.
Some nights it found almost nothing.
Other nights it uncovered pieces it hadn’t recognized before.
By the end of the week, the First Men Bloodline had climbed to twenty-four percent — twenty-four percent from the same person — which told him that whatever the System was collecting clearly wasn’t as simple as draining more blood.
His goal remained unchanged.
One hundred percent.
The Skinchanger trait waited there, and he intended to reach it.
A few days into it, Rolf mentioned something strange without looking up from the fire.
“It happens every time.”
Cael looked up from sharpening his spear.
“What does?”
“After I drink your blood…” Rolf frowned, searching for the words.
“Everything gets… clearer.”
“Clearer?”
“The raven.” He glanced toward the bird perched on the rafters.
“It’s easier to understand him.
Easier to stay in him.
Like the distance between us doesn’t matter anymore.”
“How long?”
“Half a day.
Maybe a little less.” After that, the feeling fades, leaving him exactly as he was before.
It wasn’t permanent, but it wasn’t meaningless either — each time it happened, Rolf understood his own gift a little better than he had the day before.
Cael quietly filed that observation away beside dozens of others, the same way Wick filed his.
Every evening after, once everyone had returned to the cottage, Vesper claimed the hours after supper and taught them the South — its houses, its rivers, which lords hated which other lords and why, none of it likely to matter until, one day, it very much would.
The System stayed quieter about everything else, though not entirely silent.
Every kill, every hunt, every creature that fell before them added something.
The first time it happened, he’d nearly missed it.
Experience Gained
Old Wolf … 20 EXP
Current EXP: 20
The foxes brought more.
The feral dog brought more again.
By the end of the week —
Experience Gained
Shadowcat … 340 EXP
Current EXP: 680
He tried spending them.
Nothing happened.
He tried touching the notification.
Nothing happened there either.
He didn’t have levels to spend EXP on, so Cael let it be for now.
The sea changed before anyone noticed.
Fishing boats returned lighter than they should, nets came back nearly empty.
“Bad luck,” most fishermen said.
“Bad currents,” said others.
Ferrin disagreed.
She was stacking salted cod behind her counter when Wick happened to ask why prices had gone up.
“Fish have gone scarce.”
“They’ll come back.”
“They always do.” She didn’t sound convinced.
Even the birds behaved strangely.
One afternoon Rolf released his raven from the cottage roof.
The bird climbed high above the harbor, circled once, then abruptly banked away from the open sea and landed back beside him instead.
Rolf frowned.
“What?”
Wick looked up.
“He never comes back that quickly.”
Rolf released him again.
The raven flew farther this time, reached the same stretch of water, and again wheeled sharply inland, its feathers puffing slightly before settling — uneasy, unmistakably.
“Strange,” Rolf murmured.
Vesper looked toward the sea.
“What is?”
“He doesn’t want to fly out there.”
Animals noticed things people didn’t.
Vesper watched the water a moment longer before going back to splitting firewood.
On the eighth morning, Ferrin’s shop bell rang as they argued over the price of rope.
“You call that a fair price?” Cael asked.
“I call it the only price.”
“You’ve doubled it.”
“I’ve survived three winters.”
“So has the rope.”
Ferrin snorted.
The shop door opened.
A lean man stepped inside — boiled leather, a grey wool cloak clasped with the black bear of House Mormont.
Not a knight.
A steward: the kind of man trusted with problems too expensive to ignore.
His eyes found the five of them immediately.
“So,” he said.
“You’re the people everyone’s been talking about.”
Ferrin looked up from her ledger.
“Steward.”
He inclined his head.
“Ferrin.” Then, to the room at large: “Which one of you leads this hunting party?”
Cael opened his mouth.
Vesper stepped forward first.
“I do.”
Four quiet sighs answered him almost in unison.
The steward blinked.
Vesper glanced sideways without looking particularly guilty.
“What?”
“You do this every time,” Nessa muttered.
“Someone has to.”
“You volunteered yourself.”
“I volunteered all of us.”
Wick rubbed his forehead.
“Same thing.”
Even Rolf’s mouth twitched faintly.
Cael shook his head.
“He’s right.”
“He usually is.”
Satisfied that whatever strange family argument he’d just witnessed had ended, the steward returned his attention to Vesper.
“I’ve heard you’ve done good work.”
“We’ve done honest work.”
“That’s close enough.”
The steward folded his hands behind his back.
“Lady Mormont wishes to hire your company.”
Cael looked up from the coil of rope.
“For what?”
The steward hesitated.
“Missing fishermen.”
The room grew quiet.
“How many?”
“Three boats.”
Cael frowned.
“Three?”
“One disappeared.
One drifted back empty.” The steward looked away, and for a moment didn’t seem eager to finish the thought.
“The last came back broken.”
“Storm?”
The steward looked almost offended.
“If a storm had done that, I’d have slept better.” He shook his head.
“There hasn’t been a proper one in weeks.”
“Pirates?” Nessa asked.
The steward almost laughed, though nothing about his face looked amused.
“Pirates steal cargo.
They don’t leave the boat behind to prove it.”
“What kind of damage, then?”
“I’d rather show you.”
The boat rested beneath an oiled canvas behind the harbor master’s shed.
Nobody had repaired it— it simply sat there, waiting.
The steward pulled the canvas aside, and every one of them stepped closer.
The hull had been ripped apart.
Several planks had bowed outward.
Others had been crushed inward, splintered where the wood had folded rather than broken clean.
It didn’t look like something had struck the hull, or torn through it.
It looked as though something unimaginably strong had gotten hold of the boat and simply twisted.
“There should be blood,” Nessa murmured.
“There isn’t.” The steward nodded.
“Not a drop.”
That bothered Cael more than if there had been.
He crouched beside the damage.
The timber felt damp beneath his fingertips, coated in a thin, slimy film that clung stubbornly to the wood.
It smelled of stale saltwater and something older, as though it had been dragged up from the bottom of the sea.
The smell was harder to explain away.
Not rot, not exactly.
Not fish, either.
Something underneath both.
Old kelp left too long in the sun, deep seawater gone stagnant, and the sharp mineral scent of wet stone.
“Smells wrong,” Cael said.
Nessa leaned in and wrinkled her nose.
“…Yes.
That.”
The steward sniffed obligingly and shrugged.
“Smells like a wet boat to me.”
“No.
He’s right.
There’s something under the salt.” His senses had always run sharper than any of theirs — sharper than made sense, most days, though none of them had ever said so aloud.
“Rot, but wrong rot.
Deep-water rot.”
Cael looked from the steward, who plainly smelled nothing at all, to Vesper, who’d caught it the same instant he had, and said nothing.
It was one more thing neither of them could explain to a man who couldn’t smell it in the first place, so he let it sit, unspoken, the way most of their strangeness had learned to sit.
Wick pointed toward one of the shattered beams.
“What are those?”
Tiny circular marks covered the timber — perfect circles.
They came in rows, too evenly spaced to be random, as though whatever left them had pressed down in a deliberate line and dragged before letting go, dozens of smooth stones pressed into soft wood before it hardened again.
Not teeth.
Not claws.
Not nails.
Nessa leaned closer.
“I’ve never seen marks like these.”
The steward shook his head.
“Neither has anyone else.”
He sounded like he’d answered that question many times already.
“Do the men have theories?” Cael asked.
“Even bad ones?”
“The old fishermen mutter about Black Rock.” The steward’s mouth flattened.
“None of them agree why.
Ask three, get three different reasons, and not one of them will say it to my face without spitting first.”
Rolf stood near the shoreline instead of the boat, the raven perched silently on his shoulder.
Both stared toward the open sea.
Neither moved.
“Rolf.”
He looked over.
“See anything?”
“No.”
He watched the water another few seconds before adding, quietly, “…He doesn’t like it.”
“The raven?”
Rolf nodded.
“He keeps looking out there.
But he won’t fly.”
Cael glanced toward the grey water.
It looked perfectly ordinary, which somehow made it worse.
The steward broke the silence.
“Lady Mormont wants answers.”
“Can you give them?”
“No,” Cael admitted.
“But we might find them.”
“When?”
“As soon as we’ve spoken to everyone who saw the boats.”
The steward nodded.
“I’ll arrange it.”
By afternoon they had spoken to six fishermen.
Five told the same story: “Bad luck.” “Poor fishing.” “Cold water.”
The sixth was old enough that nobody interrupted him anymore.
“They’re feeding farther out.”
“What?”
“The fish.
They’ve moved.”
“Why?”
The old fisherman looked toward the sea.
“Because something bigger got hungry.”
One of the younger fishermen laughed.
The old fisherman looked at the younger fisherman and said nothing.
Then, quietly:
“You should not fish past Black Rock after sunset.”
“Why not?”
“My father always said not to.
And his father before him.”
“What lives there?”
The old fisherman looked away.
“I’ve never stayed long enough to find out.”
A long silence followed.
Then he said quietly, “But the sea belongs to something after dark.”
He was quiet a moment, staring past them at the water.
“Sometimes,” he added, “you can hear it breathing.”
Nobody asked him what he meant.
Somehow, none of them wanted to know badly enough to ask.
No one laughed after that.
They walked back through the village as evening settled, nobody speaking until they reached the cottage.
Finally, Wick broke the silence.
“You believe him?”
“No,” Nessa answered.
“I believe he believes it.
There’s a difference.”
Cael nodded.
“There usually is.”
Vesper spread a rough map across the table.
“Let’s ignore the stories.” He marked three points.
“The missing boats.
They all disappeared here.” Not the same place, exactly, but close enough — a rough triangle several miles from shore.
“Currents?” Nessa suggested.
“Maybe.”
“Reefs?”
Vesper considered that one longer than the first.
“Possible.”
“Something alive?”
He didn’t answer that at all for a moment, just looked at the triangle he’d drawn like it might rearrange itself if he stared hard enough.
“We’ve got enough to justify looking,” he said finally.
He tapped the triangle.
“Tomorrow we start with the water.”
Nobody argued.
Outside, waves struck the rocks below the cottage, steady and unbothered, the way they had every night since they’d arrived.
Tomorrow, for the first time since Bear Island, they would leave the shore behind them.
That night sleep came slowly.
Rolf remained awake longer than everyone else, the raven sitting beside the window, watching the darkness beyond the harbor.
Watching the sea.
Cael noticed.
“You’ve been staring at the water all evening.”
Rolf hesitated.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Another silence settled between them before he finally frowned, searching for the words.
“It feels… wrong.”
“What kind of wrong?”
Rolf never looked away from the window.
“The kind—” His fingers tightened slightly around the windowsill.
“—that wants you to come closer.”
No one laughed.
Outside, beyond the harbor, the sea remained perfectly calm.