The first few minutes passed without conversation.
Adrian preferred it that way.
The truck moved slowly along the forest road, tyres grinding over wet gravel before eventually finding asphalt.
The change didn't help as much as he'd hoped.
The road was narrow and uneven, patched in places where roots or winter had broken through the surface. Every dip seemed to find a different injury.
His ankle complained first.
Then his shoulder.
A deeper pothole sent a sharp ache through his side that made him suck in a breath and immediately regret that too.
The forest worker glanced at the mirror.
Adrian looked out of the window.
Trees.
More trees.
A narrow road winding between them.
Occasionally another track disappeared into the forest, marked by signs Adrian couldn't read quickly enough before they passed.
He had known Rovenmark was sparsely populated.
Knowing it from a map was different from driving through it.
Several minutes passed without a house.
Then several more.
Adrian shifted beneath the blanket.
It was beginning to work.
Not warmth exactly, but something approaching it. His shivering had eased, and his fingers no longer felt quite as stiff.
That left room for other sensations.
Mostly hunger.
His stomach cramped hard enough that he pressed a hand against it.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten.
Before the van?
Lunch at work?
Something from the vending machine?
The memories were absurdly ordinary.
He'd been planning frozen pizza.
Adrian closed his eyes.
Not that again.
He opened them and watched the forest.
Eventually, the trees began to break.
Not disappear.
Just loosen.
A field appeared between them, narrow and sloping, bordered by dark fencing. Beyond it stood a long building with a steep roof and machinery parked beneath an attached shelter.
Another followed a few minutes later.
Then a cluster of houses.
Adrian straightened slightly.
They looked normal.
That was his first thought.
Houses were houses.
Walls. Windows. Roofs.
Then he started noticing the differences.
The roofs here were steeper than those around home and extended much farther beyond the walls. Some dropped low over covered entrances and storage areas, giving the buildings broad, heavy silhouettes.
The lower floors were usually stone or something made to resemble it. Above that came timber and dark weather-resistant panels, especially on the sides facing the open slopes.
Several houses had enclosed walkways connecting them to workshops or smaller outbuildings.
Solar surfaces covered some roofs.
Others had the dull metallic strips of thermal collectors or arcane conductors worked directly into their edges.
Nothing looked old-fashioned.
Just regional.
Built for this place.
Adrian had seen architecture like that in photographs and travel programs.
Never this much of it at once.
It made the distance from home feel more real than the name Rovenmark had.
The road descended.
The forest opened farther.
Ahead, something stood beside the road.
Then another.
Adrian leaned slightly toward the window.
A narrow grey pylon rose from the verge, perhaps three metres high. Another stood opposite it.
Metal and composite casing.
Sensor arrays near the top.
A vertical strip of embedded arcane material ran down one side, dark in daylight except for a faint blue pulse near its base.
They passed between them.
Adrian looked back.
Two more stood farther along the perimeter.
Then another beyond a field.
That was more substantial than he'd expected.
He'd seen settlement barriers before.
Everyone had.
Larger cities integrated them into traffic systems, buildings and utility infrastructure so thoroughly that most people barely noticed them. Smaller towns used simpler versions.
But this—
Adrian looked through the rear window until the pylons disappeared behind the curve.
The forest worker noticed.
“Perimeter.”
“I know.”
The answer came more defensively than Adrian intended.
The man shrugged.
Adrian looked outside again.
Of course he knew what they were.
Detection.
Warning.
Depending on the installation, limited barrier projection.
Enough to identify larger magical disturbances or something coming out of the forest that shouldn't be approaching inhabited areas.
What surprised him was the scale.
For this?
There still wasn't anything he would have called a town.
A few houses.
Fields.
Forest.
Another group of buildings farther down the valley.
Apparently Western Rovenmark took its perimeter security seriously.
Adrian thought about the facility hidden somewhere behind them.
Then about what had been inside it.
Maybe that wasn't unreasonable.
The road widened.
A pavement appeared on one side.
Then both.
The houses moved closer together.
Not city-close.
But close enough that Adrian finally stopped thinking of them as isolated properties.
A sign stood at the roadside.
He caught the regional crest and a name beneath it, but they passed before he could read the whole thing.
So this was the village.
Adrian had expected smaller.
There were proper streets.
A bakery on the corner.
A repair shop with two vehicles suspended on diagnostic platforms.
A school building set back behind a fenced yard.
Charging points beside what looked like a combined fuel and energy station.
A small supermarket.
People.
Actual people.
Adrian felt something inside him loosen.
Then tighten again almost immediately.
People meant help.
People also meant questions.
He sank slightly deeper into the blanket.
They slowed at an intersection.
Two pedestrians crossed ahead of the truck.
One was human.
The other wasn't.
Adrian's attention fixed on him before he could help it.
The man looked perhaps forty, dressed in work clothes and carrying a paper bag under one arm.
Human shape.
Human hands.
Mostly human face.
But his ears were long and mobile, extending outward through openings in a knitted cap.
And above them rose a pair of antlers.
Not enormous.
Enough to make his lineage obvious.
Aniel.
The man laughed at something his companion said.
Then they reached the other pavement and continued walking.
That was it.
No one stared.
No one reacted.
Adrian watched him through the side window until the truck moved on.
A week ago, he wouldn't have cared.
Now his eyes searched automatically.
Ears.
Tails.
Anything that might tell him something.
There.
A woman leaving the bakery had short rounded ears covered in reddish-brown fur and a narrow tail visible beneath her coat.
Different again.
Adrian looked down at the blanket.
Somewhere beneath it, his own tail lay curled awkwardly beside his leg.
The thought still didn't fit properly.
The truck dropped into another depression in the road.
Adrian bounced against the seat.
Pain flared through his ribs.
He hissed and pressed his arm against his side.
At the same time, something shifted beneath the thin lab coat.
A soft, unfamiliar weight moved with the jolt.
Adrian froze.
Then the truck bounced again.
Oh.
Right.
He pulled the blanket tighter across his chest.
The pressure helped immediately, holding everything more firmly in place.
Apparently that was something else vehicles were going to make him aware of now.
Adrian adjusted the blanket once more and looked determinedly out of the window.
The forest worker saw the movement in the mirror.
“We're nearly there.”
Adrian was grateful he hadn't asked.
“Where?”
“The clinic.”
Adrian's stomach tightened.
“No.”
The answer came quickly enough that the man glanced at him in the mirror.
“No clinic?”
Adrian shook his head.
“All right.”
A short pause.
“Police, then?”
“No.”
This time the man looked at him for longer.
Adrian pulled the blanket closer around himself.
“Right.”
The truck continued down the road.
That was all.
No argument.
No questions about why.
Adrian was grateful for that too.
A clinic meant bright rooms, examination tables and people asking to look at injuries hidden beneath the only thing he was wearing.
More than that, it meant being examined.
Scanned.
Touched.
After the laboratory, the thought alone was enough to make his pulse climb.
Police presented a different problem.
Questions.
Questions Adrian couldn't answer.
And worse, questions he could.
Name?
Adrian Voss.
Age?
Thirty-eight.
Address?
Nowhere remotely close to Western Rovenmark.
Identification?
None.
And then someone would look at him.
At the white hair.
The ears.
The eyes.
The tail.
At a woman who appeared to be somewhere in her twenties.
And Adrian would have to explain why every official record attached to his name described a thirty-eight-year-old human man.
He could already imagine the silence.
The second look.
The questions becoming slower.
More careful.
Maybe someone checking whether he'd hit his head.
His family.
The thought landed harder.
There would be a missing-person report.
There had to be by now.
His mother.
Mara.
Jonas.
Work.
How long had he been gone?
Three days?
Four?
Longer?
The laboratory had intended seventy-two hours of sedation after the final procedure.
Had that happened?
Had he been unconscious longer?
What day was it?
Adrian realized he still didn't know.
He looked toward the dashboard, searching for a date.
The display showed the time.
10:43.
No date.
His eyes moved away.
The forest worker turned onto another street.
Adrian watched the village pass.
Normal lives on the other side of the glass.
A delivery vehicle stopped outside a shop.
Two children with backpacks waited at a crossing.
A woman stood beneath an awning talking into a phone.
Someone was carrying groceries.
For all Adrian knew, people back home were doing the same things.
Except his apartment was empty.
His phone was probably still there.
Or maybe the police had it.
Maybe his mother had been inside.
The thought made his throat tighten.
The truck slowed at another intersection.
The man looked at Adrian through the mirror.
“So where do you want me to take you?”
Adrian opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Home.
The answer was immediate.
Home meant his apartment.
His own clothes.
His shower.
His bed.
His phone.
His mother.
Mara.
Jonas.
A life in which he knew what he was supposed to do next.
But home was somewhere far beyond Western Rovenmark.
He had no money.
No identification.
No idea how far they'd taken him.
And if he somehow appeared at his own front door—
Adrian looked at his reflection in the window.
White hair.
Amber eyes.
A narrow unfamiliar face framed by ears that didn't belong on a human head.
His mother wouldn't recognize him.
No one would.
The man was still waiting.
Adrian lowered his eyes.