Ash didn't sleep that night.
He sat by the firepit behind the healer's hut, turning the black disc over in his fingers. No visible seams. No aura. Just dead weight and strange rings etched into its surface.
It had come from the body of the caster. The glyphs had faded, but this thing remained. Cold to the touch, even next to the fire.
He tapped it once.
The air around him flexed. No wind. No sound. Just pressure, like the moment before an explosion. A ripple spread through the air, barely visible, and then came the voice—distant, broken, not meant for him.
"Behavioral variance... thirty-six-point shift... terminating... protocol..."
Then silence.
Ash stared at the disc. He tapped it again.
Nothing.
Elda found him at dawn. She carried two small bowls, one filled with herbs, the other with water. She didn't speak as she handed him one.
Ash drank.
"You've got the look," she said after a moment. "Seen it too many times. The part after a fight when nothing feels solid."
Ash didn't look up.
"Something's wrong with this place."
She tilted her head.
"You just noticing now?"
He set the bowl down and took out the disc. Handed it to her.
"It spoke."
Elda didn't take it.
"I touched it yesterday. My ears rang for hours. I don't want to hear what it has to say."
Ash slipped it back into his belt pouch.
"The glyphs. The way the world flickered when I touched them. It wasn't magic."
Elda looked at him, calm but focused.
"Then what was it?"
He didn't answer. He wasn't sure he could.
Later, he walked the battlefield alone.
The bodies had been moved. The blood had not. Dirt soaked in iron, still damp in places. The villagers burned the remains outside the forest line. Even the weapons were discarded. They didn't want reminders.
Ash studied the tree line.
Same shadows. Same angle. But the light felt different again. Not wrong, just... delayed. As if the sun hadn't finished catching up.
He crouched by the place where the caster fell.
Something pulsed under the soil.
He dug with his hands, fast and clean. A hand-length stone sat buried just beneath the surface. Smooth. Oval. Cracked through the middle.
It vibrated faintly.
Ash reached out and touched it.
The pulse stopped.
For a full second, everything around him froze.
The trees. The smoke from the cookfires. The birds. Even the breeze.
Then, as if nothing had happened, the world resumed.
Ash stood, breathing steadily.
A pattern.
Something was watching. Waiting for deviation.
That evening, Calen found him sharpening a salvaged sword.
The boy hesitated.
"One of the men says you brought them here. That the raiders came because of you."
Ash didn't respond.
Calen stepped closer.
"I don't believe it. But they're scared. You fight like something that doesn't come from anywhere near here."
Ash kept sharpening.
"Go back to your house."
"But—"
Ash looked up.
"Go."
Calen left without another word.
Ash watched the firelight dance across the blade.
He didn't know if the villagers were right to fear him.
But he was starting to understand why they might.