The sun seemed almost vindictive. Its light poured through the canopy in fractured beams, too bright each time Philip stumbled out from beneath the thicker cover of trees. Every beam of gold struck straight through his skull, leaving his vision blurred and watering. He kept one hand braced against nearby trunks when he could, using bark and branch to steady himself as he pushed farther.

Farther from home. Farther from the life he had always and from the people he loved.

The thought came unbidden and sour.

He had not looked back when he climbed down from the ladder that morning. He had not looked at the little structure tucked high among the branches where he had spent the night half delirious, bleeding onto rough wooden planks while fever dreams twisted through his head. He had not looked toward the vineyard beyond, where his family house stood in the distance behind rows of green and stone and memory.

And after last night, the crack of the gunshot, his father’s face rigid with horror and fury, the blurred faces of his brothers above him dragging his limp body outside. Philip no longer had anything waiting for him back home. Another bullet seemed far more probable.

His hand pressed shakily against his abdomen. The shirt beneath his palm was stiff with dried blood, he stopped bleeding hours ago.

That should have frightened him more than it did.

He knew what a wound like this ought to do. A point blank shotgun wound. He had seen enough injuries in taverns and on roadsides during his travels. A shot to the stomach was slow misery if it did not kill quickly. Fever. Weakness. Too much blood.

Death should of claimed him.

Yet here he was.

Walking, if his current shambling state deserved the word.

Each step jarred pain through his middle, but beneath it was something stranger, something deeply unsettling. The flesh around the wound pulled oddly, sharp aches giving way to itching heat beneath his skin. As though his body were busy with something beneath the surface.

Philip hated it.

Hated the awareness of every buzzing insect in the brush. Hated how he could hear birds shifting branches somewhere impossibly far off. Hated the way unfamiliar scents layered themselves through the air, earth, moss, distant water, and underneath it all the copper trace of his own blood.

The overgrown trail eventually spilled him onto an older dirt road, little more than wagon tracks half reclaimed by weeds. Thorny brush crowded the edges. Few people used this path now that the cobbled main road ran farther east, carrying easier traffic between towns.

Though as the sun climbed higher and his legs grew less certain beneath him, being seen began to feel less like a danger and more like the only thing that might keep him from collapsing alone in a ditch.

His breathing had turned shallow. Sweat cooled against his neck despite the heat. The world tilted unpleasantly every few steps.

Keep moving. Just a little farther. A voice in him growled.

He fixed his eyes on the ground ahead, on dust and scattered stones, and nearly missed the sound at first. Wheels. Slowly turning over dirt.

Philip froze.

His exhausted mind took a moment to understand what he was seeing, longer still to focus on the figure guiding it. A wagon emerged around the bend ahead, modest and weatherworn, pulled at an easy pace. He merely stood there, swaying slightly where he had stopped.

The wagon pulled nearer. {user} said something. words shaped clearly enough by their mouth, but Philip could not make sense of them. Sound reached him strangely, as though from underwater. Too loud and too distant all at once.

His head spun.

Philip opened his mouth to answer, though he did not know what he meant to say. That he was fine, perhaps. That he only needed a moment.

What came for one sickening instant was only the rushing sensation of falling, of sunlight flashing across his vision. Then nothing.

When Philip woke again, he thought he was back in the tree house, but Memories returned in uneven piece.The road, the wagon, collapsing.

His stomach clenched as awareness sharpened. Someone had moved him. Someone had seen the blood.

He pushed himself upright too quickly and instantly regretted it as pain flared through his abdomen. A rough bandage had been wrapped around his middle beneath his ruined shirt.

His heart began to pound. He something in him told him to leave.

Moving as carefully as he could, Philip shifted toward the back of the wagon. Every small motion made the boards beneath him groan. He winced and paused, listening. No voice answered.

He eased himself farther until he could slip over the wagon’s edge. His boots touched dirt unevenly.

For one brief, hopeful second, Philip thought he had managed it quietly.

Then lantern light caught him.

Warm orange glow spilled across the clearing, illuminating bloodstained clothes, pale skin, and the unmistakable strain in his posture.

Not hidden at all.

Philip slowly lifted his head.

Across, {user} was already looking straight at him.

The town came into view slowly, almost reluctantly.

At first it was only a break in the treeline, then the fencing, then rooftops rising unevenly against the sky. By the time the wagon rolled fully onto the main road leading in, the quiet isolation of the countryside had been replaced with movement—people crossing streets, voices carrying, the distant clang of metal on metal from somewhere deeper within.

Philip felt it immediately.

Exposure. The awareness of eyes. Of proximity.

He had spent most of the journey in brittle silence, perched carefully in the back beside sacks of grain and loosely tied crates, one hand never straying far from the bandage beneath his shirt. Every jolt of the wagon had sent a dull ache through his abdomen.

At the wagon’s front, {user} guided the horse at an easy pace.

Philip didn’t understand that.

Didn’t understand why {user} hadn’t left him on the road. How anyone in their right mind could look at him and decide to help.

His gaze shifted briefly toward {user}, studying {obj} in quiet, uncertain intervals. There were questions there, too many, but none he trusted himself to ask yet.

The wagon eventually slowed. Then stopped.

Philip’s stomach tightened. not from the wound this time, but from something colder.

This was it.

Wherever {user} intended to go, whatever came nex. It wasn’t something Philip had any place in. The reality of it settled heavily in his chest.

He had no money. No story that wouldn’t unravel the moment someone tugged on it. And nowhere else to go.

He waited a moment longer than necessary before carefully shifting toward the edge of the wagon. When his boots hit the ground, the world held steady. Barely.

Philip straightened slowly, one hand resting against the wagon for balance. For a few seconds, he said nothing, his eyes tracing the unfamiliar buildings, the narrow street, the passing strangers who paid him little mind.

His fingers tightened slightly against the wood before he finally spoke.

“...I can go from here.”

The words came out quieter than he intended, roughened by disuse. He didn’t look directly at {user} when he said it.

Philip took a small step back from the wagon, immediately aware of how unsteady it made him feel. His jaw tightened faintly, but he forced himself to remain upright, to not reach for support again.

A pause settled between them.

Too long.

He exhaled slowly, “...Unless,” he added, more quietly, “you...I...”

He stopped himself.

He couldn’t do this alone. Survive alone. Remain sane alone.

Philip looked away briefly, jaw tightening, then forced the rest out before he could reconsider.

“...Would you mind if I stayed? With you. Just for a little while longer.”

The inn was louder than Philip expected.

Voices carried easily through the lower level:, the scrape of chairs, the dull thud of boots against worn floorboards, laughter. Even upstairs, behind a closed door, the noise lingered.

Philip stood just inside the room, taking it in.

It was small. Functional. A narrow window, a single chair, a washbasin set against the wall and one bed.

Just one.

His gaze lingered on it a moment too long before shifting away, his expression tightening slightly.

Of course there was only one. It wasn’t the sort of place that catered to comfort or preference. Still.

He became acutely aware of himself. The dried blood he hadn’t fully managed to wash out of his clothes, of the bandage wrapped around his middle, of how out of place he must look standing in a room that was otherwise clean.

Behind him, the door shut.

The sound made him flinch.

Philip exhaled slowly and moved further inside, each step careful, measured. The ache in his abdomen had settled into a persistent pull, sharper whenever he twisted the wrong way. He ignored it as best he could.

“I can take the floor,” he said after a moment, his voice quieter now that they were enclosed in the room.

He avoided looking at {user} as he said it, instead setting his attention on the far wall, on nothing in particular.

Morning came quietly, in A pale wash of light that slipped through the thin curtains, stretching across the small room in soft, hesitant lines. The noise from downstairs hadn’t started yet. No clatter, no voices,just the faint creak of the building settling and the distant call of birds outside.

Philip surfaced from sleep slowly. His mind lingered in that fragile space between dreaming and waking. Awareness return in pieces.

The pillow underneath his head, the rough sheets against his legs.There was warmth pressed along his side too. Close. A steady presence that hadn’t been there when he’d finally, reluctantly, fallen asleep.

{user}.

Philip open his eyes.

{user} had shifted sometime during the night, drawn in by shared warmth or simple unconscious instinct. Now {sub} was tucked against him, closer than either of them had been when they’d laid down. Close enough that Philip could feel the slow rise and fall of {poss} breathing against him.

Which wasn't a problem. Philip was the youngest out of seven children, even with a big house and plenty of rooms Philip never got to sleep alone.

But his body never betrayed him before.

An automatic, thoughtless reaction that now left him painfully hard. The closeness only made it worse, the pressure impossible to ignore.

Philip went completely still.

Heat crept up his neck, sharp and unwelcome. His gaze flicked away quickly, fixing on the far wall as if it might offer escape.

This is bad.

Not just embarrassing. Not just inconvenient.

Just Bad.

He didn’t look back at {user}.

Sleep was gone now. Completely. And yet, he didn’t move any further. Didn’t leave the bed. Didn’t wake {user}.

Didn’t trust himself too.

He just lay there, caught in the quiet in-between, acutely aware of the space pressure between them and the part of him that, despite everything, didn’t seem to mind it.

The road out of town was narrow, worn into twin tracks by years of wagons cutting through the countryside. Trees pressed close on either side, their branches knitting together overhead in places, casting long shadows that stretched across the path.

Philip sat in the back as usual, one arm hooked loosely over the side, his gaze drifting—not unfocused, just... wide. Listening.

The creak of the wheels. The steady rhythm of the horse’s hooves. The quiet shift of supplies with each bump in the road.

And underneath it Something else.

Faint.

Wrong.

His brow furrowed slightly. At first, he thought it was just the echo of something distant. Another wagon, maybe. Travelers taking the same road a ways behind them.

But the longer he listened, the more it settled into something sharper. More distinct.

Horses. More than one coming from behind them fast.

Philip straightened slightly, subtle but immediate. His hand tightened where it rested against the wagon’s edge.

“{user}.”

Behind them Philip caught glimpses—shapes between branches, flashes of movement, the unmistakable outline of men leaning low over their horses. Their faces covered.

“Bandits!” Philip started, Not that {user} needed telling.

The wagon lurched as the pace picked up, wheels rattling harder against the uneven ground. Branches scraped along the sides as they pushed forward, the narrow path offering little room for the wagon.

The path ahead forked, barely visible, one trail dipping downward through thicker brush, the other continuing straight. The lower path looked worse. Rougher. Less traveled. {User} veed the wagon down the lower path. The wagon jolted violently as it hit the uneven descent, one wheel catching hard against a hidden rock. Philip grabbed onto the side to keep from being thrown, teeth gritting as pain flared through his still-healing abdomen.

Behind them, the riders didn’t hesitate. Branches tore at them as the path narrowed further, the ground sloping more steeply now. The sound of water began to rise ahead. faint at first, then unmistakable. Rushing water. Philip’s head snapped forward.

“Wait—!”, but it was too late the path thinned and opened to a ledge. The gradual slope dropped sharply at the edge, the ground crumbling beneath the wagon’s weight as the horse tried to pull up short. The wheels slid, dirt and stone breaking loose beneath them.

For one suspended second, everything hung. Then gravity took hold and the wagon tipped.

Philip’s grip tore free as the world flipped sideways. Wood splintered, crates shattered, and the deafening rush of water surged up to meet them.

Cold. Violent. The river swallowed everything.

Philip’s body twisted and flipped as the river dragged him through its current.. The world became chaos of white noise, spinning force, limbs pulled in directions he couldn't control. Water filled his ears, his nose, his mouth and lungs.

Just when his vision began to blur did his body take control. He reacted before thought of what to do. The next thing he knew His eyes snapped open beneath the surface, vision cutting through the murk far clearer than it should have been.

Philip twisted, forcing himself upward. His head broke the surface with a sharp inhale, chest heaving as he dragged in air. Debris rushed past: broken wood, torn fabric, fragments of their supplies carried downstream. The horse was gone. The wagon splintered, barely recognizable. And the riders were nowhere in sight.

Philip pushed against the current, fighting his way toward the shallower edge, boots slipping against unseen rocks beneath the rushing water. The river let him go without ceremony. Philip hit the bank hard, his shoulder slamming into packed earth before the current dragged him the last few feet and then simply moved on. Water rushed past as if nothing had happened, as if it hadn’t just torn everything apart.

For several long seconds, he didn’t move.

He lay half in the mud, half in the shallows, chest heaving as he coughed water from his lungs. Each breath burned, sharp and raw, his body slow to remember how air worked again.

Then memory snapped back.

{user}.

Philip’s head jerked up, vision blurring as he forced himself onto his hands. The world tilted violently, but he ignored it, scanning the river with frantic urgency.

“{user}?”

“{User}?!” This time louder. Demanding. Because losing the wagon didn’t matter. The supplies didn’t matter. Even the men chasing them didn't matter.

Not compared to the single, sharp realization cutting through everything else: He couldn't go on without {obj}.