The forest ended at a ridgeline. Beyond, the eastern mountains rose in grey folds, peaks still white with late spring snow. Le Maçon stopped at the tree line and studied the terrain with the same attention he’d once given stone.

Three days travel to the foothills. Perhaps five to the first reliable passes. The White Council’s maps had been incomplete, and it was hard to estimate how far he could travel in a day now. He was still adapting to his new condition. The region was disputed territory, had changed hands twice in living memory, but the basic geography held. Mountains. Forests. Villages scattered in the valleys where the soil permitted farming.

Somewhere in that grey expanse, the Magikar’s escaped experiments.

He continued walking. His boots made no sound on the forest floor.

The White Council chamber. Stone walls carved with names of the lost, the oldest lists worn nearly smooth. Five figures at the crescent table, robed, hooded, and still.

“Colonel Thibault Beaumont. Le Maçon.” The speaker’s voice carried from deep within the shadows of their hood with the practiced weight of someone who had commissioned difficult work before. “The terms of your assignment have been set before you. We ask that you confirm your understanding.”

“Reconnaissance. Assessment. Establish contact if prudent.” The voice came out the same as their voices always did. Soft. Androgynous. Measured. They couldn’t see what writhed beneath.

“Correct. The task of negotiating formal alliances falls to others. However.” A deliberate pause. “Should the opportunity present itself and your judgment support it, the Council grants you that latitude. Use it carefully.”

“Understood.”

“We would be remiss not to prepare you plainly.” The speaker folded their hands, a curious movement from one so still. “The Magikar’s work tends toward the monstrous. Their experiments are rarely stable. Rarely sane. You may find nothing but corpses at your destination.”

“Or I may find weapons. Allies.”

“Yes.” A brief silence. Acknowledgment, not encouragement. “Gather what intelligence you can. Return it to us intact.” A pause. “Survive, Le Maçon. That is not a pleasantry. It is a condition of the commission. The Venge are precious few, and none to spare.”

His hand was clenching and unclenching. He stopped, looked down at the pale fingers. They responded normally to conscious direction. The involuntary movements were new.

Irrelevant. He continued walking.

The sun moved across the sky. He didn’t tire. That was new as well. This body didn’t require rest the way the old one had. Didn’t require food, though he could still taste if he chose to. Didn’t require sleep, though sometimes the darkness called anyway.

Mostly it didn’t require anything except the mission.

That should have been perfect. He’d spent fifty-three years managing the limitations of flesh—fatigue, hunger, the need for sleep that interrupted work. Now those limitations were gone.

Instead there was

her voice screaming his name and he couldn’t look away they’d made sure he couldn’t look away the restraints were Magikar-work and Marguerite’s eyes found his across the laboratory pleading for him to do something SAY something feel SOMETHING why didn’t I SAY something FEEL anything

He was kneeling in the dirt. When had that happened?

Le Maçon stood. Brushed off his knees with methodical precision. The sun had moved perhaps fifteen minutes. Not significant. He resumed walking.

A stream cut across his path. He stopped at the bank, looked down at the water running clear over smooth stones. His reflection stared back.

The face was his own. Older than he remembered—they’d kept him alive for weeks in that place, and dying had aged him in ways living never had. The skin held a greyish pallor that would never be tanned by the sun again.

The eyes were still pale green. Still unblinking.

Still empty, to anyone looking in.

He knelt, cupped water in his hands. The cold registered as data: temperature, mineral content from the stones, probable source in the higher elevations. He drank because the action was normal, expected. The water tasted like memory.

The council had gifted him the hammer, identical to the ones he’d carried in Montclair. “It is not merely a weapon, Le Maçon. It is a reliquary of souls. Many of those who you marshalled against the siege now reside inside it.”

He had lifted it in a hand, intending to inspect. He could hear them scream when he held it. Cursing their demise, the Magikar, themselves. Cursing him.

He gave no external sign of the noise, completing his inspection and returning it to the ceremonial pillow it had been presented on, dipping his head in thanks.

The hammer materialized in his hand. Simple act of will now, though the first time had been accident. Or instinct. Hard to tell the difference.

He looked at the worn wood, the heavy iron head. Felt something that might have been weight, might have been accusation. The Council hadn’t explained bound weapons. Hadn’t needed to.

rotten friend rotten oath we swore and you just WATCHED

The hammer vanished. His hand was empty again.

He continued walking.

Night fell. The forest grew dark around him but his eyes adjusted—another gift, another change. He could see in darkness now. Could move silently through terrain that would have broken his old legs.

Could walk and walk and never tire.

Should have been perfect.

“Fascinating.” The Magikar’s voice, clinical interest. “Most subjects break at this threshold. Beg. Bargain. Attempt negotiation.” A pause. “You’re just… watching.”

His eldest daughter hung in chains. Her blood pooled on the floor. She’d stopped screaming ten minutes ago. Her youngest boy, not yet five, sat beneath her. Silent. Eyes wide in shock.

“Are you even human?” Genuine curiosity in the question. “We have theorized about null-states. Individuals lacking the standard affective responses. But I’ve never encountered one in practice.”

Le Maçon said nothing. There was nothing to say. They would kill her regardless. His silence changed nothing.

“Remarkable. We must study this.”

KILL THEM RIP THEM APART TEAR

He counted to twenty. His breathing normalized, an automatic response, unnecessary but comforting. The rage that had seized him retreated like water draining from a basin.

Unacceptable. He would need to develop better control mechanisms.

He resumed walking at a normal pace.

A village appeared in the valley below. Smoke from cooking fires. Distant sounds of daily life. Children playing, someone hammering metal, dogs barking. Normal things. Living things.

He would avoid them. He no longer looked human. Whatever illusions living flesh had provided were gone now.

The mission required information. The mission did not require him to frighten children.

He circled the village, staying to the forest line.

His son’s face. Jehan, nineteen and still afraid of him. “Father, please, tell them! Make them stop!”

The Magikar were taking measurements. Magical readings. His son’s body opened like a book they were studying.

“Father, I don’t understand why, why won’t you,”

He couldn’t answer. Didn’t know what answer to give. What was there to say? That begging would change nothing? That his son’s death served the Magikar’s research purposes and those purposes would be fulfilled regardless of emotional displays?

Jehan had looked at him one last time. Not pleading anymore. Just… disappointed.

Then his eyes had gone dark.

FAILED HIM FAILED THEM ALL SHOULD HAVE FELT SOMETHING ANYTHING WHY DIDN’T I

The hammer was in his hands again. He’d brought it out without thinking. Was holding it like he’d held it during the siege. Ready to strike.

He looked around. Just trees and darkness and the distant village lights.

He made the hammer disappear.

The second night. He found a defensible position. Old habit, unnecessary now but comforting, and sat with his back against stone. Didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep. Just sat and watched the stars wheel overhead.

The same stars he’d mapped in the astronomical dome. The eternal patterns his ancestors had learned from elven teachers.

They looked different now. Colder. More distant.

Or perhaps he was the one who’d changed.

The transfer ritual. Magikar sorcerers chanting in languages that hurt to hear. His body strapped to one table, the thing waiting on another. Some kind of vessel they’d prepared. Part flesh, part metal, part something else.

“The null-state makes you ideal,” the lead researcher had explained. “Normal consciousness resists transfer. Creates incompatibilities. But you…” A smile. “You barely have consciousness to transfer. This should be seamless.”

They’d been wrong.

The magic had touched him, pulled his essence free. And then he had simply died.

False dawn came, painting the horizon a dead shade of gray. He rose from his alcove and continued his journey through the woods.

The air was cooler here. Another pointless detail. He couldn’t freeze.

The White Council again. “Are you prepared for this assignment?”

“Yes.”

A long pause. The councilor studying him, face concealed in the shadows of the hood. “You seem… stable. More stable than many who return.”

“I am functional.”

“Functional. Yes.” Another pause. “But are you well?”

The question had surprised him.

“I am capable of completing the assignment.”

The Council had accepted that as sufficient.

Sunrise came. The sun rose over the mountains ahead, painting the peaks gold and rose. Beautiful, in the abstract way that mathematical precision was beautiful.

He felt nothing looking at it.

No. That wasn’t true.

He felt

HATE HIMSELF hate this HATE that it’s too late HATE NOW when it’s too late when they’re GONE when

Blood on his hands. When had that happened? He looked down. No blood. Just pale skin and the trembling that wouldn’t quite stop.

The rage was getting stronger, cut deeper, left more residue behind.

He resumed walking.

The foothills. Steeper terrain now. He climbed without fatigue, handling slopes that would have winded him. Good. This was good. Focus on the mission. Focus on the terrain. Focus on anything except

Celine’s notebook. Found in his pocket after he’d returned. She was the only one he had been spared witnessing the death of, instead watching unblinking as they hauled her like livestock as she screamed, reaching helplessly for him, begging him to save her.

He didn’t remember taking it. Didn’t remember her giving it to him. Just: there, against his chest.

Her handwriting. Observations about glass-making, thermal expansion, the geometry of rose windows. Questions she’d wanted to ask him. Notes to herself about impressing father, about making him see.

Now he knew. She’d tried so hard. They’d all tried. And he’d given them nothing.

Now they were gone.

SHOULD HAVE TOLD HER SHOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING ANYTHING

He was kneeling again. The notebook wasn’t in his pocket. He’d left it with the White Council for safekeeping. Or perhaps just to stop carrying it.

She was gone. They were all gone.

And for the first time in his existence, he felt loss.

The hammer in his hands. Gaspard’s voice, maybe, or maybe just memory: “You never felt it, did you? Never understood what we carried. You just did what needed doing and moved on.”

“The mission required—”

“The mission. Always the MISSION. We ate men, Le Maçon. We hunted them and killed them and ATE them. And you just… calculated the rations.”

“Would emotion have changed the outcome?”

“It would have made us HUMAN.”

He made the hammer vanish.

Then brought it back.

Looked at it in the fading light.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. To Gaspard. To the hammer. To himself. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand.”

The words felt strange. Unfamiliar. Like speaking a language he’d never learned.

But they were true.

That was new.

Everything was new.

He was dead and for the first time, he was alive.

The mountains rose ahead. Somewhere in those grey peaks, the Magikar’s experiments waited. Escaped horrors. Twisted victims. Possible weapons or possible allies or possible nothing but corpses.

Le Maçon walked forward, into the gathering dark. Behind him, the sun had already set on Amerel.

Ahead, the unknown.

He kept walking anyway.

That’s what he did.

It was all he’d ever known how to do.