I woke up thinking about the dead man. About the way he stood. Still, empty, staring at a wall. His legs worked. His lungs didn't, but his muscles remembered how to hold him upright. A body running on leftover fuel. I lay on the cot and listened to the infirmary breathe around me. Renn was snoring softly two cots over, one arm dangling off the edge, fingers twitching in his sleep. A dream, probably. Something funny, knowing him. The mercenary with the splinted leg was muttering about meat prices. Even unconscious, people kept going — planning, fearing, wanting. What did I want? I stared at the ceiling and tried to answer honestly. Food. Shelter. Answers about my past. The same list a well-designed machine might produce if you asked it to survive. But the baker-walker had wanted something too. He'd walked three miles back to his bakery. Dead body, but something in the residual magic had sent him to knead dough. A ghost of purpose. A copy of a copy. Was I any different? I ate because I needed fuel. I worked because it bought food. I slept because my body demanded it. I was a closed loop — the same one I'd identified back in Riverside. Eat to work, work to eat. The only upgrade since then was that my loop now included a cot instead of sheepskins. So what separated me from the thing in the ravine? I watched Renn twitch in his sleep and smile. Renn didn't eat because he needed fuel. Renn ate because he enjoyed it. He fought because the danger made him feel alive. He talked endlessly because silence bored him. Every action had a layer on top of the mechanical — a spark of something personal, irrational, wasteful. Joy. Annoyance. Curiosity. Boredom. Affection. Anger. Emotions. Short, pointless bursts of feeling that served no survival purpose whatsoever. And yet every living person I'd met ran on them. Hollen's grumbling. Lira's curiosity. Veyra's sharp-edged pride. Renn's relentless need to be funny. Terro's obsession with data. Even Greyve's stupidity — it was still something. A fire, however small, burning behind the eyes. My fire was out. Or buried. Or never lit to begin with. But here's the thing — and I'm aware this might be wrong, because my brain has a proven track record of lying to me — if emotions are what separate living people from walking corpses, then I need to find them. Starting today, I was going to try. It was probably a terrible idea. * * * It was... My first attempt happened at the water trough, thirty seconds after stepping outside. A mercenary I didn't know was splashing water on his face. I walked up, stopped two paces away, and said: "Good morning." I said it the way I say everything — flat, even, direct. Eye contact. No inflection. Like stating a geographic fact. The man flinched. Water dripped from his chin. He looked at me like I'd just told him his family was dead. "The hell was that?" "A greeting," I said. "It sounded like a threat." "It wasn't." He grabbed his towel and left quickly, glancing back twice. I stood at the trough. How is 'good morning' a threat? I replayed it in my head. The words were correct. The delivery, apparently, was not. * * * Breakfast was porridge. Grey, thick, with a consistency that suggested the cook had personal grudges against both oats and the people eating them. I sat at the bench next to Renn, who was poking his bowl with profound suspicion. "Every morning I think it can't get worse," he said. "Every morning the cook proves me wrong." I looked at my porridge. Then at Renn. This was an opportunity. People bond over shared complaints. I could contribute. I could participate. "It looks like what we found in the ravine yesterday," I said. The table went quiet. Four people who had been eating porridge stopped chewing simultaneously. One of them slowly lowered his spoon. Renn stared at me. Then he burst out laughing — hard, genuine, the kind that made him grip the table. "Did you just—" He wheezed. "Did you just compare the porridge to a corpse?" "Yes," I said. "Was that a good joke?" "No! That was horrifying!" He was still laughing. "But also — yes? Kind of? Don't do it again. Or do. I can't decide." The man across the table pushed his bowl away and left. Renn laughed harder. Something shifted in my chest. Is this what joy feels like? I had nothing to compare it to. But when Renn laughed, something inside me responded — not to the joke, but to the fact that I'd caused a reaction. * * * Third attempt. Worse. I noticed, as Terro readied his equipment near the armory, that the leather strap on his quiver had come loose. An arrow was tilting out at an angle. If he ran, it would fall. I walked over and reached for the strap. Terro's hand locked around my wrist like an iron clamp. His eyes went flat. For approximately one second, I was certain he was about to break my arm. "What are you doing?" His voice was the calm of a loaded crossbow. "Your strap is loose. The third arrow from the left is going to fall." He held my wrist for another full second, then released it. He looked down at the strap. It was, indeed, loose. He tightened it himself, precisely, without looking at me. "In the future," he said, "announce your intentions before reaching for another person's equipment. Especially a person who has been trained to respond to unexpected contact with immediate and proportional violence." "Noted." "I nearly dislocated your shoulder." "I noticed." He walked away, his posture a straight vertical line of dignified irritation. I stood there, rubbing my wrist. Three attempts at human connection. Score: one startled mercenary, one traumatized breakfast table, and one near-dislocation. But also one genuine laugh and one problem identified before it caused trouble. Mixed results. I'd continue tomorrow. * * * After that Veyra called me. Veyra's office was a small room off the main hall, and it looked like a paper mill had exploded inside it. Ledgers stacked on ledgers. Scrolls rolled and unrolled across every surface. Maps pinned to the walls with daggers — actual daggers, blade-first, which was either practical or a statement about her organizational philosophy. She sat behind a desk that was more paper than wood, a quill in one hand and a half-empty cup of something bitter-smelling in the other. She didn't look up when I entered. "Sit." I sat on a stool that creaked dangerously. "I've made a decision about you," she said, still writing. The quill scratched across parchment. "You're not a mercenary. You have no rank, no card, no combat certification, and based on the report from my forge master, you are also not a blacksmith." I said nothing. That was fair. "However." She set the quill down and looked at me. "You show up at dawn without being asked. You do what you're told without complaining. You don't steal, you don't start fights, and you don't get drunk and vomit in the training yard." She paused. "This puts you ahead of roughly forty percent of my actual recruits." She pulled a sheet of parchment from a drawer and slid it across the desk. A form, partially filled. At the top: Fourth Company — Contractor Agreement. "This makes you official. You're attached to the Fourth. You get a cot, meals, and access to the notice board. You can look at contracts, but you can't take them independently. You work assignments I give you. Pay is per task — copper, mostly." She tapped the bottom of the page. "One month trial. If you perform, I file for a proper rank. If you don't, you walk. Clean break, no debt." I looked at the form. It was straightforward. "I accept," I said. "I wasn't finished." Veyra leaned back and crossed her arms. "The Fourth has a reputation. We're not the biggest company, not the richest, not the flashiest. But we close contracts and we don't lose people. I intend to keep it that way. So if you get in over your head on a job — you pull back. No heroics, no improvising. You signal the team and you retreat. I'd rather lose a bounty than fill out a death report. Clear?" "Clear." She pushed an ink pot toward me. I picked up the quill and signed. Marshal. One name. She looked at it, looked at me, and shrugged. "Welcome to the Fourth, contractor." She stamped the form with a seal — a clenched fist over a bridge. "Don't make me regret it. That's expensive." I remembered my morning experiment. This was a moment where a normal person would express gratitude. Maybe smile. I considered attempting to smile again, then remembered the water trough. I settled for: "Thank you, Veyra." She raised an eyebrow. "That's the most human thing you've said since I pulled you out of the forest. Keep it up." She pulled a second sheet from the pile. "Now, since you're officially mine — I have a job. Sit back down." * * * The Greyvein Mine had been closed for a year. It was a crystal extraction site two hours east of Ashford, built into the base of a limestone ridge. The miners had pulled raw magical crystals from the rock — the same kind that lit the city's lanterns and marked the road milestones. The vein dried up, the company pulled out, and the tunnels were sealed. "Sealed badly," Veyra said, tapping the map. "The eastern shaft collapsed inward three months ago. Since then, we've had walker sightings along the southern road — one or two a week, all coming from that direction. Yesterday you and Terro confirmed the latest. The city council wants the source cleared." She looked at me. "You, Renn, Terro, and Pol. Go in, clear whatever's walking around in there, and collapse the entrance properly on your way out." "Pol?" I asked. "Big man, face like a cliff. He carried your stretcher." I nodded. "When?" "Now." She smiled — the sharp, brief kind. "Welcome to the Fourth." * * * The Greyvein Mine. We approached from the eastern ridge. The entrance was a square-cut hole in the limestone, framed by rotting timber supports. Iron rails for ore carts ran out of the dark mouth and ended abruptly where the ground had collapsed. Weeds grew between the rails. Wooden signs — CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE MINING GUILD — hung at crooked angles, half-eaten by weather. Pol walked point. He was everything Veyra had described — massive, silent, carrying a tower shield and a short, heavy mace with the casual ease of a man carrying groceries. His face was a topographic map of old fights. He hadn't spoken a single word since we'd left the compound. Renn flanked left, both swords drawn. Terro stayed behind, bow ready, an arrow nocked but not drawn. I followed with my hammer. "I hate mines," Renn announced as we crossed the threshold. The daylight behind us narrowed to a slit, then vanished around the first bend. "Dark, cramped, full of dead people. At least in a forest you can run." "If you needed to run, you would already be failing at the objective," Terro noted. "I like having options, Terro." The only light came from residual crystals embedded in the tunnel walls — small, dim, pulsing a faint, sickly green. Enough to see by, barely. The rails under our feet were rusted solid. Water dripped from the ceiling in irregular patterns, each drop echoing off the stone like a slow, broken clock. First contact: fifty paces in. A walker stood with its back to us in a side alcove. Male, middle-aged, wearing the remnants of a miner's coveralls. Grey skin, slack jaw, eyes that reflected the green crystal light like a cat's. Pol didn't slow down. He walked up, positioned his shield, and swung the mace in a short, brutal arc. The walker's head snapped sideways with a wet crack. It folded and dropped. "One," Pol said. The first word I'd heard him speak. His voice was deep. We kept moving. Second walker: a woman, sitting against the wall with her legs straight out, rocking slightly. Terro took her from twenty paces. Clean shot, through the temple. "Two," Pol counted. Renn glanced at me. "You alright?" "Yes." "You're staring." "I'm observing." "You're staring like they owe you something." I said nothing. He wasn't wrong. Every walker we passed pulled at the same thread inside me — the one connected to the phrase and the token. But the thread didn't lead anywhere. Just down, into the dark. We reached the main excavation chamber sixty paces in. The tunnel opened into a wide, low-ceilinged cavern supported by thick timber pillars. Mining equipment — picks, wheelbarrows, coils of rope — lay scattered in the green half-light. And in the center of the cavern, standing in a loose cluster like mourners at a forgotten funeral, were the rest. I counted eight. No — nine. Ten. Shapes in the shadows, standing, swaying, their grey faces turned toward nothing. "Well," Renn said quietly. "That's more than two." Pol raised his shield. Terro drew his bow to full tension. Renn's grip tightened on both hilts. For three seconds, nothing happened. The walkers stood in their silent congregation. We stood at the entrance. Green light pulsed. Then Renn's boot caught the edge of a rusted ore cart. It shifted with a grinding shriek of metal on stone that echoed through the chamber like a gunshot. Every head turned. Ten pairs of dead eyes locked onto us. Ten mouths opened. A collective, rattling hiss filled the chamber — not loud, but layered, the sound of air being forced through throats that had forgotten how to breathe. "Contact!" Pol barked — one word, a command and a warning — and stepped forward, shield high. They came. Not fast — walkers never moved fast — but in a wave, a shambling mass of grey limbs converging from three directions. The chamber was too wide for Pol to block them all. Too close for Terro to shoot without hitting Renn. Renn surged forward, both blades cutting in precise, compact arcs. A head separated from its neck. A hand — reaching, grasping — fell to the ground still twitching. He was fast, brutally efficient, but the space was tight and they kept coming. Pol anchored the center, his mace rising and falling with mechanical rhythm. Each swing ended a walker. But two slipped past his shield side, drawn by the noise, stumbling toward the tunnel entrance — toward Terro. Terro dropped one with a snap-shot at five paces. Point blank. The arrow went through its skull and embedded in the wall behind it. The second lunged at him. Terro sidestepped, but the thing caught his bowstring with dead fingers. The bow twisted. Terro cursed — the first time I'd ever heard him use profanity — and kicked the walker backward. And then: a shape in my peripheral vision. A walker, somehow behind us — it must have been in a side alcove we hadn't checked. It came from the dark, arms extended, jaw hanging open, directly at Renn's unprotected back. Renn was mid-swing, committed, couldn't turn in time. My hand moved before my brain gave permission. The fingers of my left hand folded into a shape I didn't consciously choose. Two fingers extended, the rest curled. Palm out. Ken. A flat disc of blue light flared between Renn and the walker. Sharp, bright, humming for the half-second it existed. The walker hit it chest-first and was hurled backward, slamming into the cavern wall with enough force to crack the timber support behind it. The light faded. The cavern went quiet. The last three walkers were down — Pol had finished them while I wasn't looking. Water dripped. Green crystals pulsed. Renn stood with both swords raised, breathing hard. He turned slowly, looked at the walker crumpled against the wall, then at the space where the blue light had been, then at me. My hand was still raised. The fingers still folded. I lowered it. Silence. Long, heavy, broken only by the dripping water. Pol pulled his mace from the last walker's skull with a wet, cracking sound. He looked at me from behind his shield. His expression didn't change. But his eyes stayed on my hand for a long time. Terro restrung his bow with steady fingers. He said nothing. But I could see him filing the event away — data, always data. Renn sheathed his swords slowly. He wiped his face with his forearm. Then he looked at me. "What the hell was that?" I looked at my hand. The fingers that had moved on their own. The word that had surfaced from the dark without being called. "I don't know," I said. Half a lie. But the whole truth was worse, and I didn't have it myself yet. * * * The walk back was quiet. Not the comfortable quiet of tired men heading home. The loaded quiet of people who'd seen something they didn't understand and were deciding what to do about it. Pol walked point, as always. He hadn't spoken since his last count. His silence now felt deliberately heavy. Terro was behind me. I could feel his gaze on the back of my head — steady, analytical, the gaze of a man compiling a report he hadn't been asked to write. Renn walked at my side. For the first mile, he said nothing. Then: "You saved my life back there." "You would have dodged." "Maybe. Maybe not." He was quiet for another hundred paces. "Are you a mage?" "Maybe." "That gives no answer." "I know." Another silence. Then Renn did something I didn't expect. He reached over and clapped me on the shoulder. One quick, firm hit, the way soldiers do. I felt the impact. And something else. Is this what it feels like? To matter to someone?

Chapter 10: Living