never knowing the saint had already bled,
had risen,
and walked toward his children’s hearth.
Tales were told as they entered his heart.
And from that fire, a fellowship was formed.
But the Forest does not speak through flame.
It waits.
It measures.
It sent no omen, no voice, no storm.
Only wolves.
And they came not to kill,
but to listen.
For in the quiet places of the world,
where data rots and roots remember,
the code of beasts still runs clean.
They saw what men could not:
That the prince had returned,
And they were his to command.
The Forest, older than faith,
offered him their teeth and wings.
The night found Chen, Joya, and Gloria still before the ruin of Kildra’s lab by the time Gloria finished packing.
It had been decided: Chen needed to meet someone higher up in the Greens. The Forest’s recent behavior was too miraculous to ignore.
It was too dark to safely travel, Joya had said, so they made a small fire—in the classic Green way—and huddled beside its faint, flickering light.
Chen got lost in the glow for a while.
New memories had begun surfacing again. Not like before—no clear sequence, no certainty. Fragments.
Some terrified him. Others… drew him in.
A brunette woman. A smile like sunrise.
A small boy hopping into his lap.
Why did that fragment fill him with such warmth—
and such unbearable grief?
Why did it leave him trembling with hatred for Kildra?
He didn’t know.
And he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“A pen’ fa ja dre’m Ch’n,” Joya said—speaking in a pidgin form of Ba`Tya (Ban-Ka-Tie-ah), the ritual dialect descended from old Tekniak. Most people just spoke common these days.
The phrase broke the long, uncomfortable silence around the fire.
Chen flinched, pulled from his silent meditation by the sudden break.
He hadn’t marked Joya as the chatty type.
But the man had been watching him all night—studying every movement, mouthing his words under his breath like scripture.
Gloria had warned him.
Told him how resolute a Green believer Joya was.
“Re-Earthed,” they called it.
Another name for extremist, in Chen’s opinion.
He’d have to keep an eye on him.
“Umm… just—everything is new. Yet not.
New memories that I’ve always known.
New logic that’s always been there.
Also… things I’d… I’d rather not remember.”
“Ja e old soul, Ch’n,” Joya said, chewing on a long strip of something — jerky or bark. With his beliefs, it could be either.
“The Dev’l, she seal’d th’y up gud, ta keep’ja hush.
Tems ja power—wisdem.
She’s keepin’ it from ya.”
He finished with a bite, eyes steady in the firelight.
Maybe Joya was the wise one here.
His words held a resonance Chen couldn’t shake—truth he wanted to deny, but couldn’t.
Not honestly.
Not anymore.
“Yeah,” Chen muttered. “I guess you’re right about that.
There’s so much she did to me. So much I was just—
Ignorant? No… what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Puppet,” Gloria said, without looking up from her tablet.
“The word is puppet.
Which is what you were.”
“She not be wrong,” Joya said, his voice low. “Not k’nd.
But not wrong.”
He glared at Gloria—but not with anger. With warning.
“Why should I be kind?” Gloria snapped, finally looking up.
“I have the files.”
She raised her tablet like a blade.
“I know what he’s done with her.
In the last seventy-five years.”
Her voice cut colder.
“Do you remember the last fifty years, Chen?”
She didn’t wait for the answer.
“I do.”
Chen stared at her.
The memories had returned—fully, unedited. His years as a Herald, laid bare.
To his shock, most of that time… was just him.
No manipulation. No excuses.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’ve done wicked things.”
He let that hang.
“Am I sorry?”
A pause.
“For most… no.”
“I always gave people a chance to negotiate.
More times than not, they saw a stranger standing alone—and chose strength over diplomacy.”
He turned his eyes to the fire.
“No. I’m not sorry for my own actions.”
“I mean…” Gloria began, but Chen cut her off.
“I don’t think you understand the wilderness that was left to us after the Collapse.”
He kept his gaze fixed on the fire.
“My memories show a consistent view. From the Golden Age to now. Different lives—same pattern.
We lost too much. And even now, what we’ve rebuilt… it’s a flicker compared to what was.”
His voice darkened.
“And in that loss, I’ve seen what we are.
What we become when there’s not enough to eat, to share—when survival shrinks us.”
He shook his head.
“Some of the memories I wish I could forget… are exactly that.”
A long silence.
“So no. I won’t make excuses, Gloria.”
He looked at her now—not with anger, but with something sharper.
“I am a blade. Don’t ask me to be a crane.”
Gloria paled.
She looked to her husband for rescue—something, anything to pull her out of the hole she’d dug.
Joya harrumphed, firmly on Chen’s side. He, too, had seen the darker side of man.
“Ap’olgies, Ch’n,” he said. “My Glory’s been spar’d this real’ty. Me done a gud job of it, if I say so meself.”
He smiled at the small joke.
Chen understood—and returned it with one of his own.
“You’re her shield,” he said softly.
“I… I know that feeling.”
He thought of Leah.
And the echo of a boy’s laugh he could no longer place.
“My…” He choked on the word. “My Leah.
I, too, am her shield.
That’s why I stay here. That’s why I haven’t called for my ship.”
He paused, then added with a dry, almost amused bitterness:
“A ship. Not really mine anymore.”
He laughed softly at the strangeness of it all.
“Do’s not it work with’out the Dev’l?” Joya asked—half concern, half curiosity, fully aware he was missing something.
“Oh, it works,” Chen said. “I can call it with a thought. But it doesn’t belong to me anymore.”
He stared into the fire.
“It belongs to Chen.
And he would follow it to me, if I took it.”
Joya frowned, confused.
“Are… are ja not Chen?”
“Yesss…” Chen let the word roll like smoke.
“And no.”
“Kildra probably regenerated in our tower,” he said, almost thinking aloud, “and recalled me from memory. Which means there’s likely another Chen there now.”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Can you imagine my Leah, with two of me around?
Chaos.”
He poked at the fire with a stick.
“No. I stay here. I start over.
That’s the least I can do for them.”
He looked up at no one in particular.
“Let them have their Chen.
“And I’ll suffer their absence alone—here.”
“Won’t you… implode?” Gloria asked, her voice low, face unreadable—like an experiment was whispering behind her eyes.
“Quantum physics,” she continued. “You can’t be in two places at the same time.”
Chen stared at her.
How could she know about quantum physics?
The only reason he knew about it was from the memories—the ones clawing their way back from some buried Golden Age. Knowledge no one should have access to anymore.
“Um,” he said, faltering. “I mean… we aren’t the same. The moment I debonded, her memory of me split off from my quantum particle identifier…”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
He stopped.
Then narrowed his eyes.
“…How do you know about quantum physics?”
Her face flushed, sudden and sharp.
A secret, exposed.
She crossed her arms over her chest in a small, instinctive act of protection.
Then glanced toward Joya—silent, pleading.
Joya sighed through his nose. Protective. Proud.
“She be a gen’is,” he said.
“Found a Cald’r—a tablet—when she was just a sprout.
Made it run.
Fig’d it out. Learn’t.”
He looked at Chen now, serious.
“Tis not som’tin we speak to.”
Chen nodded, understanding too well.
In a world that would enslave you for smithing information alone, possessing a Calder was as dangerous as it was priceless.
“A Calder?” he said, breath catching. “Wow. That’s… a treasure. All that information. Libraries’ worth.”
“No,” Gloria said quickly. “Not libraries.
It was a middle school Calder. Just up to the basics of quantum physics.”
She looked away, then back—eyes sharper now.
“I don’t even know what a particle identifier is.”
A beat.
“…How do you?”
“I… I had—have? A couple.”
“A couple of what?”
“Calders,” he said, eyes drifting toward the forest.
The silence returned, deeper now.
If she had been mentally deconstructing his gear earlier—reverse-engineering every circuit, every material—what would she think of full-cycle Calders?
Pre-K to university.
Archived systems that had built civilizations.
She was probably plotting.
Or calculating.
Or both.
He tensed as Joya moved suddenly—sharp, unexpected.
Chen instinctively reached for defense.
But nothing came.
Joya had only risen to check on Gloria.
She had passed out in her seat, arms still crossed, tablet dimmed in her lap.
Gloria awoke shortly after. The guys had settled back down, and Joya was midway through one of his favorite stories—the kind he only told when drinking.
“So… me be balancin’ on this log, eh?
Floatin’ ‘way from the ship, and he hollers—
‘Ya may’ve gotten y’self loose, but I gotcha hooch anyhow, ya lizard-fagget!’”
He said the last in a straighter Common tone, mimicking the mate for effect.
Both of them cracked up at the punchline.
The fire snapped in the wind, hissing like it was trying not to laugh with them.
“An’ Ch’n—Ch’n, best part—
He drank it! Right th’re!
Starin’ me in’ta eyes like it were holy-sap!”
He paused. Then leaned in slightly.
“…‘Cept it weren’t hooch.”
Chen blinked.
“No?”
“No,” Joya said, eyes gleaming.
“…T'was mine.”
Both men rolled onto their sides with laughter, breathless and unguarded.
“Funny…”
The voice whispered in Chen’s head.
It had been murmuring all night—single words, scattered comforts, barely noticed.
He accepted it as part of his new existence.
He was either schizophrenic now… or something else entirely.
Either way, he would have to live with it.
He was quietly hoping for the former.
They settled down a bit.
“Joya,” Chen said, watching him across the fire. “Your dialect. Are you from the Isles?”
“Ay! Fornica Isles—land o’ riches, ladies, an’ pirates—arrrgh!”
He laughed the last part out, half-joke, half-pride.
“Tell me about it,” Chen said, frowning slightly.
“I… I think I have muddled memories from there.
Something about a siege.”
“A siege?” Joya scratched his chin. “Hmmm. Ain’t been war there in ov’r two hundr’d years.”
He leaned back, eyes narrowing toward the stars.
“T’was a republic back then, ‘fore the Great Capt’n took it over.
Right bastard he was. But brought order—of a sort.”
“Bastard?” Gloria cut in, finally joining the conversation.
“More like evil. He introduced slavery, turned government into a pyramid scheme, taught neighbors to rat each other out, and baked strength-over-everything into the culture.”
She spit to the side without ceremony.
“Eh,” Joya said, taking another sip from the drink they’d been passing.
“She no likin’ the Isles much, Ch’n.”
“Chen,” Gloria said, lifting her tablet without looking up.
“I suggest you don’t go digging into that memory, if you want to stay sane.”
She tapped the screen once, her tone flat.
“That Devil’s memory is clear about it.
It’s something she kept in accessible storage.
Proud of it, as she was.”
***
The fire was low, its light nothing more than a breath now.
Joya had gone quiet, drifting in and out of sleep as he sat.
Gloria slept beside him, one hand still resting on her tablet.
Chen leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
The belt—called a Lash by Kildra, who had ironically crafted it for her original Charge, Gilda—kept his vitals topped off.
He estimated he only needed an hour of sleep every day or two now.
He’d have to test that soon.
That’s when he heard it.
Gru… Wolves… for you.
Then he felt the pressure.
Eyes in the dark.
Gleaming, deliberate.
Just past the lip of the clearing, deep inside the shadows cast by trees that reached hundreds of meters high.
Muzzles began to emerge from the dark.
“Ch’n! Wolves!” Joya shouted, springing to his feet, axe in hand.
Gloria scrambled backward, eyes wide, fumbling for her pistol somewhere in the clutter beside her bedroll.
“I know,” Chen said.
His face twisted—part confusion, part certainty.
“They’re… mine.”
He didn’t know why he said it.
But he knew it was true.
Three of them. Maybe five.
They stepped from the treeline, slow and silent.
The middle one was larger than the rest.
Watching.
Measuring.
Chen didn’t move.
He didn’t need to.
The large one stepped forward.
Broad-shouldered. Pale-coated.Its fur shimmered like mist over roots.
It padded to the edge of the firelight—just shy of the glow.
Its eyes locked onto Chen’s.
No growl.
No threat.
Just… stillness.
Then it exhaled—long and slow—and lowered its head, almost to the earth.
It stepped aside.
Another followed. Then another. They passed around the fire in slow, deliberate arcs—never breaking pace, never turning their backs—before slipping back into the brush.
Only then did Joya speak, his voice reverent—almost formal—in high Ba`Tya.
“Vey’n ul Gor’Shaan… Fae’dem tu’morcha.”
(The Wolf Spirit walks. The prince is not alone.)
He began looking around frantically.
Gloria stirred, blinking.
“What just happened? What are you doing!?”
“T’was ta Wolf Spirit!” Joya said matter-of-factly. “Me lookin’ fa ta Bird Spirit!”
But still—something in Chen unlocked.
Not memory. Not clarity.
Recognition.
The Forest had seen him.
And more than that—it was speaking to him.
He had been measured.
Summoned.
And, somehow, he had answered.
“Bird Spirit?” Chen asked aloud.
Morning… Owl… Hunting… Busy…
The Forest replied like a whisper inside his thoughts—calm, impersonal, complete.
Chen sighed.
Had he just traded Kildra for the Forest?
“The owl’s busy, Joya,” he muttered.
“I’ll get you some birdies in the morning.”
No use fighting it.
He’d roll with it. For now.
Joya’s jaw dropped.
He saw prophecy.
Chen saw protocol.
He could guess the truth.
The Forest wasn’t divine—it was engineered.
Golden Age, probably.
Biotech grown to interface with life.
But either way…
Now he had wolves.
And birds.
Maybe pigs next.
He could go for some bacon.
And so our prince walked west, beneath bough and breath,
and the beasts of the old world stirred at his passing.
Some bowed. Some bled. Some watched.
For the Forest remembers its child,
and does not ask whether it should serve—
only when.