The wind of the Eastern Marches was not kind.
It bit at the skin like the breath of old ghosts, and it carried with it the stench of war not yet begun — burnt leather, forged steel, bitter oil. A thousand footsteps had already marched across the dry grass, and more would follow unless something changed.
Frido walked alone.
He bore no blade, no banner, no companion.
Only silence.
The Sigil of Yielding burned faintly beneath his tunic. At night, when he lay beneath sparse stars, it pulsed with warmth like a second heartbeat.
The first village he came to was called Beldrun Hollow — a place of simple folk, now twisted by fear.
Its gates were chained. Men with makeshift spears watched from the palisade.
When they saw the boy, they raised the alarm.
But Frido did not flinch. He walked calmly to the gate and sat before it, cross-legged, with his hands palm-up in peace.
He did not speak.
He did not beg.
He simply waited.
---
It took three hours before anyone came to him.
An old woman, gray-haired and sharp-eyed, approached from behind the bars. She wore mourning black — a widow of the border wars.
"You from the Flame Legion?" she asked.
Frido shook his head slowly.
"A scout?"
He pointed to his throat and shook his head again.
She studied him.
"You think silence will keep you alive?"
Frido reached into his cloak and drew a small piece of parchment.
> "I seek only to listen, and to be heard without harm."
The old woman narrowed her eyes. "Foolish. Listening never stopped a sword."
Still, she did not send him away.
At sunset, she brought him a cup of barley broth.
When he took it, bowing in gratitude, she sat down behind the gate.
"Name was Maera," she said after a while. "My husband. Died in the War of Severance. For what? The right to burn someone else's crops?"
Frido listened.
Not just with his ears, but with stillness.
And somehow, Maera spoke more.
"He had the softest singing voice. Like butter on snow. Gone now. Just like the fields. Just like my boy."
She looked at Frido.
"You can't bring them back."
Frido didn't try.
But he offered something else: he pulled out another ribbon — the one Mirea had given him — and held it out.
Maera blinked. "What's this?"
He pressed it into her hand.
> "So you remember you were heard."
Maera swallowed hard.
The gates did not open.
But the next morning, she told the guards to let him pass through.
And word began to spread: a boy without a voice walked east, and hearts followed.
---
By the fifth day, Frido had crossed three valleys and a silverwood pass.
He saw camps — poor ones — filled not with soldiers, but with displaced villagers. Entire towns emptied for the coming war. Fathers sharpening knives. Mothers clutching infants. Eyes that had forgotten how to hope.
At the edge of a forest called Grayholt, Frido met a band of deserters.
There were four of them. Dirty, tired, and young. They surrounded him, blades drawn.
"You alone?" one asked. "Traveling without escort in lands like these?"
Frido nodded.
The leader, a boy no older than seventeen, stepped forward. "You're from the Flame side?"
Frido shook his head.
"What are you then? A priest?"
Frido held up a new parchment.
> "I am a witness."
The deserters laughed.
"A witness? To what?"
Frido pointed at the eldest one's scar — a fresh, red line along his shoulder.
The boy frowned.
"How'd you know?"
Frido touched his own shoulder in the same place.
Then pointed to the sky.
And knelt.
The deserters watched, confused.
But one — the quietest of them — whispered, "He's seen battle."
Frido picked up a stick and began drawing in the dirt.
He etched a circle.
Then two figures inside it — two soldiers facing away from each other.
He made a line between them, then erased the line slowly.
A picture of peace.
The deserters watched in silence.
Finally, the youngest lowered his dagger.
"I don't know who you are, mute boy," he said, "but maybe the gods sent you to shame us."
Frido didn't smile.
But he placed a hand over his heart, then held it out to them.
They didn't take it.
But they didn't attack.
---
He reached the border of Redvane on the seventh day.
Here, the war truly breathed.
The great fortress of Hevenmark stood atop a crag like a fist raised against the world. Smoke rose from its forges. Siege weapons lined the ramparts. And before its gates, a host was preparing — thousands of soldiers, armor gleaming in the sun, their standards crackling in the wind.
And in the center of it all — a white tent ringed in iron — stood General Loras, Warden of the East.
Frido did not go around.
He went forward.
Straight into the jaws of it.
---
The guards caught him before he reached the camp.
They dragged him before Loras — bruised, dusty, but unyielding.
The general was a giant of a man — bald, tattooed with the ink of battlefield prayers. He looked at Frido with the exhaustion of someone who had buried friends and burned enemies for decades.
"A mute boy? This is what the Crowned Flame sends?"
Frido made no gesture.
Loras frowned.
"I should have you hung for mockery."
Frido wrote.
> "I do not serve the Flame. I serve the peace you forgot."
Loras chuckled darkly. "Peace is a myth. A dream sold by men who never held a sword."
Frido reached forward and gently touched Loras' hand.
Then wrote again:
> "But once, even you believed."
Loras froze.
He looked down.
And in that moment, something stirred — a memory. A face. A daughter, once held in trembling arms. A song his wife used to sing when the world was still soft.
He closed his eyes.
"Who are you really, boy?"
Frido answered with ink and will:
> "The one who refuses to forget."
---
Loras did not free him.
But he did not kill him either.
He had Frido chained in a small wooden cell beside the war tent.
Yet as night fell, guards came, one by one, just to see the boy who walked with silence.
Some left weeping.
Others left quiet.
But none left unchanged.
---
The war had not stopped.
But something had begun.
And far away, Mirea watched the horizon, praying without knowing she was praying.
Because something inside her said:
He has reached them.
---
End of Chapter 43