She left before the light changed.
No signal. No message. Just footsteps beneath fog and frost.
The wind pulled at her green hair as she rode... strands twisting like ink through water. She didn't braid it. Didn't tie it. Let it move. Like it seeks Freedom.
Mira's voice lingered anyway.
"No marks. No blood. No noise."
She found the monastery just after moonset. Tucked behind the southern Elairth woods. Red roof, worn stone, a crooked bell that hadn't rung in seasons.
She watched. For hours. From the shadows. From the trees.
The children were let into the garden before first meal. Barefoot. Cloaked. Laughing in a way that hadn't yet learned fear.
That's when she saw him.
Blonde hair. Blue eyes. A little slower than the others. Not shy... just quiet. Like he already knew silence could protect him.
She waited for the right moment.
Mid-prayer. The older monks bowed. The younger ones scattered. A pot was left steaming in the side corridor.
She slipped through the back.
Through the grain door. Through the cold cellar.
No sound.
She found him near the side alcove, chasing something small. A moth. A dream.
Her hand came over his mouth before he turned.
He didn't scream.
Just blinked once. Slowly.
Like something in him already knew this would happen.
She held him close. Lifted him without effort. He was light. Warm. Still humming something under his breath.
They vanished through the larder hatch.
The wind covered the rest.
—--
They rode in silence.
Ashren sat tucked in front of her, fingers gripping the edge of her cloak. The wind moved her green hair around them both.
He didn't ask her name.
She didn't offer it.
They rested once near a river bend, long past the monastery's reach. No fire. No food. Just cold stones and old trees and the kind of quiet that presses into bone.
He fell asleep quickly.
She did not.
She watched him breathe. Studied the way his lips parted. The way his chest rose and fell like he hadn't yet learned to guard it.
And then... something came back.
Not clearly.
A doorway.
A mother's hands, flour still on the fingers.
A man laughing with his boots off.
Then smoke. Screams. Fire too loud to be real.
And after that... a cage.
Steel bars. A hand brushing her hair, not to comfort... but to keep her still.
Then Mira's voice.
A bowl of water.
A command.
She looked at Ashren again.
And something inside her... cracked.
Not like glass.
Like ice, deep below the surface... shifting.
—--
By the next dawn, she turned north.
Not toward Mira.
To a field she remembered from a mission long ago... with an orphanage at its edge.
She didn't knock.
She didn't wait.
She left him wrapped in her cloak, set gently beside the door, a pouch of coin tucked under his side.
No name.
No story.
Only a boy... and a single breath of mercy that would never be spoken.
By the time the caretakers opened the door... the wind had already scattered her tracks.
And her green hair was gone behind the tree line.