The northern road dwindles behind Effruin, swallowed by wet grass and gray morning mist. Each step jars his ribs, but he keeps moving beneath the empty sky.
Far behind, the High Marshal remains beside the sword planted in the mud. No soldiers come for him yet; the shadow sphere has returned Effruin to a road no patrol watches.
Effruin
The road is empty.
His left hand presses against his side as pain flares beneath the ribs. The movement slows him, and the dull aftermath of liquor leaves his senses heavy and his balance uncertain.
Behind him lie the High Marshal’s body, Harvess’s bargain, and the last fragment of a friendship that survived dragons but not Sosshan. Ahead, Tahu and the imperial road wait without welcome.
Effruin disappears into the mist, one-armed and wounded, carrying no trophy but the knowledge that vengeance has left him alive. The Empire still stands, and his family remains somewhere within it.
The abandoned sword catches the weak dawn behind him. Its fading holiness marks the place where the High Marshal fell, while Effruin’s footprints lead onward and offer no promise of what follows.
“I rest somewhere in the forest. Through meditation and the controlled flow of my chi, I work to mend my wounds and heal the traumas of my past.”
FAILURE (Good Health, rolled -1)
Effruin leaves the road for a sheltered hollow beneath the trees. He lowers himself carefully, ribs protesting the movement, and settles into meditation with his left hand resting on his knee.
He draws chi through the battered channels of his body, guiding it toward the bruised ribs and the fatigue weighing down his limbs. Endures Long Roads keeps the rhythm steady despite his poor health.
The work cannot find balance. One arm forces every posture and adjustment through a single overtaxed shoulder, and the effort makes his breathing shallow rather than restorative.
When his focus turns inward, old commands rise with the memory of collars and sale. His breath hitches, composure breaks, and the chi scatters before it can mend what pain alone cannot reach.
Effruin
The wounds will close before the past does.
Effruin concentration and composure shatters. He remains lying beneath the trees, breathing slowly until the worst pain quiets, but his ribs remain injured and the old trauma untouched.
The forest gives him no cure, only concealment and a span of safety. By dusk he can rise without worsening the damage, yet, on this day, meditation was not sufficient to mend the wounds within.
Effruin left the northern road and vanished beneath the gray-boughed trees, each breath a small, stubborn victory.
Effruin
No more debts today. Let the dead keep what is theirs.
He tried to gather his chi around the broken rhythm of his ribs, but pain and memory scattered it. At last he lowered himself into the leaves and let the forest hide him.
Effruin
Alive is enough.
Behind him, Grahamin’s body and the abandoned holy sword remained on the road, while Harvess’s bargain and the ruin of friendship traveled silently with him. Vengeance had not broken the Empire or ended the threat to his family; it had only left him wounded, awake, and alone. Beneath the trees, Effruin rested on the road to Tahu, accepting survival as the small, hard mercy that remained.