Chapter 24 — Fragments

The bread was gone, the grask meat cooling on the stones. Merlin snored against Elira's hip, tail twitching in his sleep. She scratched behind his ears absently, humming under her breath.

I forced myself to speak at last. "I… don't remember much."

Her hand stilled. She glanced at me, quick and sharp, then softened her voice. "You were struck?"

"Something," I muttered. "Head's fogged. The rest—blurred."

Her eyes lingered on me, searching, but I kept my gaze steady.

Inside, I cursed myself. I knew exactly what I was doing. In consulting, we called it "strategic ambiguity." Withhold information, let the other party fill in the gaps. Here, the gap was "I'm from another world and my dog is magical." So yes, I played dumb. The oldest technique in the stakeholder management playbook.

No one sane would believe the truth. So I played the fool instead.

Elira didn't press. She nodded once. "Then you'll need someone to speak for you. A dangerous thing, walking blind."

She leaned back, eyes on the thin sky between the ravine walls. "This is the eastern march. Few villages cling here, fewer traders. Bandits run most of it, though someone higher feeds them. You've met their claws, I think." Her eyes flicked to my ribs, where the shirt hung torn.

I stayed silent. Let her fill the space.

She continued, voice steady, as though reciting: "The Caller rules from the stone halls, takes tithe in coin and flesh. Those who won't serve vanish. Those who try to run find the Hollow Maw waiting in the tunnels."

The name alone brought the weight of that cavern back, the soundless scream in the dark. The Warden of Systems—that's what the summoners had called me. What did it mean? What did "systems" mean in this world of stone and magic? Was the Caller himself a kind of system? A pattern to be read and broken?

I chewed the inside of my cheek, face kept blank.

Elira sighed. "Not the easiest place to start a new life. But you're alive. That counts for more than you know."

She reached for her basket again, pulling free a twist of herbs bound in cloth. "Here. For the pain." She set it by my knee, not waiting for thanks.

I stared at it, at her, at Merlin breathing steady for the first time in days.

The amnesia mask held, but inside my thoughts snarled: This is absurd. Cliché. Ridiculous.

And yet… it worked. She told me more in minutes than I had learned in days.

Sometimes the trope was a tool. And right now, I needed every tool I could find.