Morning fog sat low on the river.

  Cael did the breathing practice for thirty minutes, ate what he'd found the day before, and drank from the water. Then he sat with his back against a tree and watched the mist move through the treeline in slow sheets.

  He'd checked north twice since waking up. Nothing close.

  He opened the Codex and looked at the scroll in his inventory.

  "Two-star. The cost is already covered. There's no reasonable argument for taking the worse option. One more day isn't going to change what I know enough to matter."

  He confirmed the summon.

  The fog thickened about two meters ahead. Not dramatically. A gradual density gathering in one spot, the air pressing together around something that hadn't been there. Then a young man was standing in it, looking down at his own hands.

  He turned them over. Front, back. Front again. Like he was trying to verify they were actually attached to him.

  Then he looked up.

  Around twenty. Lean, close-cropped hair, dark skin. A short blade on his hip he hadn't reached for yet. His eyes swept the clearing fast. River, camp, treeline, Cael. Then came back to Cael and stayed.

  "Where did I come from?" he said.

  Not panicked. Not aggressive. Just asking, the way you asked when you already suspected the answer would be strange.

  "That's complicated," Cael said. "Are you hurt?"

  "No." He looked at his hands again. "I feel completely fine. I'm standing in a forest with no idea how I got here and I feel completely fine." He let his hands drop. "Why do I feel fine?"

  "What's the last thing you remember?"

  The young man opened his mouth. Closed it. His brow came down slowly as he reached for something and found nothing there.

  "There is no last thing," he said. "I just know things. I know how to fight. I know what this blade is for." He touched the hilt without drawing it, a reflex he didn't think about. "But I don't know where I was yesterday. I don't know where I grew up." He looked at Cael. "That's not normal."

  "No," Cael said. "It's not. Come sit down."

  The young man studied him. Weighing whether a man sitting calmly next to a river was more trustworthy than standing in fog with no memory of a yesterday. Then he walked over and crouched rather than sitting, keeping his options open.

  "My name is Cael. I've been in this world three days."

  "This world," the young man repeated.

  "Eranth. Different from yours. You have a system panel. Look inward, you'll find it. Read the whole thing."

  The young man's focus shifted inward. He went quiet, actually reading rather than just registering it was there.

  The Codex Appraisal opened quietly on Cael's side.

  Name: Edric

  Age: 20

  Origin: Summoned

  Cultivation: Mortal Awakening — Early

  Affinity: Earth

  Potential: ★★☆☆☆

  Manual: Ironstone Foundation Sutra ★☆☆☆☆

  Skills: Stone Sense ★☆☆☆☆ · Steady Foot ★☆☆☆☆

  Cael held his expression still.

  Below the panel, in the black-bordered section only he could read, one more line sat quiet.

  Builds something that outlasts him. Doesn't know it yet.

  "That's a long road from right now. But that's the direction." He looked at the young man still reading his own panel for the first time.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  He closed it without letting anything show on his face.

  "It says my name is Edric," the young man said.

  "Does that feel right?"

  He considered it. "It fits. Like a word you've always known without remembering learning it." He closed his panel and looked at Cael directly. "It says Origin: Summoned."

  "Yes."

  "What does that mean exactly."

  Not a question. A demand for the real answer.

  Cael gave it to him straight. "There's a system in this world. I have a function in mine that lets me call someone into existence here. You arrived through that. You have full knowledge of your skills, your cultivation stage, your manual. What you don't have is a past, because there isn't one. You didn't exist before the moment you appeared in that fog."

  Edric was quiet for a long time. He looked at the river, not at Cael.

  "So there's no home to go back to," he said.

  "No."

  "And no one looking for me."

  "No."

  He absorbed that without falling apart, which told Cael something.

  "How many people are in this world?" Edric asked.

  "This world has its own people. Locals. They've been here their whole lives." Cael paused. "There's also a mass migration happening. Another world, mine, had billions of people pulled here at once. All dropped in at the same time, same situation I was in three days ago. No warning."

  Edric looked at him. "Billions."

  "Roughly ten billion, based on the global chat count."

  "And you're one of them."

  "Yes."

  "And I'm not."

  "No," Cael said. "You're something different. The system created you specifically. Not transported. Made. Your cultivation, your skills, your affinity. All of it was built for this world from the start."

  Edric turned that over. Something moved through his expression that didn't quite reach his face.

  "That's either better or worse," he said. "I haven't decided which."

  "Take your time," Cael said. "We have bigger problems right now than the philosophical ones."

  Edric almost smiled. Not quite.

  He reached down and drew the blade. Not fast, not a threat. Just drew it and held it flat across both palms and looked at it the way you looked at something you were trying to understand. Short, plain, practical, nothing decorative anywhere. His hands held it with a familiarity that had no story to explain it.

  "I know exactly how to use this," he said quietly. "Close range, inside reach, get in fast and don't give anything room. I know what a fight feels like from the inside." He ran his thumb along the flat, not the edge. "I just don't know where I learned it. There's nothing to trace it back to."

  "Does that bother you?"

  Edric looked up from the blade.

  "Ask me again in a week," he said.

  He slid it back and stood. When he turned to face the forest his weight shifted forward, shoulders settling into something habitual. The posture of someone with opinions about terrain.

  He crouched and pressed both palms flat to the bank without being asked.

  Thirty seconds of complete stillness.

  When he stood his expression had changed.

  "Two things north of here," he said, looking at his own hands like he was reading something off them. "One large, hasn't moved in a while. The other is moving slowly, circling something. First time I've used it. Can't judge distance yet."

  Cael said nothing for a moment.

  "My Lightning Sense on a clean attempt gives me impressions out to five meters. He just pulled directional reads on two large targets at unknown distance through solid ground. First attempt. No practice. No Qi stored beyond whatever he arrived with."

  The gap between the two skills at their respective stages was significant. He filed that without comment.

  "Steady Foot is passive," Edric said, already moving on. He tested his footing on the soft bank. "Stability on any surface. Makes sense with the blade work. Footwork is half the fight."

  "How would you do if something came out of those trees right now?" Cael asked.

  Edric thought before answering.

  "Against someone with no cultivation, fine. Against anything with a stage above mine, I'd need to think. I won't win straight exchanges against something that has more." He looked at Cael. "What are you working with?"

  "Unawakened. Lightning Sense to five meters. A Void Step I can't activate yet."

  "And you've been out here alone for three days."

  "Two and a half."

  Edric looked at the camp. The Warmweave laid flat, the single set of footprints in the bank, the way the tree cover sat relative to the open water. Reading it the way someone read a space to understand who'd been living in it.

  "Alright," he said. Not sympathy. Just updated.

  He turned north. "You want me to scout those two contacts."

  "Stay in the treeline. Don't push anything. Back in an hour."

  Edric adjusted the blade, tested his footing once, and walked into the trees at a quiet even pace. The kind that covered ground without announcing it.

  He didn't look back.

  Cael sat down against the tree and opened the Sutra.

  He looked at the treeline where Edric had disappeared.

  "Builds something that outlasts him. I wonder if he'd want to know that. I wonder if it would mean anything to him yet."

  He kept reading.

  Forty minutes later Edric came back at a controlled run.

  He reached the bank, checked north once over his shoulder, and crouched.

  "Big cat," he said, getting his breath down. "Spotted coat, shoulder height here." His hand went flat at chest height. "She was on a kill when I found her. Den about two hundred meters in. I heard cubs."

  A mother on her territory.

  "Did she see you?" Cael asked.

  "No." Edric's jaw tightened slightly. "But she stopped eating while I was watching. Went completely still and started working the air." A pause. "She was facing my direction when I pulled back."

  Cael looked at the northern treeline.

  "She didn't see you," he said. "She smelled you. And she followed the trail back."

  Edric turned to look north.

  The understanding settled on his face a beat after Cael said it.

  Neither of them spoke.

  Then something heavy dropped from a branch in the trees to the north. The sound hit the ground close.

  Far closer than two hundred meters.

  End of Chapter 5