Chapter 147: YOU CAN STAY
Corwin's notebook was still beside the territory map the next morning. Aiden checked both for damp, then left them on the workbench.
Corwin's warning could wait. So could the tremor beneath the low water.
His month in the Foggy Marshland was over.
That meant his Academy assessment should be over too.
Aiden took Nyx and Miasma toward the southern boundary. Cinder stayed at camp. Her Ember reserves were still recovering from the fight with the takers, and this wasn't a trip that needed her fire.
Early in the claim, Aiden had tested two boundary stones west of the entrance. The stones never moved, but the distance between them changed.
He had walked the same stretch several times and gotten a different result each time.
He tried it again.
From the first stone to the second, then back.
Same distance.
Aiden tried once more.
Still the same.
"Finally."
Nyx waited ahead of him in the fog. Miasma was beside the second stone, inspecting the moss around its base.
Aiden checked the ground. No new channel. No sign that either stone had shifted. Whatever had been changing the distance wasn't doing it anymore.
A sheep stood farther along the boundary.
Aiden stopped.
He had seen the strange sheep several times since coming here. They sometimes stood in the fog and watched him for far too long. If he moved, they followed him with their eyes until the mist hid him.
This one was grazing.
Aiden walked farther along the boundary.
The sheep kept eating.
"Huh."
Aiden waved at it.
Nothing.
A minute later, it wandered into the reeds.
That was new.
The system appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ PROVISIONAL SEAT — ASSESSMENT COMPLETE ]
Territory: Foggy Marshland
Holder: Aiden Vell
Bounds: confirmed
Area:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The Area field was still blank.
"Sure. A month here and it still doesn't know how big the place is."
That was it for the Academy. He had done what they asked: choose one of the Association's listed territories and hold it for a month.
Now he was supposed to return to Caldran, report the result, and receive his first official tamer rank.
Changing distances, strange sheep, and tier two beasts fleeing the eastern waterways weren't part of the assessment.
If they gave points for that, I'd ask for C.
Maybe B. I've suffered enough.
Before he left, he wanted to know why both had changed on the same morning.
He went to the keeper.
She was outside her shelter, cutting the damaged ends from a basket of roots.
"My month is up," Aiden said. "The assessment's finished. The boundary isn't changing anymore."
The keeper put her knife down.
"The Academy only cares that you held the place for a month. This is different."
She wiped the dirt from her hands.
"I told you the first night. The fen went quiet when Nyx brought you in. But the paths still changed around you, and those sheep kept watching. If that's stopped too, I'd take it as a good sign."
Aiden looked toward the fog.
"Corwin saw the same things before he disappeared. He thought something might be controlling the fen."
"He never proved it."
"No."
Neither had Aiden.
"The Association refused to put Corwin's report in the record."
"Then keep his notebook."
"I plan to."
The keeper picked up her knife again.
"You'll be leaving for Caldran now."
"That's the plan."
"You sound disappointed."
That caught Aiden off guard.
A month ago, he had wanted to survive the assessment and get the hell out of this haunted place.
Now he had Corwin's notebook on his workbench. He knew where Miasma liked to forage. Nyx had places in the fog she could find without a map. Cinder had spent days complaining about the wet ground without once trying to leave. His supplies were stacked beside a shelter they'd repaired themselves and he had a dead tree covered in the scars of his training.
"I'll come back."
The keeper gave him a short look.
"Then I suppose you're worse at choosing land than I thought."
"That's been established."
She smiled and kept working.
Aiden headed back to camp.
Cinder was lying beside the shelter when he arrived. Her head lifted immediately.
"We passed."
She got up and came straight to him.
Aiden had enough warning to brace before her muzzle hit his chest and pushed him back.
"Yes. You helped."
She pushed again.
"A lot."
Her tail started moving.
"Fine. We would've failed without you."
That earned him another shove.
"You're becoming difficult to congratulate."
Cinder huffed and stayed against him while Aiden rubbed the side of her neck.
Miasma climbed onto the workbench. Nyx disappeared underneath it.
Corwin's notebook and the territory map were still where Aiden had left them.
The Hearthcat was missing.
Aiden looked around.
"Where's the one member of this household who contributed nothing?"
The cat came around the side of the shelter. It walked past Cinder, jumped over Nyx's tail, then sat directly on Aiden's boot.
"There you are."
The cat closed its eyes.
"You know you're not contracted to me, right? You could've stayed in Caldran. Instead you followed us into a haunted swamp."
One ear moved. Aiden scratched behind its ear.
"Questionable judgment."
The Hearthcat had followed him because it wanted to. That was enough.
Aiden looked around the camp.
The shelter still needed work. The workbench wasn't level. Mud got into everything. The nearest decent road was outside the fen. The marrowfern he and Miasma had planted near the shelter had just started to bud.
It wasn't a good piece of land.
He wanted to come back anyway.
That was the part he hadn't expected.
Caldran had always been somewhere he lived because he was born there. Sewer Row had been his route because a clerk put his name beside it.
This place was different. Nobody had told him to repair the shelter. Nobody had told Cinder where to sleep or Miasma where to forage.
Nyx had chosen the marsh before Aiden even knew what was waiting here.
Even the cat had made its own decision.
Tomorrow, he needed to start thinking about the trip back to Caldran. He had an assessment to report and a tamer rank waiting for him.
Aiden sat on the edge of the workbench. Cinder settled beside him. Miasma stayed on the workbench. Nyx's pale eyes watched from underneath it.
The cat remained on his boot.
Aiden looked at all of them.
"We go to Caldran, get the rank, then come back."
Cinder's tail hit the ground once.
Miasma stayed beside his hand.
Nyx closed her eyes.
Aiden smiled.
For the first time, he had somewhere he wanted to return to because he'd chosen it.
"Home, then."