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Chapter 17 - Chapter 17 Bread and Silence.

Inside the Grünwald Cottage – Hohenwacht, Germany.

The warmth hit Janice like a second skin the moment she stepped inside.

The cottage was modest—stone walls and a pinewood ceiling stained from decades of smoke. A heavy hearth crouched in the back corner, alive with a crackling fire. Light spilled from it in slow, golden waves, licking across the worn table, the black kettle, and the bundle of dried herbs tied above the mantle.

The air smelled like stew.

Salt. Garlic. Root vegetables. Boiled bone.

A smell that said: we survive here.

She closed the door behind her gently.

The old man and woman didn't flinch. They watched her from opposite sides of the hearth—not coldly, not cruelly. Just with weight. Like people who had outlived famine, war, and strangers bearing flags.

Helena moved first.

She stepped into the light, fetched a folded towel from the chair by the wall, and handed it to Janice.

"For your coat," she said softly. "And your hands."

Janice took it with a small, respectful nod. Her fingers were stiff and pink from cold. She knelt by the fire, turning her palms toward it, feeling her heartbeat echo back through the stone floor.

Johann leaned against the doorframe, pipe now lit. His eyes didn't leave her—not in suspicion, but in calculation.

"You came from the sea," he said again, slower this time. There was something searching in his tone.

Janice looked up, her shoulders pulling back slightly.

"Yes," she said. "And we didn't come alone."

Helena turned again.

"The boy."

"He's outside," Janice said. Her breath had steadied now. "Watching. Waiting."

Johann and Helena shared a glance.

Not long.

Not hesitant.

Just... old.

Worn into them like rings in oak.

Then Johann spoke again.

"Call him in."

Janice blinked.

"Are you sure?"

"We wouldn't ask," Helena said, with a touch of steel beneath her warmth, "if we hadn't already decided."

"This land," Johann added, gesturing out toward the fields beyond the cottage wall, "has old bones. We know the difference between a beast and something... weightier."

Janice didn't move at first.

Then she stood, but didn't go to the door just yet. She turned back toward them, hands clenched slightly at her sides.

This was the moment.

And she knew it.

"Before I call him," she said, "you should understand something."

Their eyes fixed on her.

Helena set down her ladle.

Johann exhaled a long, low stream of pipe smoke.

Janice's voice was soft—but firm now.

"We need food. A bed. Work. Safety. Even if just for a while."

"And I know what that costs."

She stepped forward.

"We have things to offer."

She gestured behind her.

"We brought a canoe. Supplies. A catch—a shark, preserved. I can cook. Clean. Bind wounds. I've worked as a nurse in ice and mud and worse."

Then, lower:

"And him—he's strong. Quiet. But if you knew the things I've seen him do..."

Her eyes didn't flash—but they held gravity.

"You'd want him here."

She paused.

Let that settle.

"We're not beggars."

"We're looking for a start."

Helena tilted her head slightly.

Then smiled.

"You sound like someone who's already decided to stay."

Janice didn't answer that.

But she didn't deny it.

Johann nodded once, tapping the ash from his pipe.

"Then go get your boy," he said.

"Let us see what kind of roots he brings to this soil."

Janice hesitated, as she stood at the door.

She opened it slowly. And then the cold poured in like a breath that had waited too long to speak.

She didn't call.

Didn't raise her voice.

She just said:

"Cain."

He was already there.

Standing just beyond the fence, half-shadowed in the mist, as still as a stone statue left to guard the edge of the earth. His eyes reflected the cottage light like twin sparks of frost.

But he wasn't alone.

Across his shoulders, tied in rough canvas and bundled with rope, hung a broad section of shark flesh—cleaned, preserved, cured in salt and seaweed. Not a trophy. A trade.

He stepped forward in silence.

The rope creaked over his coat. The weight swayed against his back. The blood had been washed clean, but the memory clung to it—something that did not belong in these woods, yet belonged to him.

He entered the cottage without pause.

Boots heavy on the threshold.

Steam rose faintly from the seams of his coat, water hissing softly where it met the warmth of the hearth.

His hair was damp, matted against his forehead. His coat was salt-streaked. He looked like someone who had crawled from myth into daylight.

But his eyes moved with precision.

Walls. Windows. The stairs. The fire poker near the hearth. The knife on the table. Then Johann. Then Helena.

Then Janice.

Only then did he relax.

Slightly.

He unshouldered the shark flesh and set it down beside the hearth, wrapped tight in its canvas.

Janice stepped forward and knelt beside it, untying the bindings to reveal the clean meat—pink, marbled, cut with skill and care.

She looked up.

"It's fresh. Preserved in cold sea brine. Enough to feed a dozen."

Helena stepped forward. Her eyes moved from Janice to Cain to the meat—then back again.

Johann's pipe had gone out.

He relit it, slowly, but said nothing.

Then, finally, Johann spoke.

"You trade for food?"

Cain didn't nod.

He just stepped forward, sat down across from Janice.

Helena, wordless, ladled two bowls of stew and placed them before them both.

Janice murmured her thanks.

Cain lifted the spoon, blew on it once.

A soft curl of steam danced upward.

He ate.

No one spoke for several minutes.

Only the fire.

Only the wind pressing softly at the shutters.

Only the slow, purposeful rhythm of two strangers eating as if they'd known how to sit at this table their whole lives.

Then Helena asked softly:

"What brings you to Germany?"

Janice looked to Cain.

He didn't speak. He didn't stop eating.

But he didn't need to.

Janice answered for both of them.

"A place to stop running."

Outside the cottage, nothing moved.

The fields still slept.The well still sat cold.The garden still waited for spring.

But beneath the soil—something stirred.

It wasn't like the island.

There was no dominion here.

No throne.

Just the first, faint pulse of something willing.

Not power.

But possibility.

The Light Stone, still sealed in Cain's chest pouch, pulsed once.

Not bright.

Not loud.

But listening.

Like a question.

Like the start of something that could grow—if the land answered.

The fire had burned low by the time Cain finished eating.

The bowl sat empty on the table. He didn't ask for more. He didn't speak. He simply sat there, shoulders loose now, coat hung by the door, steam no longer rising from his back.

Janice had curled up on the small bench beside the hearth. Her head rested against her arm, her breathing soft.

Helena had draped a blanket over her without a word.

And Johann, seated across the room in his worn wooden chair, his pipe long since gone cold, watched Cain with a look that was not suspicion, but calculation.

Helena stood and broke the silence first.

"You'll sleep here tonight," she said. "Both of you."

Johann didn't argue.

He simply rose and moved toward the back room—the old guest chamber. A space once meant for a child. Now long unused.

Helena guided Janice gently through the door, tucking her in beneath a quilt that smelled of cedar and time.

Then she returned to the hearth and stood before Cain.

"You too," she said, voice soft but firm. "You needn't sleep on the floor."

Cain didn't move at first.

Then, slowly, he stood.

He followed Helena down the hallway, ducking under the low beam, and settled into the loft—no mattress, just furs and straw. He said nothing as he lay down.

But as he closed his eyes, the Light Stone pressed faintly against his ribs, its hum barely audible—

Not to Helena.

Not to Johann.

But to the earth beneath the cottage.

In the dead of night, nothing screamed.No thunder cracked.No divine light split the heavens.

But things shifted.

The roots beneath the garden twitched, like fingers remembering how to move.

The frost clinging to the outer fence softened—just a little.

The potato sprouts that had stalled in the cold soil unfurled a quarter inch.

The rosemary near the back wall lifted its head for the first time in weeks.

And inside—

The couple slept.

Deeply.

Helena woke first.

Her eyes blinked open to soft gray light spilling through the window slats. It was a light she was used to squinting against—that early haze that made her eyes water and blur. But not this morning.

She sat up slowly.

Then paused.

Something was... different.

She could see.

Clearly.

No haze. No cloud. No grit behind her eyelids.

She turned her head and could make out the tiny cracks in the ceiling that she hadn't noticed in years—the ones she used to trace with her fingers as a girl, lying in her father's house.

And the smells—not just smoke and wool, but salt, and thyme, and the rich, wet tang of cold earth coming from beneath the doorframe.

She looked down at her hands.

The joints weren't swollen. Her fingers weren't bent or stiff. Her knuckles looked... right. She wiggled them.

No pain.

Her back, usually hunched and aching from the cold, felt straight.

Strong.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood.

No pop. No jolt. No hesitation.

She didn't need to brace herself against the wall like she usually did.

She simply stood.

And smiled.

Johann snored softly beside her—deep, nasal, uneven. He'd always had a bit of a breathing problem. Years of pipe smoke, probably. Wheezing in winter, light coughing in the morning. They both thought it might be creeping toward something worse—lung rot, maybe, or something deeper in the chest they couldn't name. But he'd refused to see a doctor.

She reached over and touched his shoulder.

"Johann."

He stirred. Then sat up with a grunt, rubbing his eyes.

He didn't cough.

Not once.

He swung his legs over the bed. Paused.

His back—always tight from an old cavalry injury—didn't creak or lock up.

His hip, where he'd taken a spill off a cart fifteen years ago, didn't spasm. Didn't even sting.

He stretched his arm and reached for the nightstand.

His hand didn't tremble.

He caught the pipe clean.

No fumble. No hesitation.

He stood.

Straight.

And it surprised even him.

He turned to the window, reaching for the latch with steady fingers.

Pulled it open.

Cold air flowed in—fresh, not bitter.

He inhaled.

Deep.

And exhaled.

"I can hear the birds again," he muttered.

Helena joined him.

Her gait was smooth. Her breath full.

Together, they looked out the window.

The garden—

Green.

Not wildly overgrown. Not miraculous.

But... healthier.

The roots hadn't just held on through the frost.

They'd begun to rise.

The rosemary was blooming slightly at the tips.

The mint leaves looked fuller.

Tiny beads of moisture clung to the undersides of cabbage leaves, catching the morning light like dew that shouldn't exist this early.

They didn't speak for a while.

Then Johann turned his head slightly, just enough to glance down the hall toward the guest room.

The door was still closed.

But he could feel it.

Something had come into the house.

And left something behind.

He nodded.

Just once.

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