Killing for Manhood
Copyright© 2026 by Heel
Chapter 5
A month passed like a slow wound.
Thomas wandered the high places where the land broke into stone and sky. He slept under scrub and overhangs, hunted small game when he could, drank from seeps he had learned as a boy. He did not go home. He did not go far enough to forget.
At night, guilt came easiest.
He saw the arrow’s crooked flight every time he closed his eyes. He heard her cry carried on the wind. Sometimes he dreamed he was still holding her, that she weighed nothing at all—then woke with his arms empty and his chest tight, fear sitting on him like a living thing.
He spoke to no one.
When he passed near the road, he kept to the rocks. He watched wagons from a distance, men on horses, the slow spread of fences. The world went on, indifferent to what he had broken.
He told himself she was alive.
He told himself the village had helped her.
He told himself leaving had been mercy.
Some days, he almost believed it.
On the thirtieth morning—he counted by moons and by hunger—he found himself above the same village.
He had not meant to come back. His feet had carried him there without asking, drawn by something between hope and punishment. He watched from the ridge as smoke rose and people moved below, small and ordinary in the daylight.
Then he saw her.
She came out of one of the buildings slowly, carefully. Her hair was shorter now, uneven where it had been cut. Her face was thinner. She leaned heavily on two wooden crutches, moving with concentration, jaw clenched with effort.
Her left leg dragged slightly, stiff and weak, the foot turned just enough to notice.
Thomas’s breath left him all at once.
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