Chapter 10
A New Shoot
A few people were gathered around the notice board in Railton, same as always.
Wind scraped along the old station-house wall and rattled the curled sheets pinned there. Eren walked up to the board; Nova followed a step behind, scarf loose around his neck, pale blue eyes taking in the people and stalls like everything was new.
Eren scanned the board first.
Courier runs, trouble-clearing jobs—the same handful of sheets as before. Nothing fresh.
Someone whistled.
"Well, Eren." A tall, thin man squatting by the wall with a smoke lifted his chin, eyes flicking to Nova. "Your kid? Haven't seen him around—you're not even married, are you?"
Another man in a torn cloak laughed. "Maybe an old debt caught up with you?"
Eren knew they meant no harm—they were just bored.
"Yeah. My wife had him." Eren said it flat. "Serious question—anyone in town heard of a lost child these last few days?"
"This one beside you? You picked him up?"
Eren nodded and gave them the short version of how he had met Nova.
The thin man took the cigarette from his lips and looked Nova over again. "Haven't heard anything. Might not be from town. Or his people already—"
Eren shook his head. The man took the hint and let it drop.
"You do like picking up work for yourself." The man in the cloak shook his head, grinning, and tapped a sheet on the board. "With a little one now, stay off the rough jobs. However good you are with your hands, ease up."
The thin man chimed in. "Yeah—guys like us, one mouth to feed and that's it. Another person at your side is another rope on your ankle."
Rick had caught the talk from the tavern doorway, half a cup still in his hand. He came over, stood beside Eren, glanced at Nova, and kept his voice down. "Rough words, fair point. In times like these, keeping a kid close isn't always a good thing."
Eren's gaze went back to Nova. The boy was crouched beside a hitched chest-high pack rabbit, watching it chew dry hay slowly. He reached out, then stopped, as if waiting for the rabbit to say it was all right.
"Yeah. I know." Eren said.
Rick finished his drink and set the cup on a nearby stall. Only then did Eren look away from Nova.
"I'll keep an ear out for the kid. If anyone in town recognizes him, I'll send word."
"If you want, I can also ask around—see if anyone's looking to take a child in."
"Thanks. Let's hold off on adoption for now."
"Don't pick anything far today." Rick said. "If you want work, there's a half-day job out back—fixing cart axles. Pays at noon. Not much, but you won't leave town."
Eren nodded. "All right. I'll look in on it."
They spent the better part of the day asking around town—tavern, notice board, used-clothes stalls. Mostly the same answer: hadn't heard a thing. One man opened with a price before Eren had finished the question. Eren ignored him and walked on with Nova.
In the afternoon he took Rick's axle job and helped rebuild the axle on an old handcart. Nova sat nearby and watched.
"Does your hand still hurt?" Nova asked.
"Not much."
Over the next few days, whenever Eren took odd jobs in town or patched things up in the village, he had a small shadow at his heels.
In the village Auntie Li asked a few more households; Uncle Zhang checked again at the town gate. In Railton, Rick put the question to traders who ran the nearby hamlets. The answers all matched: no lost child, no one who recognized Nova.
The guesses, though, kept piling up.
Some said Eren had always run alone—maybe he had left a child somewhere and was only now bringing him home. Later the story shifted: money was tight, so he had turned to trafficking kids.
At night only embers were left in the stove.
Nova sat on the hide rug with the old scarf Auntie Li had given him set to one side. Eren counted the Crystone coins he had earned that day at the table and tucked them into his pouch.
He watched Nova a while, then asked, "How was today—still nothing coming back?"
Nova shook his head.
"That's fine. If it doesn't come back, it doesn't."
Eren did not press further.
The room went quiet. Wind pushed at the courtyard gate and made the boards creak.
He stared at the dying coals a while, eyes empty.
These last few days he had run through every option he could think of.
He had looked into the shelter—it was no good place. They said they fed you; really it was a row of drafty sheds where kids fought over whatever clothes they had left on their backs.
He had not let Rick ask about adoption either. You could not vet a family from the outside.
In the end he sighed, chin dipping in a small nod—once, twice.
"Stay for now. Stick with me. I'll teach you things."
Nova nodded, serious. "All right."
"Sleep." Eren stood and banked the fire low.
Nova burrowed under the hide and was out before long.
On the fifth day since they had met, they were repairing the courtyard wall.
Eren lifted a stone, left hand under the bottom, right hand packing clay into the gap. The stone had just settled when his left hand went slack all at once—as if a tendon had been yanked.
The stone slid wrong, hit the foot of the wall, and chipped a piece out.
Eren crouched, moved the stone aside, and flexed his left hand. The fingers bent, but strength would not come. Pale gray lines tightened under the cloth wrap, climbing the back of his hand.
The hand could not be ignored anymore.
He patched the gap and took no more jobs.
Early the next morning he went to Railton—not for the notice board, but for Old Qin.
Old Qin had led crews in the mines once and seen plenty of Crystone trouble. He lived in a small yard on the south side of town. A line of hides hung drying by the gate; you could smell them from far off.
Eren knocked. A voice answered from inside, and a wiry man in his sixties came out—bright eyes, one sweep over Eren, then straight to business. "What is it?"
Eren held out his left hand and unwound the cloth.
Old Qin looked, and his face settled. He leaned in, pressed his thumb along the edge of the lines, and let go.
"How long?"
"Six days."
"Where'd you pick it up?"
"Roadside rock face. Chipping Crystone."
Old Qin straightened and jerked his head toward the house. "Inside."
The room was darker than outside. Wooden shelves ran along one wall, stacked with stones of every size and a few sealed clay jars. Old Qin sat at a low table in the corner and motioned for Eren's hand.
"Some people call it a Crystone shoot." Old Qin said. "It drills into a body. Rare—I have only seen it two or three times."
Eren looked at his own hand.
Old Qin scraped a fingernail lightly along the gray edge. "I'll be plain. Once this thing takes hold, it's bad news. I have heard of men lasting three or four years before their bodies gave out. I have heard of others gone in two months. Everyone's different."
Eren sighed. About what he had expected.
"Can it be cut out?"
Old Qin shook his head. "I don't know."
"Has anyone lived through it?"
Old Qin looked at him. "Not that I have seen. I have heard, out west, there is someone who studies Crystone—revolutionary, I think—who works on things like this. Whether he could help you, I couldn't say."
"West. The revolutionaries." Eren repeated it.
"That's right." Old Qin said. "If you really want a chance, you could try."
Eren rewound the cloth, tied it tight, stood and thanked him, and set a few Crystone coins on the table from his pouch.
Old Qin glanced down and pushed them back. "Keep it. A few words is nothing." He said, "If you want to thank me, find that researcher and come tell me how it went. I would like to know."
Eren pocketed the coins and nodded. "Deal."
Old Qin leaned back in his chair and waved him off.
On the way back the sun was already sinking west.
Wind drove grit across the road. Eren pulled his cloak collar shut and watched the path ahead, mind elsewhere.
Old Qin's words ran through his head. West. The revolutionaries. A man who studied Crystone.
No name, no place—just rumor, thin as smoke. Still better than waiting in a room for the end.
Alone, it would have been simpler.
But there was Nova now.
Heading west—no telling what the road would bring. Leave the boy in the village, who watches him? Take him along?
His eyes dropped to the dust on his boot tips. He sighed.
The days after that, Eren took Nova everywhere he went.
In town he showed Nova how to pick up work. On delivery runs he taught him to read tracks and wind, and what to do when beasts showed up. When there was a cart to fix, a wall to patch, or freight to haul, he did not only let Nova sit and watch—he put the boy to work too.
None of it would ever be written down, but it was the kind of knowledge that kept you alive in a world like this. Nova asked a lot of questions and picked things up fast. After a few days Eren still would not let him go out alone, but simple jobs at Eren's side were no longer a problem.