Win

Win came to Cairn the way most of its people did: carried in by something breaking somewhere else. He was six when the war took his father, and the Kale family took him in before the dust of that day had settled. Ten years later he has a place at their table, a room above their inn, and a habit of thanking them by name — every meal, every time — like a guest who never stopped being grateful and never quite stopped being a guest.

He is quiet the way deep water is quiet. People who don’t know him read it as shyness; people who do know better. Win watches a town the way other boys watch a sparring match — tracking who’s struggling, whose stall is short, whose hands are full — and then he simply appears beside the trouble, sleeves rolled. He’s never been able to walk past a thing he could help carry.

He trains with a sword every morning and hopes never to need one. His father left him little, but he left him this: defend the people beside you, and never take a life — there is always another way. Win holds the creed the way other families hold heirlooms. In a world at war over its dead, it may be the heaviest thing anyone in Cairn carries.