SOUL BOUND HEIR

Chapter 2: Five days

The forest took him without asking.

Donald drifted between the trunks, formless and cold. Mist clung to the lower branches. Wet leaves brushed through what remained of him and left no mark. The mountain ridge had already vanished behind the trees. Only the distant crash of boots in the river still reached him, growing fainter with every slow stretch of space he covered.

He had no lungs, yet something inside him still wanted to breathe. The absence of the body felt wrong in a way that went deeper than pain. His power sat locked behind the chains that still bound the empty flesh somewhere downstream. Without its living shell, the greater share of it would slip away within five days. After that, the soul itself would thin and vanish away like chaff. He had been told the rule once, years ago, in a lesson that had felt theoretical. It no longer did.

The trees opened without warning onto a narrow clearing. A low stone cottage sat against the rise of the land, its roof dark with moss. Smoke no longer rose from the chimney. The door stood half open.

Donald hesitated at the edge of the trees. Farther away, the voices of soldiers still carried on the wind, clearly. He had nowhere else to go. The five days had already begun counting themselves down.

Inside the cottage, the air smelled of woodsmoke and damp wool. A single lamp burned low on the table. On the narrow bed against the far wall lay a young man about Donald’s own age. The face was pale. Chest not moving. A middle-aged man sat on a stool beside the bed, both hands resting on the still chest, forehead pressed to the dead boy’s ribs. His shoulders shook once, then went still again.

Donald floated closer. The man’s grief filled the small room the way cold fills a cellar. It asked for nothing and offered nothing in return.

The man lifted his head. Tears tracked through the dirt on his face, but his eyes were dry now. He looked straight at the empty air where Donald’s soul hung.

“I know you’re there,” the man said. His voice was rough, used to quiet. “I felt the shift when you crossed the threshold.”

Donald had no mouth to answer. The hunter man—Gaius, though Donald did not yet know the name—kept one hand on the dead boy’s chest and raised the other. A faint thread of green light moved between his fingers. Not royal magic. Older, smaller and f*******n one.

“You’re royal,” Gaius said. “The blood always leaves a different taste. And you’re dying by degrees. Five days is all you have left if you stay like this.”

The words settled over Donald like another weight. He already knew the limit. Hearing it spoken aloud made the number sharper.

Gaius looked down at the body on the bed. “My son, Harvey, was supposed to leave for the palace school as a scholarship student at first light. But a fever took him before midnight. I felt the last breath leave.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Outside, a night bird called once and stopped.

“You need a body,” Gaius said. “And this one still has hours of warmth left in it. After that, the gate closes.”

Donald drifted closer to the bed. Guilt rose, cold and immediate. The boy on the mattress had a name. He had a father still sitting beside him. Taking the shell felt like another kind of theft. Yet the alternative was clear. Five days. Then nothing.

Gaius did not look away. “I won’t force it. But if you refuse, both of you will be lost. Him to the ground. You to the wind.”

Donald made the only choice that still left a path forward.

He settled into the body the way a man steps into cold water. Resistance met him first, the natural refusal of flesh that had already let go. Then the heart stuttered. Once. Twice. A third time, stronger. Air scraped into the lungs.

The eyes opened.

Harvey’s body coughed hard, once, and then breathed.

Gaius sat frozen. His hands remained on the chest that now rose and fell. For several long seconds, neither of them moved. The lamp flame leaned in the draft from the open door.

Donald tried to sit up. The limbs answered slowly, heavy and unfamiliar. The face that belonged to someone else turned toward the older man. When he spoke, the voice was not his own.

“I’m sorry.”

Gaius closed his eyes. A single breath left him, long and uneven. When he opened them again, the grief was still there, but something steadier had moved in beside it.

“Name,” he said.

“Donald Gallagher.”

The older man nodded once, as if the name explained everything and nothing at the same time. “I am Gaius. This was my son’s body. It is yours now, for as long as you can keep it.”

Donald looked down at the hands that no longer belonged to him. Calluses marked the palms in places his own hands had never carried. The scholarship token still hung from a leather cord around the neck—a small brass disk stamped with the palace seal.

“They’ll come looking for me,” Donald said, panicking. The new throat made the words sound thinner. “Barco. His son. The soldiers.”

“I know.” Gaius rose and crossed to a wooden chest against the wall. He took out two narrow bands of dull silver metal, each etched with fine, almost invisible lines. “These erase the scent. Royal or not. Hide it there in your hair. It will make them feel nothing even if they stand an arm’s length from you."

Donald took the band. The metal was cool and strangely light. He hesitated, then wound it through the dead boy’s dark hair and twisted it closed. Gaius did the same with the second band, binding his own gray-streaked hair at the nape of his neck.

Outside, a horn sounded—long, low, and close.

Gaius’s head turned toward the door. “They’re already in the lower woods.”

Donald swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor felt solid under feet that still did not quite belong to him. The band bought him only silence. It did not buy him time.

Another horn answered the first, nearer still.

Gaius moved to the door and looked out into the mist. When he spoke again, his voice remained quiet, almost ordinary.

“Get dressed. They might search the entire house before morning. Seems they are tracing the scent of your soul.”

Donald pulled on the simple shirt and trousers that had been laid out for the scholarship journey. The clothes smelled of woodsmoke, and the boy who had worn them last. He stood, unsteady, and met the older man’s eyes.

Gaius did not look away. “You took what was left of my son. In return, you will live long enough to make the men who did this pay. That is the only bargain I am offering.”

The horns sounded a third time, close enough now that the horses could be heard between the notes.

Donald nodded once. The unfamiliar heart in the borrowed chest beat steady and hard.