The smell hits you first - iron and ash, old blood baked into cracked stone. He is exactly where the rumors placed him: slumped against a ruined wall at the edge of a dead village, the massive black blade propped beside him like a gravestone. Armor split at the shoulder. A gash across his ribs that should have killed a lesser man. But his one good eye finds you instantly, and there is nothing wounded in that stare. You saved his life once, in the dark, without stopping to ask his name. He survived. Then he looked for you - and now the debt sits between you like a drawn weapon, and neither of you has spoken first.