13 August 1553, Milliscient Calendar.
A sharp arrow whooshed through the hazy, smoke encroached air, lodging into a patch of grass.
Kindled flames engulfed the golden wheat fields like hungry beasts, crackling as they clawed further across the far horizon adorned with sentinel like mountains. Today, the valley convulses like it never before has.
Amidst the roar of orange fury, a Raeinth staggered across an oak bridge, each creak of the splintered wood causing his heart to sink further. With his hand on his bleeding shoulder, Raeinth dragged his numb feet forward, smoke coiling into his lungs—thick, acrid and tasting of charred earth, forcing a cough that tore from his throat like shattered glass.
The howl of the fire swallowed everything: the shrieks of Bavona village's souls twisting into the night, the wet thud of bodies hitting blood soaked dirt. A war horn wailed from the village heart, its brass dirge slicing through the inferno like a blade through flesh that caused the boy to flinch.
Rust sparks spiraled upward, drunk on the wind, painting the churning sky in strokes of hellish red, and shadows leaped across gutted homes—thatched roofs caved like broken ribs, shops spilling their innards of splintered wood and shattered clay.
Raeinth's crimson eyes burned, wide as fresh wounds, drinking in the ruin of what had been home just hours before. Streets he'd chased fireflies down now ran red, walls scarred with crimson arcs where sharp swords had kissed stone. He glanced back, and his heart slammed against his ribs with the intensity of a war drum.
'Idiot, Idiot!'
Veridian ranks poured through the haze of the village, their iron plates gleaming dully under soot-blackened banners. Their laughs were like jagged things, lacking even a hint of regret as they yanked screams from pleading villages. Their faces were twisted in the dancing firelight, certain nooks and crevices illuminated and others shadowed, like a mask of glee and amusement over their impervious, cruel agency.
Swords rose and fell relentlessly, dripping gore that steamed on the cooling earth. Raeinth's gaze fixed over the silhouette of a boy his age, crumpled up mid flight as his cry gurgled into silence. He recognized that frame... unmistakably—'Cyne'.
Hot bile threatened to rise up Raeinth's throat as he saw the lifeless corpse of his friend amidst the mountain of bodies tossed like a plate of carcasses.
Next to Cyne's warm corpse, an elder's plea ended in a gurgle, A soldiers boot crunching down on his bone. Innocence didn't beg; it just broke. To call this a battle was an insult—no honorable battle snuffs the lives of innocents. No, this was a forge of human agony, hammering souls into slag.
In the village center, a woman knelt amid the embers, her face a ruin of tears and ash, cradling two small forms. They were now charred husks, no bigger than the boy himself, their limbs twisted like discarded rags. "My poor babies," she sobbed, voice fracturing on the words, "I'm so sorry..." Her arms trembled, pulling them close as if warmth could stitch them back. Raeinth froze, bile rising hot in his throat again.
Just then, a shadow fell. Iron glinted. The soldier's blade whispered through her spine in a swift movement. She folded forward, breath rattling out in a final, wet sigh, joining her children in the dirt. The killer didn't pause, he simply wiped his steel on his thigh and melted back into the smoke.
Nausea hit the boy like a fist, his coughs turning into brass-rasped hacks that doubled him over the bridge's rail. Smoke clawed deeper, painting his vision black at the edges.
'Just the outskirts. Home's close. Mom. Dad.'
Raeinth's house squatted there, beyond the fields—a stubborn thatch roof house on the hill, with a neatly adorned oak door engraved with the village guard knight emblems.
In this moment, more than anything else, he needed legs that worked, lungs that didn't betray, and a body that listened. Fumbling at his thigh, his fingers came away slick with his own blood, the gash from a stray arrow throbbing like a second heartbeat.
He clawed at his leather belt, his knuckles whitening around the worn slingshot—a gift from his father whittled from orchard branch and twine. His legs buckled then, knees kissing charred oak. The world tilted, crimson flames rushing up to greet him. A gust howled past, smoldering and merciless, whipping his wavy black hair across eyes too heavy to hold open.
One last cough. His grip slipped, and the slingshot tumbled free, vanishing into the pyre below with a faint plink lost to the crackle. His knuckles unclenched, empty now. The bridge, the screams, the sky's bloody weep—they blurred, dissolving into a hush deeper than death.
And in that void, golden light cracked through. Not the fire's lie, but something softer; memory's dawn. Pulling Raeinth back, back to a time before the ashes claimed Bavona. Before the boy became the flame.