The world my mother built for us was woven from woodsmoke, river mud, and the scent of baking bread. We lived in Praag, a village nestled in a crook of the Silverwood, a place of cobbled streets slick with rain and timber-framed houses leaning on each other like tired old men. For years, it was the only world I knew. It was a fragile thing, that world, but I didn't know it then. I only knew the warmth of my mother's hand and the solid feel of the ground beneath my feet.
That fragile world held its shape for ten years. The first crack appeared on a hot summer afternoon in Miller's Field.
We were playing Spears and Goblins, using fallen branches for spears and a line of birch trees for the goblin horde. I was a goblin, as usual. The other children—Elara, with her ribbons the color of cornflowers, and Tomas, whose father owned the tannery—found it easy to cast me as the monster. I didn't mind. It was a part I understood. Stay quiet, lunge at the right moment, and fall dramatically when struck.
But that day, something was different. The sun was hot on the back of my neck, and the air was thick with the drone of honeybees. Tomas, puffed up with the authority of the hero, pointed his stick-spear at me.
"You're not a real goblin," he declared, his face screwed up in concentration. "You don't even shout."
Elara chimed in, hands on her hips. "He never does. He's quiet. It's creepy."
"My da says his ma ain't from around here," Tomas added, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper loud enough for all to hear. "Says there's something wrong with them. That's why his eyes are like that."
I froze. My eyes. Storm-grey, my mother called them. A gift from a father I couldn't remember. To Tomas, they were just… wrong.
"Freak," he spat. The word was a stone thrown in a still pond. The ripples spread fast. The other children shuffled back, their faces, once open and flushed with play, closing up.
The world began to fray. The buzzing of the bees grew louder, a physical pressure inside my skull. The brilliant green of the field leached away, turning the color of old moss. The children's faces blurred, their features smearing like wet paint. Their whispers became a single, meaningless hum. My own heartbeat slowed to a dull, distant thud.
I stood there, a small, still goblin in a field of grey, until a hand touched my shoulder.
The world rushed back in a dizzying flood of color and sound. My mother, Lyra, stood beside me, her hand a warm anchor. Her face was a mask of calm, but her eyes, the warm brown of rich soil, held a fire I knew well. She didn't look at me. She looked past me, at the small huddle of children and the two mothers who had come to collect them.
"Elara. Tomas," my mother's voice was not loud, but it cut through the summer air like a shard of ice. "Is there a problem?"
Tomas's mother bristled. "Our Tomas was just saying the boy is… odd. Doesn't play right."
"He called him a freak," Elara's mother added, pulling her daughter close.
My mother took a slow step forward, her hands balled into fists. "He is a child," she said, her voice dangerously level. "And you are teaching your children to fear what they do not understand. Does that make you proud?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She turned, her gaze softening as it fell on me. "Come, Kael. Let's go home. I'll make honey-cakes."
As we walked away, leaving a wake of stunned silence, I felt a familiar shame curl in my stomach. I was the reason for the fire in her eyes, the tension in her shoulders. I was the stone in her shoe.
We passed the sturdy cottage where the Grak family lived. Most villagers gave them a wide berth. Orcs, even ones who had sworn off clan warfare, made people nervous. Grak, the son, was my age. He was built like a little boulder, with skin the color of muted jade and small tusks just starting to grow in. He sat on his front step, carving wood with a shard of flint, having watched the whole thing from a distance.
He looked up as we passed, his dark eyes meeting mine. He just grunted.
"They're stupid," he said, his voice a low rumble. Then he went back to his carving.
My mother squeezed my hand. A small smile touched her lips. "See? Not everyone."
That was the beginning. Grak and I were two sides of the same outcast coin. I was too quiet and strange; he was too big and green. He taught me how to track deer and find the sweetest berries. I taught him the quiet games I played in my head, stories of ancient kings and forgotten magic. The seasons turned. The whispers of the other children faded, replaced by the rustle of leaves and the murmur of the river. In the quiet understanding of the outcast, we found our own world.
By the summer our voices had begun to deepen, we had grown bolder, our explorations taking us further up Whisperwood Creek than we were ever allowed. Grak was trying to catch slick, silver-scaled fish with his bare hands, his rumbling laughter echoing every time one slipped through his fingers. I was perched on a mossy boulder, watching him, feeling a rare and simple peace settle over me.
That's when we heard the scream.
It was thin and reedy, full of a terror that was anything but play. We scrambled up the creek bank. There, in a small clearing, was Tomas. He was backed against a rock face, his face sheet-white. Between him and us, slinking low to the ground, was a forest panther. It was a lean, muscular creature of midnight fur and emerald eyes, starving, its ribs showing faintly beneath its sleek coat.
It let out a low, guttural snarl, a sound that vibrated in my bones.
Grak didn't hesitate. He let out a roar of his own—a surprisingly deep and furious sound—and snatched up a heavy branch. "Get behind me, Kael!" he yelled.
The panther ignored him. Its eyes were fixed on the smaller, trembling prey. Tomas.
Something inside me broke. It wasn't a retreat into grey. It was the opposite. The world didn't dull; it sharpened to a razor's edge. The green of the leaves became so vivid it hurt my eyes. The sound of the panther's breathing, the frantic hammering of Tomas's heart, the rustle of a single falling leaf—I heard it all, a symphony of imminent violence. My own heart began to pound a frantic, savage rhythm.
Grak was brave, but he was just a boy. The panther gathered its haunches to spring.
I didn't think. I moved.
The air felt thick, like water. My hand closed around a river stone the size of my fist. It felt impossibly light. My arm drew back, my muscles coiling with a strength that wasn't mine. The world seemed to slow, stretching the moment into an eternity. I saw the twitch of the panther's ear, the ripple of muscle along its flank, the glint of saliva on its teeth.
I threw the stone.
It flew straight and true, a grey blur that struck the panther on the side of its head with a sickening crack. The creature yelped, a sound of shock and pain, and stumbled sideways. It shook its massive head, dazed, and looked at me. For a second, its emerald eyes met my grey ones, and I saw not just animal cunning, but fear.
It turned and vanished into the undergrowth, a shadow swallowed by other shadows.
The clearing was silent, save for Tomas's ragged gasps. He stared at me, his mouth agape. The fear in his eyes was no longer for the panther. It was for me. He scrambled to his feet and ran, crashing through the woods without a look back.
Grak lowered his branch, his green face pale. He stared at the spot where the panther had been, then at the stone I had thrown, now lying yards away. Then he looked at me.
"Kael," he breathed, his voice full of awe. "How…?"
I had no answer. The strange, sharp clarity was fading, leaving behind a hollow ache and a trembling in my limbs. I looked at my own hands, half-expecting them to be monstrous. They were just my hands. Small, smudged with dirt. But they had done that. A cold dread, far worse than the fear of any panther, seeped into my bones. What was I?
News, like water, finds every crack in a small village. Tomas's story, embellished with every telling, spread quickly. He conveniently left out the part about the panther saving his life. He only talked about me. About the look in my eyes. About the stone that flew like an arrow. The children who once merely avoided me now fled at my approach. Their parents pulled them indoors, their whispers following me down the street like ghosts.
The world my mother had built was cracking.
A few days later, a voice like grinding stones called my name. "Boy! Over here."
It was Borin Stonehand, the village's Dwarven blacksmith. His forge was a place of perpetual heat and rhythmic noise, a cave of soot-stained stone that smelled of coal smoke and hot iron. Borin was as broad as he was tall, with a magnificent beard the color of iron filings and rust. He was a creature of the earth, solid and unyielding, and he tolerated no fools.
I approached his forge cautiously. He was hammering a glowing orange horseshoe on his anvil.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
He plunged the horseshoe into a barrel of water, which hissed and steamed. Only then did he turn his stern, soot-smudged face to me.
"Heard a story," he grunted, wiping his hands on a leather apron. "About you. And a panther."
I tensed, expecting the same accusation.
"Tomas Longfellow is a squawking little coward," Borin continued, his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners. "But he's not a liar. Not about what he sees." He picked up a small object from a workbench. "They say you have a monster in you, boy."
I flinched.
"Hmph. Maybe." He stepped closer. "Strength is strength. A hammer can build a house or it can cave in a skull. The hammer doesn't care. It's the hand that holds it that decides."
He pressed the object into my palm. It was a wolf, forged from dark iron, no bigger than my hand. It was perfect: the powerful haunches, the alert ears, the texture of the fur rendered in the unyielding metal. It was captured mid-stride, a silent hunter.
"A wolf is a hunter," Borin said, his gruff voice softer than I'd ever heard it. "A monster to the sheep. A protector to the pack. It's all a matter of where you stand."
I stared at the iron wolf, its weight a comforting pressure in my hand. It felt like a simple, solid truth in a world that was becoming increasingly complicated.
"Thank you," I whispered.
Borin just grunted, turning back to his fire. "Don't thank me. Just learn which one you are, boy. The monster or the protector."
I walked home under a sky bruised with the colors of sunset, the iron wolf clutched tight in my fist. For the first time since the clearing, the cold dread receded. The fear was still there, a shadow lingering at the edges of my mind, but now it had a counterbalance. A weight in my hand. A choice. The world my mother had built for me might be fragile, but that day, Borin Stonehand had given me my first stone to help shore up the walls.