From the east, they came not as a wave, but as a tide.
The army that crested the hills overlooking the Silverwood was a thing of grim order. This was no rabble of bandits, no frenzied orcish warband. This was a line of disciplined steel, marching under the unfamiliar banners of the Duchy of Aeridor—a coiled serpent of silver on a field of blood-red. Sunlight glinted off thousands of spear points and helmet rims, a river of cold light flowing down into the green valley. At the heart of the formation, flanking the standard-bearers, rode figures clad in black iron plate, their helms fashioned into snarling beasts. They were an incongruous core of darkness within the human ranks, their presence a discordant note in the symphony of war. Their target was clear: the small, insignificant village of Praag, a place of no strategic value, a simple meal for an army that could swallow a city.
The sound reached us first. A low, resonant horn blast that was not Grak's and not from any hunter in the Whisperwood. It was a sound of summons, of conquest. It echoed from the eastern hills, and a moment later, it was answered by a frantic, clanging peel from the bell in Praag's market square. The sound of warning. The sound of panic.
Grak and I were on our feet in an instant, the warmth of our shared promise on the ridge turning to ice in my veins. The world had felt boundless a moment ago, a map of adventures waiting to be drawn. Now, it had shrunk to the size of my own hammering heart.
"What is that?" Grak's voice was a low rumble, his knuckles white where he gripped the leather pack my mother had made for him.
I didn't answer. I was already running, my eyes fixed on the plume of smoke that was beginning to rise from the direction of the village—not the gentle, white smoke of hearth fires, but the greasy, black smoke of burning thatch. My senses, always a half-step ahead of my thoughts, were screaming. The air tasted of iron and fear. The ground vibrated with a rhythm too steady for fleeing animals, too heavy for anything natural. It was the tread of a marching host.
We plunged back into the Whisperwood, no longer hunters but prey. The familiar paths felt alien, the trees like silent, uncaring witnesses. We burst from the woods into the outskirts of Praag, and the scene was one of fractured chaos. Villagers ran in every direction, their faces masks of disbelief. Some carried children, others clutched sacks of grain or useless family heirlooms. The air was thick with shouting and the first, terrible screams from the eastern edge of the village, where the vanguard had already hit.
"Kael!" Grak grabbed my arm, his jade-green skin pale with shock. "The forge! Borin will know what to do!"
He was right. If there was any order to be found, it would be with the dwarf. We fought our way through the panicked throng, the smell of honey-cakes and woodsmoke now choked by the acrid stench of fire. We saw Tomas Longfellow, his face streaked with tears, being dragged along by his father. His eyes met mine for a second, wide with a terror that erased all memory of playground taunts. He was just a boy, and we were all about to die.
We found Borin Stonehand not hiding, but preparing. He stood before his forge, its fires roaring not for craft but for war. He had his great smithing hammer in one hand and a notched, heavy-bladed axe in the other. A handful of stout farmers and woodsmen stood with him, their expressions grim. They were forming a barricade of carts and barrels, a pitiful dam against the coming tide.
Borin saw us, his gaze sweeping over Grak's thick, powerful frame and then to me. His decision was instant and pragmatic. "Grak! To me! You know how to use that axe I gave you!"
He then turned his fiery gaze on me. "Kael! You are no soldier. Your duty is to your mother. Get her to safety! Hide her! Now, GO!"
His voice was a command forged in fire and steel, brooking no argument. But I was frozen, watching the line of armored soldiers advancing. They moved without haste, their shields locked, their spears a fence of glittering death.
Grak looked at me, his young face set with a resolve that seemed far too old for him. He understood the dwarf's logic. He was a wall; I was not. "He's right," Grak said, his voice a low, urgent rumble. "I can hold a line. You have to get to Lyra. Go. Keep her safe."
"No," I said, my voice a strangled whisper. "The promise. We leave together."
"And we will," he insisted, his gaze unwavering. "This is just… a delay. Now go! Find me when it's over." He squeezed my shoulder, a gesture of finality, and turned to stand beside the dwarf, a small boulder of defiance next to a mountain.
My feet finally obeyed. I turned and ran, leaving my only friend to face an army. The guilt was a physical thing, a hook in my gut, but the image of my mother's face was stronger. I found our cottage untouched, an island of calm in the growing storm. I burst through the door, my chest heaving.
"Mother!"
Lyra stood in the center of the small room. She wasn't packing. She wasn't crying. Her hands were folded before her, and her face held a terrible, brittle serenity. She had known. All these years, she had been waiting for this day.
"Kael," she said, her voice soft, yet carrying over the rising din outside. "Come here."
She moved to the worn rug in the center of the room. With a strength I didn't know she possessed, she pulled it aside, revealing a recessed iron ring. She pulled, and a section of the floorboards lifted, revealing a dark, cramped space beneath. It smelled of damp earth and time.
"Get in," she ordered, her gentleness gone, replaced by a fierce, desperate command.
"No! We have to run!" I pleaded, gesturing wildly toward the door. "We can hide in the woods, the old cellars—anywhere but here!"
"There is no running," she said, her hands on my shoulders, her warm brown eyes boring into mine. "They are not here for the village, Kael. They are here for you."
Tears streamed down my face, but I saw the truth in her eyes. This was the fear she had lived with every day of our lives here. This was the monster she had tried to shield me from.
"Promise me, Kael," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Promise me you will live."
"I promise," I choked out, the words tasting like ash. It wasn't enough. Before I could protest further, she shoved me, hard. I stumbled backward into the opening, landing clumsily in the cramped darkness. I looked up at her, my mouth open to argue, to beg her to come with me.
"I love you," she said, her face framed by the square of light. "Never forget that. Never forget the light."
Then she lowered the floorboards back into place. As they settled, I saw them for a fraction of a second—faint silver lines etched into the interior of the wood, flaring with a cold, blue light. A wave of pressure washed over me, and the world outside became a muffled cacophony. The roar of the fires and the distant screams were crushed into a low, dull drone, like hearing a storm from the bottom of a deep well.
I scrambled up, my hands scrabbling at the floorboards above, but they were sealed tight, immovable as a mountain. I opened my mouth to shout, to scream her name, but no sound came out. The runes held my voice in a chokehold. Trapped. Silenced. I slammed my fist against the unyielding wood, a useless, noiseless protest. It was then I found the crack between two boards and pressed my eye to it, a prisoner forced to watch the execution.
Through the sliver of a view, I saw boots. Heavy, iron-shod boots marching into my home. Two pairs.
"Search the place," a voice said. It was distorted by the magic, thin and distant, like a voice through a stone wall. "The intelligence said a cottage on the western edge. A woman and a boy."
I saw the hem of my mother's simple brown dress. She stood perfectly still. "There is no boy here," she said, her voice faint but clear through the magical barrier. "Only me. Take what you want and leave."
One pair of boots stepped closer. "We don't want your trinkets, woman. We want the half-blood. The one with the eyes of the storm. Eighteen years old today. Where is he?"
My blood ran cold. They knew. They knew my age. They knew my eyes. This wasn't a war. It was an execution.
"I don't know what you're talking about," my mother said, her voice a flawless lie. It was the last gift she would ever give me.
There was a soft, wet smack, the sound barely reaching me. A pained gasp. When I looked again, she was on her knees. A drop of blood, dark and thick, fell and splattered on the floorboards just inches from my eye.
"We can do this all day," the cold, distant voice said. "Or you can tell us where the abomination is, and we will grant you a quick end."
A long silence stretched. I thrashed in my prison, a silent, frantic animal, beating my hands against wood that would not yield, screaming words the runes devoured before they could form.
Then, I heard her speak. Her voice was a ragged whisper, not of defiance, but of steadfast denial. To them, it must have sounded like the delirious ramblings of a dying woman. But to me, it was a final command.
"There is… no boy… only… the light…"
The second soldier laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. There was a sudden, sharp intake of breath from my mother. A gurgle. A soft, heavy thud as her body slumped to the floor.
Her hand came to rest just over the crack I was peering through. I could see her fingers, the calluses from her needlework, the dirt from her garden. They were still. So terribly still.
Something inside me broke.
It wasn't a snap; it was a shattering. The grief and the rage and the terror were too much. The careful walls I had built inside myself crumbled into dust. All that existed was the still hand, the spatter of blood, and a pain so vast it had no sound.
My promise to her—live—warred with the overwhelming need to avenge her. And in that conflict, something ancient and dark, something that had slept in my blood since birth, awoke.
It wasn't a decision. It was an eruption. The cold blue light of the runes etched into the floorboards, visible now only to my inner eye, began to flicker and strain against a rising tide of raw, violet-black fire that poured from the very core of my being.
The magical silence shattered first. My own scream, raw and inhuman, tore through the protective ward, echoing in the sudden, ringing stillness of the cottage. The pressure building in my chest and behind my eyes found its release.
The wood of the floorboards above me didn't just splinter; it detonated upward in a shower of shattered timber and dying blue sparks. I felt the runes break, their ancient magic dissolving like mist in a hurricane.
I heard the soldiers shout in alarm, their voices sharp and clear now. "What in the hells—?"
But their words began to stretch and warp, their cries twisting into metallic, drawn-out wails. The very air in the small cottage grew thick and began to shimmer, vibrating with a low, gut-wrenching hum. My uncontrolled scream became a physical force, a vortex of raw power with me at its epicenter. The walls of the cottage didn't fall; they seemed to dissolve, the wood and daub smearing into the air like wet paint.
Light and shadow bled into a violent, churning tempest. I saw the world through a fractured lens, a thousand images at once: the terrified faces of the two soldiers, their armor being peeled away by unseen forces; the roof of the cottage collapsing into a spiral of impossible geometry; the green of the Whisperwood and the red of the banners outside folding in on themselves. A hook of impossible force latched onto my soul, pulling me inside out, shredding me and reweaving me in the same agonizing instant.
The ground vanished. Gravity became a memory. I was tumbling through a non-space of screaming color and deafening noise, a place that smelled of ozone, blood, and damp earth all at once. The last clear image burned into my mind was my mother's hand, still and pale on the floorboards, a tiny, peaceful island in a universe of my own making, before it too was swallowed by the howling vortex of violet energy.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.
The screaming chaos ceased, replaced by an unnerving silence broken only by my own ragged gasps. The feeling of being torn apart vanished, leaving behind an ache that resonated in every bone. I collapsed, not onto the bloody floor of my home, but onto a bed of damp moss and gnarled roots.
The air was cool and clean, heavy with the scent of pine and wet leaves. Dappled moonlight filtered through a thick canopy of leaves high above, painting the forest floor in shifting patterns of silver and black. Ancient, towering trees, their trunks thick as cottages, stood like silent sentinels all around me. There was no sign of Praag, no smell of fire, no sound of battle. Only the whisper of the wind through branches and the distant hoot of an owl.
The world had not just been broken. It had unmade itself around me, then spat me out, battered and alone, into the heart of a forest that had never known my name.