Her name was Seliane, and she was not from the village. She spoke of cities of marble and blood, of courtrooms where power was a game and death the wager.
The boy listened, his pale eyes unblinking.
She wanted the crystal. He refused. She laughed — not cruelly, but as though amused by a child who had accidentally stolen a crown.
"You don't know what it can do," she said.
"I'll learn," he replied.
That answer changed something in her.
By nightfall, she had killed the innkeeper, set fire to the building, and taken the boy with her.
The villagers thought him dead. In truth, he had just been reborn.
Seliane's first lesson was simple:
"In this world, you will take — or you will be taken. I suggest you start taking