The roosters began their rowdy choir long before the true dawn.
Their cries sliced down the crooked lanes of Kareth, tangling with the sighing draft pushing through the warped shutter frames. A meager, bruised light crept across the floorboards hesitant, almost shy and filled the small, dirt floored cottage with the pale, cold blue of early morning.
Corin stirred beneath a threadbare blanket. The hearth had died completely overnight; the air was sharp, cold enough to draw a stinging breath. He sat up, dragging a hand through his perpetually messy hair, his eyes adjusting slowly to the muted glow that seeped through the cracks in the wall.
Somewhere outside, a wooden cart wheel gave a desperate, familiar squeak. Water sloshed in a bucket being dragged up from the well. A child's laughter brief, bright, and utterly unburdened split the morning calm.
An ordinary, desperate sound.
And somehow, the sheer ordinariness of it made everything harder.
He stood, stretching until his spine popped like old wood. The cottage smelled faintly of stale ash and cold iron the permanent, clinging scent of Alden's forge that never truly left the air, or the clothes, or the skin. He dressed in silence: a faded linen shirt that was patched near the cuff, an old, cracked leather belt, and boots scuffed from years of endless, thankless chores. Each motion felt oddly deliberate, heavier than it should.
When he stepped out, the cold met him not like a friend, but like a familiar burden.
Mist lay heavy and sullen over the fields, pooling in the hollows between the squat, leaning cottages. The valley beyond was still half asleep, blanketed in a sickly gray and faint gold. Smoke rose from the crooked chimneys in thin, wavering lines, carrying the smell of burning wood, not coal, coal was a luxury.
A few villagers were already stirring: an old man, his coat torn, patiently leading a mule toward the frozen well, a woman shaking dust from a rug that was more hole than fabric; a pair of barefoot boys chasing each other down the hard-packed dirt lane.
It was small, and undeniably poor, and fading slowly into the ground but it was home.
"Up before the sun for once," a voice called, startling him.
Alden was by the fence, sleeves rolled up, an axe leaning against his shoulder. His hair, streaked white from a lifetime spent wrestling fire and metal, glinted faintly in the burgeoning dawn light.
"Thought I'd shock you into an early retirement," Corin said, trying for levity.
"You did," Alden grumbled, squinting at him. "Almost gave me hope the boy's learned discipline overnight."
"Don't get used to it, old man."
The knight let out a gruff snort that was precisely halfway between laughter and a rough cough. "Make yourself useful then. That fence post is rotten clear through, and I'm too old to be swinging steel at wood."
Corin took the axe. The rough hewn handle was still warm from Alden's grip. He planted his boots in the muddy earth, drew a slow, deliberate breath, and brought the blade down.
The morning filled with the clean, honest rhythm of work: the solid thunk of dry wood splitting, the whine of a hand saw, the metallic creak of nails driven home. Birds called their simple songs from the leafless trees beyond the forge. Somewhere, a dog barked and was answered by another in the distance.
For a long while, neither spoke. It was the kind of silence that comes only after years spent side by side comfortable, unhurried, woven through with unspoken knowledge.
But every so often, Alden caught Corin's eye glancing up at the distant ridge the place where the mud road wound out of sight like a forgotten ribbon.
"You'll give yourself a neck ache staring that far, boy," Alden said finally, without looking up from the post.
Corin smiled faintly, still looking toward the blank horizon. "Just making sure it's still there."
"It'll still be there when you're gone," Alden said, driving a nail home with a sharp blow. "That's the trouble with horizons they don't move for anyone. They only stand there waiting."
Corin didn't answer. The wind shifted, carrying the complex scent of forge smoke, damp earth, and the underlying stench of poverty that clung to Kareth. And something else, faint and distant. The low, purposeful rumble of hooves, quickly gone.
Alden's head tilted slightly, his gaze narrowing toward the ridge. "Merchants this early?" he muttered, the question more a worry than a query. "Or riders."
"Trouble?" Corin asked, dropping the axe.
"Not yet," Alden said, but his grip on the hammer handle tightened until his knuckles were white.
The fence stood straight again by mid-morning. Alden sat on a low, unsteady stool, rubbing the perpetual ache in his shoulder and muttering curses about age being a cruel trick played only on the unlucky. Corin handed him a cup of precious, clean water.
"Sit," Alden grumbled. "And let me look at you before I start thinking you've been replaced by a younger, more energetic ghost."
Corin laughed, a deep, easy sound, and settled into the wet grass. His dark hair caught the flat light brown near the roots, gold where the sun had brutally bleached it. He looked young, utterly unscarred, alive in a restless, vital way Alden hadn't been in decades.
"You've got too much damn energy," the old man said, managing a half smile. "You swing an axe like it owes you money, and you haven't stopped moving since you woke."
"I'll take that as a compliment, then."
"Wasn't one. It's an observation."
They shared a small, quiet, genuine laugh. Then Alden reached behind him, pulling a small, oil stained cloth bundle from his satchel.
"Here," he said. "Before I forget you were leaving this morning, like a fool."
Corin frowned as Alden unwrapped it. Inside lay a dagger slender, simple, its edge honed to a terrifying, faint glint even in the soft light. The hilt was bound in dark leather, worn smooth by years of use, a perfect patina.
"This was mine," Alden said softly. "Carried it longer than I care to remember. Never failed me, even when I was too much of an idiot to deserve its faith."
Corin took it carefully. It felt cool in his hand, lighter than it looked, perfectly balanced it felt like it belonged there.
"I can't take this. It's too important."
"You can," Alden said, his voice firm and final. "The world outside these miserable walls is not kind to empty hands. You were meant to leave at dawn, but you stayed to mend a fence now leave with something to mend your fortunes."
Just then, a clear, arrogant voice echoed from the lane a traveler's impatient shout. Corin looked up to see two riders cresting the hill, cloaked in expensive, mud-splattered gray wool. Dust followed them like an arrogant cloud.
"Strangers," Corin murmured, automatically standing and placing a hand on the dagger's hilt.
Alden's eyes hardened, the softness gone. "Not strangers. Messengers."
They rode past the forge without slowing, but Corin caught a fleeting glimpse of the sigil embossed on their saddlebags: a golden lion over a field of stark red. The royal crest.
Alden's jaw set into granite. He said nothing until the purposeful sound of the hooves had completely faded. Then he stood, slower and more deliberately this time, and reached into his shirt. He pulled out a pendant circular, silver that had dulled with age, its surface scratched and worn nearly smooth. A faint crest was carved into it: a pair of curling wings surrounding an unseen sun.
"This was your mother's," he said, his voice a near whisper.
Corin turned it over in his palm, studying the faded lines. "You're certain?"
"I'd not mistake it," Alden said, his eyes distant. "She left it here before… before the world took her."
The boy didn't speak. The quiet between them deepened, heavy with the weight of things neither dared to name aloud the kind of quiet that feels like a shared, painful memory.
Alden's voice was rough when it came again. "And don't forget your promise. If you ever cross paths with the royal bloodline, any of them you turn the other way and you run. Got it?"
Corin frowned, confused by the sudden, visceral fear in the old man's eyes. "You're being weird, Alden—"
"It's not a joke, boy," Alden snapped, his voice sharp as the dagger's edge. "Some debts can't be repaid in gold, only in blood. You'd do well not to learn which kind you've inherited."
Corin hesitated, the pendant cold against his palm, before finally nodding. "Got it. I'll leave tonight, then. I want to spend the rest of the day by the river."
Alden studied him for a long, final moment, then looked toward the road again, his posture slightly defeated. "Go, before I find another job to keep you here."
Corin turned toward the horizon, the smooth, dull silver of the pendant tucked securely beneath his shirt. The finality of the decision delayed but not denied was a cold lump in his stomach.
Behind him, Alden stood alone in the dark maw of the forge doorway, a lone, solid shadow framed by the hesitant orange glow of the banked fire.
The world was waking outside the walls.
And somewhere beyond the ridge, it was already bleeding.