There was a time when Cindervale glimmered with wonder—when they said its soil birthed silver and the nights shimmered like coal embers breathing their last. But those stories were old, and time had stripped the village of its magic. Now it sagged beneath grey skies, its crooked rooftops and crumbling chimneys sagging like shoulders too weary to stand tall.
Örn had never seen the village in its golden days. He was born into its aftermath—into the silence after the song. His home, if it could be called that, was a collapsing hut at the village's edge, where rain found its way through even on dry days, and moss grew on the inside of the walls. The only soul who shared that space was old Teff—a wiry man with clouded eyes and a voice like crushed gravel, who wasn't family by blood but had taken Örn in regardless.
They didn't speak much, but that suited them both. In silence, there was a kind of understanding.
Örn had never felt important. He wasn't a hunter, nor a craftsman, nor a clever-tongued merchant. He didn't shine in any way that others did. But he had one habit that made the other children call him strange: he liked to sit on the cliffs just beyond the village and stare up at the sky. Most days, it was a dull, unmoving blanket of grey. But sometimes—just sometimes—he saw fine white lines between the stars, like ancient scratches across a windowpane. He didn't know what they meant. He didn't even know why they pulled at him. Only that they did.
On the day everything shifted, the village rooster failed to crow.
Instead, Örn woke to an unnatural silence—so thick it pressed on his ears like wool. Then came the sound.
Boom... Boom... Boom...
It echoed faintly, as though the heart of the world had begun to beat beneath the stone. He sat up, startled, and the old shack trembled ever so slightly. From the crooked shelf, Teff's kettle clinked against the wall, a soft, metallic chime that felt oddly like a countdown.
Örn stepped outside. The village was shrouded in an eerie stillness. No carts creaked. No dogs barked. Just wind rustling through dry leaves. Then he looked up.
Suspended above the grey clouds was something not of this world—a ring of pale, blue fire, turning slowly, deliberately. It hovered like an eye, half-lidded, half-seeing. Örn froze, breath caught in his throat. And in that moment, those faint star-scratches in the night sky no longer looked like random lines. They looked like fissures. Cracks. Doors.
By the time he reached the village square, the sky had returned to its familiar gloom. The glowing ring was gone, as if it had never been. The villagers, with their habitual weariness, went about their morning tasks—mending fences, lamenting spoiled stew, muttering about how the fish had stopped biting. No one mentioned the trembling ground. No one looked up.
Örn wanted to speak. He wanted to ask them:
"Did you feel it? Did you see it?"
But he didn't. Because he knew what their answers would be.
He wandered, unsure, until he came to the well. A cluster of children stood nearby, gathered around something in the dirt. A small bird—dead. Its wings were stiff, its feathers burnt at the tips. It stared skyward with lifeless, glassy eyes.
"Lightning," one boy muttered.
"There was no lightning," another argued, frowning.
Örn crouched to look closer. The bird was still warm. But what caught his attention wasn't the body—it was what lay beneath it: a circle, scorched perfectly into the soil. Geometrically flawless. Unnatural.
He reached toward it, instinct tugging at his fingertips.
"Don't."
The voice stopped him cold.
He turned to see Siera, the blacksmith's niece. She was older than him by a few years, tall and always marked with soot. She had a presence like cooling iron—quiet, but full of heat. She stared at the circle with narrowed eyes.
"Why not?" Örn asked.
"That's not lightning," she said softly, almost to herself.
He studied her. "You saw it, didn't you? The sky."
Siera didn't answer. Not directly. She just looked at the bird, then at him, then turned and walked away.
That night, Örn couldn't sleep. The heartbeat beneath the earth had faded, but something else had taken its place—a stillness that wasn't peace. A hush before something immense.
He lay on his cot, staring at the beams above, feeling the hush in his bones. On the wooden shelf beside him were three items: a pendant carved from dark stone, once his mother's; a weatherworn map full of errors and guesswork; and a wooden dagger, dulled by time, that Teff had given him long ago.
He didn't know what was coming. He didn't know what had changed. But he could feel it in his chest—something calling. Something waiting.
Tomorrow, he would climb the ridge behind Cindervale. The place the elders whispered about, the place marked on old maps with warning symbols and broken ink.
He would cross it.
He would see where the cracks in the sky led.