She flushed at his touch and quickly pulled her hand back, turning her face aside. "You always say that," she said, her voice half light, half shy. "And you always wake up like you just fought a war." There was no real anger in her words, only the soft clash of two people who had known each other since they were small enough to chase light through the grass.
They walked together along the forest path as the light shifted between the leaves, the sunlight breaking into gold coins on the ground beneath their feet. The world looked whole. Peaceful. Alive.
Aerondor watched every tree, every stone, every distant roof of the village as if he were trying to carve it into his memory. The laughter of passing elves, the sound of the wind in the branches, the clean warmth in the air. All of it felt fragile, like glass stretched thin.
In his chest, the promise hardened like a blade.
It has not happened yet, he told himself. Everything can still change. I will not let that nightmare become truth.
Behind that vow stood the weight of a strange life. Aerondor Theron. The eldest son of the Theron family. Older brother of Aeltharion. In the world that had once been only a story, he did not even exist.
And yet here he was, walking under living trees, breathing living air, carrying memories that did not belong to this time.
For ten long years after his birth, he had lived in a fog. His body alive. His mind is elsewhere.
To the world, he had only been a dull child, slow to speak, slow to react, slow to grow into himself.
His parents had sighed in quiet corners, disappointment heavy in their eyes, yet they never turned their backs on him. They fed him. Protected him. Waited for him as one might wait for a winter that refuses to end.
When Aeltharion was born, the house rang with joy once more. And even in that haze, Aerondor had laughed with a child's simple instinct, as if some hidden part of him had already known how important that small life would become.
The Therons had been rangers for generations, just like the Windrunners.
Long before mages stood at the top of elven society, before the arcane ruled courts and towers alike, it had been rangers who bled on the borders. Their order was born in the ancient wars against the trolls, arrows, and blades standing against endless green tides.
The name Windrunner had risen from that blood, beginning with Faelith, the first Ranger General. And even now, after thousands of years, rangers still guarded the forest with bow and oath.
Yet in Sasa Allanor, power belonged to those who bent the arcane.
Under the glow of the Sunveil, magic flowed easily, and mages climbed faster and higher than any human ever could. The very bodies of the high elves were shaped by that glow. Violet skin fading into pale gold. Their shining cities stood as proof of a civilization lifted by magic. And like all great light, it cast a long shadow.
In that shadow waited the old enemy.
The Amani trolls.
Distant kin in blood, closer than any elf wished to admit. Long ago, both had risen from the same dark roots. Yet when they faced each other across broken ruins and burning forests, no one spoke of cousins. Only war. A war that had never truly ended.
When the endless war against the trolls reached its final storm, Patriarch Sigma Theron followed the Windrunner ranger general into the blood-soaked jungle of Ithariel.
The victory was written into songs. The dead were written into the ground.
And not long after the cheers faded, the jungle struck back in silence. An ambush in the ruins. A blade in the dark.
Sigma Theron never returned. On that same road of death, the Windrunner ranger general also fell. Two banners were lowered on the same day.
Bad news travels faster than the wind. When word reached their homes, grief arrived like a blade that did not miss.
Aerondor and Aeltharion's mother listened in silence as the message was delivered, her face pale, her hands shaking, her breath thin.
She lasted only a short while after that. Worry hollowed her. Loss broke what strength remained. Before either brother could truly understand what death meant, they had already lost both parents.
The house did not stay empty for long.
Orivanya Windrunner took them in without words or ceremony, as if it were the only natural thing in the world to do.
She was now the Ranger General, burdened with command, with war, with endless duty. She was also the mother of the three sisters who would one day carve their names into history.
Under her roof, two broken brothers were grafted into a different kind of family. Aerondor, trapped in his fog, could only stand and watch as Aeltharion cried himself to sleep night after night, small hands clutching at the edge of blankets as if trying to hold back the world.
He felt the sadness. He felt the loss. But inside his own mind, everything was still tangled and distant, as if his soul were wrapped in heavy cloth.
But then again, Orivanya was rarely home. The border never slept, and neither did the threats that crawled around it.
So the task of caring for the two Theron boys fell to her eldest daughter.
Fenraya was young, proud, sharp, and full of fire. At first, she saw Aerondor only as a burden. A boy who stared too long. A boy who spoke too little. A boy who did not react the way others did.
Aeltharion, fierce in his own small way, did not like her for it.
Whenever she looked down on his brother, he bristled like a cornered cub. Their early days were full of sharp words, silent glares, and small battles of pride that never quite turned into peace.
Then, ten years ago, everything changed in a single quiet season.
Aerondor woke from the fog as if surfacing from deep water. The language of the high elves flowed through his mouth as naturally as breath, carved into him by years of listening without understanding. The broken child vanished without a sound.
Not long after, he stood before Orivanya and bowed his head.
He did not beg. He did not cry.
He asked only for a bow, for training, for the road that his family had always walked. For the future that waited behind arrows and discipline.
Orivanya looked at him for a long time. In his eyes, she saw the shadow of her fallen friends. She saw something steady beneath the quiet. And so she taught him everything.
Under open sky and burning sun, she gave him the weight of the bow. In the quiet of old halls, she gave him the weight of history.
The rise of Sasa Allanor. The ancestors of the high elves. The birth of the Ranger Order in war and blood. The glory and the rot of the Sunveil. The dangers beyond the forest. All of it poured into him while he trained beside Aeltharion. Knowledge and skill grew together. And Aerondor listened to every word as if time itself were watching.
However, inside his chest, another clock was ticking.
The Dark Portal had not opened yet. The first great storm had not yet broken. That meant time still remained.
Time to prepare.
Time to change paths that once led only to ruin.
In the life he remembered, Sasa Allanor would drown in blood and fire. The high elves would be shattered and reborn as the blood elves, carrying both survival and shame like twin scars. This time, he would not accept that ending.
To live in this era meant standing in the teeth of coming storms.
Orcs. Undead. Ancient gods are buried beneath the world. Demons beyond the stars. The names alone were enough to make the future feel heavy. Aerondor did not waste a single day.
Every hour not spent training felt like theft from survival. Every moment of rest felt like a debt that would be paid in blood later.
Fenraya saw the change most clearly.
The boy she once scorned now stood beside her on the practice field, loosing arrows that cut the wind cleanly, stance steady, eyes calm. In only a few short years, he had chased down the distance she had built over a lifetime.
The sight unsettled her. Not with fear, but with challenge.
For the first time, she felt someone walking at her heels. For the first time, she asked her mother for more training. Longer days. Harder drills. Higher demands.
She had never been like her sisters. Sylvandria was strong and steady, already carrying the weight of command in the way she stood and spoke. Elanora was still young, quick to laugh, quick to cry, her future wide and unwritten.
But Fenraya had always pulled against the reins. She hated fences. She hated stillness. When Orivanya spoke of the path of the Ranger General, Fenraya turned her eyes toward the wider world instead.
She chose the Farstriders, the rangers who did not guard a single forest. Rangers who walked the long roads of Elysia. Rangers who fought not only for Sasa Allanor, but for every distant banner where elves bled and died. Many of them vanished for years at a time. Some never returned at all.
As Aerondor watched her take that path, he felt the hidden gears of fate turn once more.
And this time, he intended to reach in and stop them.