Orivanya had always known that her eldest daughter carried fire in her bones.
From the day Fenraya could walk, she hated stillness. She hated rules. She hated the quiet weight of duty that came with the Windrunner name.
When Fenraya openly spoke of the Farstriders, of roads that never ended and skies not boxed in by golden trees, Orivanya felt both anger and fear twist together in her chest.
The position of Ranger General was meant to pass to the next generation, and now she began to turn her eyes, slowly and with careful thought, toward her second daughter instead.
Sylvandria did not rebel. She did not dream of distant roads. She stood straight, trained hard, and carried command as if it had always lived in her spine.
Yet no matter how fierce her worries were, Fenraya was still her child.
Blood was blood.
And when Orivanya saw how deeply her eldest daughter had been stirred by Aerondor's sudden rise, how she now chased her limits instead of running from them, the fear eased into something quieter.
As a commander, she guarded the borders. As a mother, she guarded hope. So when Fenraya asked for more training, harder drills, longer days beneath the sun, Orivanya did not refuse.
On the training grounds, competition slowly turned into a balance.
Two figures moved through dust and light, arrows rising and falling in clean arcs, breath steady, muscles burning with effort. They pushed each other in silence more often than with words.
When Aerondor's aim grew sharper, Fenraya tightened her stance.
When Fenraya's speed increased, Aerondor learned to read the wind better.
Respect grew where mockery once lived. Pride faded into trust. And somewhere between sunrise drills and night patrols, something else rooted itself quietly between them.
It was not yet love. It was no longer just friendship. It lived in the space between glances held a second too long and hands that brushed without pulling away.
Orivanya saw it. Of course she did.
A mother always sees what others think is hidden.
The son of her fallen friend stood tall now, steady and driven. She watched the way he trained, the way he listened, the way he placed the future ahead of himself. And so she chose not to speak. She turned her eyes aside and let the road unfold on its own.
But fate does not loosen its grip simply because people grow closer.
The dreams returned.
Not every night. Not always in the same shape.
Yet again and again, Aerondor would wake with his heart tearing at his ribs, the same scenes burning behind his eyes. T
he fall of the forest. The breaking of the barrier. The dead walking beneath blue fire. And always, without fail, one ending waited at the deepest point of the nightmare.
The death of Sylvandria. Her scream bound into shadow. Her soul was chained to the blade of a death knight. The birth of a queen of wails who would never return to the light.
Each time he woke, his hands trembled.
That evening, the sun dipped low behind the trees as Aerondor and Fenraya walked side by side toward Moonspire Village. The rooftops caught the last gold of the day. Smoke curled from chimneys. Laughter drifted faintly with the breeze.
Nothing here hinted at ruin.
Nothing here knew the shape of tomorrow yet.
They stopped at the edge of the village road and looked ahead together.
Without speaking, both smiled. The kind of smile that carries fragile hope.
In Aerondor's chest, the vow did not soften.
There is still time, he told himself. If I must walk far for it, then I will walk far.
He would become a Farstrider like her. That would be his first step beyond the forest. His first crack in the wall of fate.
Aerondor did not spend the past ten years running forward without direction. Every arrow he loosed, every mile he walked, every lesson he carved into memory all bent toward a future he alone could see clearly.
His first goal was simple. Leave the forest. Walk the road as a Farstrider. Gain command. Gain trust. Gain the right to lead.
Beyond that waited a name buried deep in the story of the world. A lone survivor in the Broken Isles.
A shadow that had not yet faded from history. Emerel Shadowguard. Through that man, Aerondor planned to find the hidden path once more, to gather hunters from every race and every land, and to begin building what the world would one day need when all banners burned.
In his old life, he had believed that hunters and rangers were different roads. Only after training beneath Orivanya did he understand that they were branches of the same tree. A ranger was simply a hunter who had sharpened one edge until it could split the wind. Distance. Precision. Survival. One body, many answers.
"Our rangers fight with bows," Orivanya once said as they watched arrows strike a distant target in soft, steady rhythm. "But the dwarves of Dun Morogh walk a different path. Their mountain rangers wield thunder and smoke. Muskets in their hands. Beasts at their side."
Aerondor had frowned at the thought. "Why don't we use animal companions too? Our bodies are not as strong as theirs. A beast in front would help."
Orivanya's smile had been tired, but kind. "Because time is limited. The mind only carries so much weight. To fight at range, to move unseen, to command the wind, and to raise a loyal beast as well… not every elf can bear all of that. We walk the road our ancestors built. They walk theirs."
Aerondor did not argue. But inside, another truth was already forming.
The high elves were powerful. And yet they were fragile.
Magic hid their weakness. The Sunveil fed their pride.
Most believed the arcane could answer everything.
That belief hollowed the front lines. Few wished to stand in the place where blades met flesh. Royal Guards were rare. Spellbreakers were costly. Even their armor was worth lifetimes of coin. In truth, far too many stood at the back, believing the front would never truly reach them.
The forest itself had become a wall around their thinking.
They traded little. They walked a little. They spoke to the outside world only in careful touches. This bred comfort. And comfort slowly turned into blindness.
Even the Sun King of this era, Anasterian Sunstrider, and the elders of Silvermoon carried their pride as if it were unbreakable steel, their chins lifted high above the rest of the world.
Aerondor had already seen what pride looked like when it shattered.
In his dreams, the proud fell first.
And this time, he intended to be waiting at the edge of that fall.
*
Far away from the golden forest, beneath towers of floating stone and endless spell light, the young prince Vel'anthir Sunstrider studied beneath the gathered minds of the world in Willowmere.
From time to time, faint rumors of unrest reached his ears. Small signs. Uneasy whispers. Warnings were carried on messenger birds and passing merchants. Yet the world had known peace for too long. No true war had touched the borders in his lifetime. Even as worry stirred in him, it remained distant, blurred by youth, by magic, by the belief that tomorrow would look much like today.
On the training grounds, the talk turned once more to armies and borders. "Humans also have hunters," Orivanya said as she watched her arrows strike the target one after another. "So do the dwarves. But neither race keeps a force like our rangers as their pride." She paused, as if something else had risen to her tongue. Her eyes tightened. Then she shook her head. "No. It is nothing."
Aerondor knew exactly what she had almost said.
The night elves.
The cousins long left behind across the sea.
The people who once walked the same ancient forests as their ancestors. The ones the high elves now barely remembered.
Because of the long years of isolation, Sasa Allanor had slowly forgotten Kalimdor. Forgotten the tauren who hunted beneath open skies. Forgotten the furbolgs who once guarded sacred groves. Forgotten even the wild tribes who still carried the old ways of bow and beast. But Aerondor remembered. In his memories, every one of those races still held their own line of long-range warriors, shaped by land and blood and belief.
That night, after training had burned the last of the strength from his arms, he walked back toward Moonspire Village with his brow drawn tight. The forest was quiet. The path was familiar. But his thoughts were not at peace.
How does a people fix a broken front line, he asked himself again and again, when they do not even admit it is broken?
Unorganized fighters were not enough.
Pride was not enough.
Magic alone would not stop a tide that did not tire.
A slow breath left his chest.
Why is it that when others are reborn, they grasp fate with golden hands, while I only have my own fists?
The thought tasted bitter. And yet he knew it was not fully true.
From the day his mind had awakened, everything he learned came faster than it should.
When Orivanya showed him a movement, his body copied it almost without thought. When she corrected his stance, he could feel the error in his bones before her voice even reached him.
Even the strange, arcane shooting methods, which mixed will with motion, carved themselves into his muscles in days instead of years. It was this silent gift that had let him chase down the shadow of Fenraya's long training in only a few short seasons.
As he drifted through these thoughts, a hand tugged at his sleeve.
"What are you thinking about so hard?"
Fenraya walked beside him, her eyes bright with curiosity as the evening light washed over her hair. Aerondor came back to himself and looked at her as she smiled, open and warm.
"I was thinking about the high elves' armies," he said. "We only rely on long-range fire. Don't you think that is strange?"
She blinked in surprise, then laughed softly. "Strange? It has worked for thousands of years. Our barriers stand. The trolls still hide in the trees. What is there to worry about?"
Her answer was the answer of almost every high elf alive.
And it was exactly what frightened him.
If one could not see the crack in the wall, one would never reinforce it.
Worse still, the foundations of Sasa Allanor leaned too heavily on enchanted stones and sealed defenses. If a single traitor ever opened the gate from within, the fall would be sudden and complete.
Warriors were not something he could reshape with a wish. The traditions were too deep. The pride is too thick. But there were other paths.
When I leave the forest, he thought, I will walk north. I will walk into the mountains. I will learn from the dwarves. If beasts can take the first blow while arrows rain from behind, that alone could save thousands of lives.
Lost in that future, he had not noticed his hand tightening.
Fenraya felt it. She did not pull away.
They stood at the edge of the path where the great holy tree Sas'ara rose in the distance, its branches glowing faintly in the night like a promise made of light. Aerondor stared at it in silence, his grip still tense.
She gently returned the pressure.
"I don't know what you are carrying," she said softly. "But you don't have to carry it alone."
He turned his head. For a moment, the whole world narrowed into the space between them.
The forest stilled. Even the wind seemed to hesitate. Her face was close now. Too close to be simple. A faint blush climbed her cheeks like dawn reaching the edge of the sky.
Then a third voice broke the hush.
"That… did you forget about me?"
The moment shattered.