"You will kill the kings who lied to me, defy the gods who ignored me, and destroy the…"
An insistent meow, followed by a soft purr, shattered the sentence at its most crucial point. Evan surfaced into consciousness with his heart pounding against his chest. He couldn't remember any images, only the desperation that had lodged in his chest like a cold dagger. His eyes were still sealed shut by the weight of sleep, but at least he had escaped that vision. His mind, still foggy, clung to the echo of the dream. What could that dream be? He tried to dig into his memory, to find some reflection of those words in a dusty book or the ballad of a wandering bard, but found nothing.
He moved lazily beneath the woolen blankets, stretching his numb muscles.
"Meow, meow," insisted the cat, rubbing against his cheek.
"Alright, alright, I'm coming," he murmured with a thick voice.
As he tried to open his eyes, he felt the familiar, annoying tug. A strange condition filled his eyelids with thick crust that glued his lashes together like resin. With a sigh, he brought his fingers to his eyes and began the slow, painful process of separating them, with the stinging sensation of plucking out his eyelashes one by one.
Finally, daylight filtered through his blurry vision. The ceiling of his bedroom—an attic so low he couldn't stand upright—was close, speckled with damp stains whose shapes evoked dragons and lost continents.
He pushed aside the blankets and set his thin feet on the wooden floor. He wore only some undergarments and a ragged shirt that served as his pajamas. His mattress lay directly on the floor, without any bed frame.
Crouching, he headed toward the stairs leading down to the main floor. He descended with still-sluggish movements, yawning repeatedly as he crossed the main room. With the practiced ease of someone who knew every inch of his home, he avoided the sparse furniture: a rickety table, three chairs, and the inevitable utensils of daily life stacked in a corner, until he reached the small bathroom.
Having relieved his bladder, he leaned over the washbasin and took a handful of the water his siblings had left in the bowl for washing. He rinsed his face and spat, ridding himself of the bitter aftertaste of the dream and the night.
Now more awake, he raised his gaze to the small, foggy mirror. A common face looked back at him. One that, with the grooming of a noble, might have been handsome. He had hair and eyes of a jet-black, as deep as those of the Intis or Yuguen ethnicities he sometimes saw in the city. He ran his hand over his chin, smooth as a child's. At seventeen, the absence of hair on his face and the rest of his body was just another worry added to his existence.
Leaving the bathroom, he opened the cupboard and took out a piece of salted fish for Michu. The cat was like a broken music box, repeating the same "meow" over and over, as if she had never tasted a bite.
"Easy, Michu. Don't go eating me," he said with a tired smile.
She was a cat of immaculate white, with the tips of her ears and tail a deep, vibrant blue, something as unusual as the rest of her mannerisms.
While the cat devoured her food eagerly, Evan went to the kitchen, took an apple and a piece of rye bread, and sat at the table to have breakfast. He was scratching one leg with his opposite foot when Michu, having finished her feast, came over to brush against his ankles with her back. Getting no more food, she headed toward the window.
There, Michu exposed herself to the morning breeze. The wind caressed her fur, and the cat seemed to nod slightly, as if listening to something in its whisper, while watching the street with an expression of deep and intelligent curiosity.
Then, the bells of the Church of the Sun rang out. Evan began to count the tolls, each one a dry blow in the calm air. One… two… three… Eight. It was the hour he expected. He got up to go back to his attic and get dressed, when a ninth toll, sharp and sinister, cut through the air like a knife slash. A shiver ran down his spine.
"Hell," Evan muttered, approaching the window to peer apprehensively at the streets of his neighborhood.
The small, rickety wooden houses were scattered haphazardly, separated by low fences. In their gardens, a mix of wild herbs and sparse flowers competed for the spring sunlight with ancient trees, their canopies dressed in a mosaic of vibrant greens. Along the dirt alleyways, a few donkey-drawn carts loaded with goods came and went.
That sound was unnerving not for its loudness, but for its meaning—a clear message for all the city's inhabitants:
The night would fall without a moon.
Once upstairs in his room, he opened an old wooden wardrobe and took out a simple shirt. Then, he went to a trunk in the corner. Opening it, he carefully pulled out a bundle wrapped in a clean cloth. Unfolding the fabric revealed a uniform of such fine elegance that anyone would have thought he'd stolen it.
Yet, when he put it on, it fit him perfectly. From the bottom of the trunk, he took out a pair of elegant shoes made of real leather which, when he put them on, offered no resistance.
The attire, in a somber charcoal gray, evoked the discipline of a military academy and the elegance of a noble court. The most distinctive piece was a short cape with stiff shoulders, adorned with a row of golden buttons linked by small chains of the same metal. Beneath it, a straight jacket reaching down to his thighs fastened over a wide belt of dark leather with a simple bronze buckle. The only respite from the austere gray was the immaculate white of the shirt's collar and cuffs. The collar and cuffs were richly embroidered with symbols that could be runes or blazons. The trousers, fitted with a golden stripe, completed a silhouette that was both disciplined and aristocratic.
Finally, he drew out a short, light sword of simple appearance, well-suited to his slender build. It was his precautionary measure against the approaching moonless dusk, although, in these times, he used it more to protect himself from bandits.
As a final act, he rubbed his entire body with a bar of aromatic salts. It smelled of violets, evoking modesty and faithfulness.
With the sword sheathed at his belt and a cloth satchel with a few books inside, he bid farewell to Michu with a stroke on her back. Then, he inserted the iron key into the door's lock—a luxury even his family could afford, thanks to Ferraria's industry, an almost mandatory accessory in these times.
The light from outside was a blinding flash for a second as he opened the door. And so, Evan began his journey toward the Royal Iron Academy.