I blink—caught off guard by her forwardness. “Thank you.”
She nods with approval, then turns back to my father.
“When did you move here?”
“Right after I left the infantry. When my service ended,” he replies. “Figured I’d had enough of blood and battle. Wanted something quieter.”
Aiel folds her arms, one brow raised.
Mother asks gently, “You’ve been here this whole time?”
“No. Just returned,” Aiel says. “Retired a few months ago. Spent the last decade near the northern highlands. Wasn’t sure I’d come back.”
A pause. Then—
“But I wanted quiet too. Not many places left that still know what that means.”
Mother smiles, resting a gentle hand on Father’s arm. He turns to her, and for a moment, the tension in his shoulders softens. He smiles back, then turns once more to Aiel.
I feel the pull in my chest once more. I inhale deeply, trying to loosen the sensation.
My father’s voice lowers, drawing my attention back.
“How are things, Aiel? Really.”
Aiel stands like she’s weathered storms no one speaks of. A force of a woman that has seen things—stoodbefore things—that didn’t break her. The kind of person who plants their feet and dares the world to move first.
But she doesn’t answer right away.
“We’ve heard rumors,” he adds. “From travelers passing through, traders and scouts. Things are getting worse along the borderlands, aren’t they?”
Aiel’s mouth presses into a thin line. She glances around the square—at the lanterns being lit, the children chasing each other near the fountain, the bakery glowing warm in the golden dusk.
Then she looks at us.
“They’re not rumors,” she says quietly.
Something settles in my chest, cold and still, like the earth pausing beneath my feet. And this time, it doesn’t hum.
I glance at Father. His jaw is tight, eyes shadowed—the look he gets when storms roll in from the east.
Aiel continues, voice low and certain.
“When we were in the infantry, there were units, orders, and strategies. But things went quiet for years. We thought theShadeheart had vanished . . . or died.”
She exhales slowly—a pregnant pause.
“But now? Raids are increasing. They are organized in a way we have never seen before. Not scouts or strays.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “This feels like preparation—like she’s testing our weaknesses.”
Beyond the conversation, the world continues in laughter, and bartering. It feels . . . wrong.
Shadeheart.
The moniker is a warning. Her true name, Selene, is unused but not forgotten. The Shadeheart is a story you hear when you’re young—faraway battles, half-truths, the monster who carved the Shadow Forces from nightmare and will.
But hearing it now—in Aiel’s voice, in my father’s silence—it feels too close.
“The wards are failing,” Aiel says. “We can’t seal them so the Shadow Forces keep getting through.” Her expression darkens. “She never disappeared—she was just waiting. And now . . . she’s moving.”
