I led from the front, more out of habit than need. There was no real threat ahead, no pressing reason to take the first position. But it gave me distance from the cart behind us, from the man bound inside it, from the weight of his presence that hung like a fog even when he said nothing.
When we finally made camp for the night, the windmill at the edgeof the field had begun its sluggish groan, rolling across the low grass like the breath of something dying. The ache had settled at the base of my shoulder blade and crept toward my neck – familiar in its shape but deeper than I remembered. I rolled it twice, passing it off as stiffness from the ride. But the longer it sat, the more it felt like it was the mark on my back that itched – sharp, insistent, and strange in a way I couldn’t quite explain.
I tried to sleep, but the bastard eluded me again. Instead, I lay beneath the loose canvas of my travel cloak, staring through a tear in the cloth above me at stars that seemed too sharp, too close. The windmill creaked again, slow and drawn out, and for a moment I imagined I heard it speak – an old voice, worn thin with time, dragging syllables it had no business forming.
I woke the next morning not from dreams but from the cold knot that had settled behind my ribs and refused to loosen. The road wound eastward, narrower now, hedged in by low scrub and the occasional twisted tree whose bark had peeled back in strips, revealing pale wood beneath, like skin torn to show sinew. Mist clung low to the ground, thick as breath in cold air. It curled around the horses’ legs and pooled in the low places, heavy and still.
One of the houses we passed still held a trace of a flame in its window – not burning, not bright, but a stub of wax sunken into a cloudy jar, the wick drowned long ago in its own silence. A Last Flame, once. Lit in hope, or duty, or love – no one ever said which. The people had long burned them for soldiers not yet returned and never relit them when they died. If the flame gave out before the soldier came home, the name was struck from the roll, and the waiting ended with the light. No one had cleared the jar. No one had touched the sill. Whoever lit it had known when to stop hoping.
We passed a grove where vines had overtaken the stone boundary markers, winding up and around them like they sought to pull theearth back into itself. The trees overhead arched, branches knit into a canopy that filtered what little sun there was into a green-tinged haze. The air beneath it felt too damp, too thick. As though we were riding through something that remembered what it had once been and resented what it had become.
Astrid’s mount fell into step beside mine as we entered the shadows there. Her breath steamed in the morning chill, but she said nothing at first. Then, softly, “The quiet here is wrong.”
I didn’t look at her. “It isn’t quiet,” I said, and heard the certainty in my voice before I knew I’d spoken. “It’s listening.”
She didn’t reply, but I felt her eyes on me for a moment longer before she nudged her horse ahead and let the vines swallow her silhouette.
At the next stream, we stopped to water the horses. The current ran narrow but steady, threading through the stones in soft, silver ribbons that caught the morning light and carried it downstream. The air was cooler there, touched by the scent of wet earth and the faint sweetness of moss. I dismounted and let my horse lower its head to drink, watching the ripples spread from its muzzle – gentle circles folding into one another, small and unhurried, as though the land itself still remembered peace.
Daen crouched at the bank, refilling the waterskins, and passed one to me. Astrid stood a little upstream, her reflection split by the current, her fingers drumming absently against her sword hilt out of habit. For a moment, it was almost still – the kind of stillness that exists only when the world forgets it should be afraid.
Then, the sound came: a hiss, sharp and clean, slicing the moment open. An arrow shot from the brush, cutting across the stream in a blur of feather and wood. I saw its path as it broke the light – the narrow arc that would have ended at my throat if I’d stood still. I turned from its path, my sword rising in one seamless motion, the flat of the blade catching the shaft mid-flight. Wood splintered againststeel, the fragments scattering into the current.
“Astrid, behind us,” I said. “Daen – find our ghost.”
Astrid was already moving, her blade flashing free with a hiss of its own, and Daen’s bow was half-drawn, eyes narrowing toward the brambles that hemmed the far bank. Three shapes tore free from the undergrowth—ragged, hollow-eyed, their armour stripped of purpose, and their colours reduced to shreds of Haedor’s blue and silver. Deserters, survivors, or perhaps both. Starvation had made them thin; grief had made them desperate, and the hatred in their faces burned bright enough to eclipse both.
“Butcher,” one of them spat, his voice cracked and hoarse.
The insult landed without sting. I’d been called worse, and by men braver than him. He came first, rushing down the bank with a jagged sword raised high. I let him come close, turning my body so the force of his swing met only air, then brought my elbow up beneath his chin in a sharp jolt of bone against flesh. He stumbled, exposed, and the sword found its mark beneath his collarbone, the steel sliding in with ruthless precision.
The second came with more fury than sense, swinging for my head. I met the blow directly this time, the clash ringing through my arms. He was strong but spent – the kind of strength that burned itself out too quickly. I forced him back, step by step, his footing slipping on the wet stones, then struck low, cutting through his thigh before turning the blade and driving it up through the gap in his ribs. His body convulsed as his life, or what was left of it, abandoned him with a long, shuddering exhale.
The last man hesitated, eyes darting between me and the bodies already cooling by the stream. His hands trembled around his weapon. He wanted to flee but couldn’t— not while the others were there, even in death. I looked to Daen, and nodded. The arrow thudded through the man’s chest, swift and final. The last deserter crumpled as he receivedthe only mercy we had left to offer him.
When it was done, and the moment stilled, I let the blade rest at my side, the point dripping red into the stream. The current carried it away, staining the water for a breath before returning it to clarity. Around me, the air held that strange pause that comes after violence – with the weary acceptance of those who have seen this done before and know it will happen again.
I cleaned the blade against the cloak of the nearest deserter, then sheathed it slowly. “They came from the city,” I said.
Astrid crouched to examine one of the corpses. “Haedor’s crest. They must have fled before the fires reached the gates.”
Daen glanced at me. “You think they followed us?”
“I think they had nowhere else left to go.”
They had come from the city I burned, these men who must have fled before the flames reached them. They had watched their homes fold into smoke and believed that running would spare them. They had died calling me a butcher, and perhaps they were right to. I had put enough of their brothers and sisters to death to earn the name, and while the Queen still had the continent to take, I knew I would send more to their ends.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of blood downstream. The horses had moved a little away, their hooves stirring the shallows. I crouched again, rinsed my hands, and watched the crimson thread unwind into the current until the water ran clear again. For a long moment, I stayed like that – watching the river reclaim what it could – before I rose and signalled the column to move.
As the cart rolled past, I felt Alaric’s gaze settle on me through the wooden slats. There was no accusation in it, only understanding – the kind that saw both the necessity and the cost. The day pressed on, and the world drew its shroud over the dead.
We passed a shrine not long after, half-sunk in the undergrowthand leaning at a tired angle, as though the earth had grown weary of holding it upright. If it had ever carried a name, time had long since scraped it clean. The stones were older than the roads—perhaps older than the villages that had come and gone around them. Moss clung to the arch in thick swaths, and ivy had begun its slow work of reclaiming the altar, curling over the edge like a shroud drawn by patient hands. What might once have been red ribbons clung there still – shredded to threads, clawed and tangled like old veins, trailing in the undergrowth like remnants of a prayer no longer needed nor heeded. Whatever god had once been honoured there had long since fallen silent, and yet I felt an echo of reverence in the clearing around it, in the way the trees bent back just enough to let the light in.
Someone had been here. Not long ago.
The sigils carved into the central stone – nearly faded now, little more than memory etched into granite – had been struck through with something crude and violent. A blade, perhaps. Or a chisel. The grooves were fresh, pale against the weather-darkened surface, the moss torn away in clumps where the edge had bitten too deep. Whoever had done it had not merely vandalised. They had desecrated. As though it mattered still. There was no power left in that place. No blessings to revoke, no curses to invoke. The gods had left this world so long ago that even the memory of their absence had grown quiet.
And still, someone had carved their hatred into the bones they left behind. It was not the rage of war. It was not an act of rebellion. It was something smaller. Meaner. The kind of hatred that festers low and long in the dark, needing no audience, no witness, no reason beyond itself. And I could not help but wonder what it was they feared – or remembered – that made them strike at a god already dead.
