Chapter II: Unwelcome Change
The road back from the village was noticeably quieter than the one that had led them to it.
It wasn't an uncomfortable silence-just the natural, settling quiet of people who had shared a grueling day together and no longer felt any pressing need to fill every pause with words. The expanded group traveled in loose, casual clusters, the exact same rhythm they had fallen into as their numbers swelled. The evening slowly wrapped around them in gradual layers of rich amber and deep violet as the sun began its steady descent behind the distant hills.
Chrom walked near the front of the formation, listening with half an ear to the easy chatter behind him. Lissa's voice carried the loudest, as it almost always did, punctuated occasionally by Roy's more measured replies and the occasional dry comment from Odyn. He found himself smiling without consciously deciding to. Lissa didn't often have peers her age around-at least, not ones she could completely let her guard down and be herself around. Watching her now, gesturing animatedly with her healing staff as she made some dramatic point about who-knows-what, he felt the profound, grounding relief of an older sibling whose anxious worrying had, for once, been entirely unnecessary.
He was still smiling when he heard Sarai's voice drop quietly at his shoulder.
"Chrom."
The tone instantly erased his smile.
It wasn't an angry tone, exactly. Rather, it was the unmistakable voice of someone who had decided a necessary conversation was going to happen right now, and had already mapped out how it was going to end. He turned his head and found her expression just as composed and unyielding as her voice suggested.
"While we're on the subject," she said, implying she had been patiently waiting for a natural opening and had finally decided she had waited long enough.
Without any prompting, the group around them subtly slowed and gathered closer. Something in Sarai's posture clearly telegraphed that this was a performance well worth watching.
"What exactly," she continued, choosing each word with deliberate precision, "was that back there?"
Chrom opened his mouth to reply. Then closed it. The heavy, sinking feeling in his stomach was the distinct, entirely reasonable sensation of a man who suddenly suspects he has made a massive mistake and is about to find out just how deep it goes.
"I'm... not entirely sure what you mean-"
"Don't." The single word was gentle, but carried an absolute, unshakeable finality. "You are the captain of the Shepherds. You bear a direct responsibility to every single person who fights beside you, and to every person who depends on you to come back alive." She held his gaze with unwavering steadiness. "I counted-counted, Chrom-the number of times you left your blind spots completely exposed in that fight. One hand wasn't enough to keep track of them."
A heavy beat of silence stretched over the path.
A few paces away, Frederick stood with the quiet, smug expression of a man who was hearing his own private grievances spoken aloud for the first time by an entirely impartial third party, and was finding the validation deeply therapeutic.
"It is entirely true," the knight offered carefully, stepping in. "Milord does possess a rather unfortunate tendency to-"
"Expose himself to flank attacks that should never even reach him, yes." Sarai didn't blink, keeping her eyes locked firmly on Chrom. "I know you're capable. I watched you handle yourself-you're a very good fighter, Chrom. Which is precisely why this bothers me so much." She paused, her voice softening just a fraction, revealing the genuine concern beneath her stern exterior. "If you're going to lead us, you need to lead us properly. Watch your surroundings. Guard your flanks. The people beside you are counting on you to still be standing when the smoke clears."
She held the silence for a moment longer. Then, she extended a single, gloved finger toward his face in a pointed, emphatic gesture that managed to walk the razor-thin line between being fiercely authoritative and, in its absolute directness, strangely affectionate.
"Are we entirely understood, Captain?"
Chrom's hands came up instinctively-the automatic reflex of a man who had learned, through rapid trial and error, that certain battles were mathematically impossible to win. "Y-yes. Absolutely. You're completely right, I will-yes. I'll watch my back."
She studied him for precisely long enough to satisfy herself that he actually meant it. Then, as if a mental switch had been flipped, her rigid expression dissolved into something close to satisfaction, and the ghost of a warm smile tugged at the corner of her lips.
"Good," she said, her voice dropping the heavy edge. "Glad we settled that." There was a quiet, teasing lilt as she finished: "Captain."
"...Right," Chrom managed, letting out an entirely involuntary, nervous laugh.
Frederick wisely said nothing, though the subtle relaxation of his rigid posture communicated complete agreement.
A short distance behind them, Lissa had gone uncharacteristically silent. Her eyes were fixed on Sarai with an expression balanced somewhere between absolute awe and total bewilderment. She drifted sideways toward Odyn and leaned in, dropping her voice.
"I have never," she whispered, though it carried clearly across the group, "seen anyone scold Chrom like that who wasn't our mother."
Khanna glanced over her shoulder at her cousin's retreating back with a fond, knowing look. "She isn't actually angry with him," she explained softly. "She just... cares. That's usually how it tends to come out, sometimes."
Lissa paused, turning the thought over in her head. "That actually makes a lot of sense."
"It usually does," Khanna murmured, "once you get to know her."
---
They made camp where the dirt road widened into a clearing ringed by ancient trees, their massive roots rising and falling through the grass like the backs of sleeping leviathans. The daylight had completely faded by then, the sky bleeding from rich purple into a deep, starry expanse of absolute dark, and the night air began to carry the crisp, cool edge of the evening.
Lissa made her feelings about this arrangement known immediately and at considerable length.
"I told you, Frederick," she complained, irritably tracking a buzzing sound near her ear with suspicious intensity. "It's pitch black already. And the bugs are out." She uttered the word bugs the exact same way other people might say catastrophic plague. "Noisy, disgusting, buzzing little bugs that fly right into your face, and crawl all over things, and-"
What happened next was, by any logical account, entirely inevitable.
A particularly bold bug flew straight into her open mouth.
The sound she produced was entirely devoid of human language. It was the distinct noise of someone experiencing a profound, unmitigated personal injustice. She spat violently, scrubbed furiously at her lips with the back of her sleeve, spat again, and turned upon the nearest person-who happened to be Roy-with the expression of someone who had just been personally and maliciously wronged by the entire universe.
Roy pressed his lips together very firmly. A second later, his shoulders began to shake.
"Don't," Lissa warned, pointing a trembling finger at him.
He lost the battle completely and burst out laughing. Several others joined in almost immediately. Even Frederick, who possessed enough military dignity to turn his head away before his stoic mask cracked, didn't entirely succeed in hiding his amusement.
"You'll be fine," Roy managed to say once he had somewhat recovered. He patted her gently on the back with genuine sympathy, though the gesture was heavily undermined by the fact that he was still grinning ear to ear. "Just think of it as character building."
"I have plenty of character!" Lissa declared with monumental feeling. "I have more character than I know what to do with. I am practically overflowing with character, Roy!"
"Then you can certainly afford to take on a little more."
She gave him a look of such deep, theatrical betrayal that Khanna had to physically turn away to hide her laughter.
A few feet away, Chrom watched his sister with the fond warmth of someone who finds even the most exhausting situations endearing simply because they involved the people he loved. "Come on now, Lissa. Hardship builds character. Do you want me to get you started on gathering firewood?"
"I'll pass, thank you very much," she announced, haughtily settling herself down onto a thick tree root with the dramatic dignity of a person who had made a definitive choice and intended to stick to it. "I have built quite enough character for one single evening."
Robin, who had remained quiet throughout the whole exchange in the cautious manner of someone still calibrating how much freedom he had to find things funny around people he had only just met, cleared his throat. "On a-related note, I feel obligated to mention that I am utterly starving. Does anyone else... or is that just me?"
As it turned out, it was definitely not just him.
---
Frederick and Chrom disappeared into the shadows of the tree line with Odyn between them, returning some time later bearing the spoils of a successful hunt and wearing the composed expressions of men who intended to present their findings as though nothing about the situation were remotely out of the ordinary.
The meat turned out to be bear.
Chrom sat cross-legged across from the crackling fire, eating with genuine, unpretentious contentment. "Ah. It's been far too long since I last had bear. Wouldn't you say, Odyn?"
Odyn chewed thoughtfully before swallowing, wearing the practical air of someone who had dined in far stranger circumstances than a forest clearing and had long ago learned not to ask too many questions. "I'm not going to argue with food that's already cooked," he said, taking another bite. "And it's actually quite good."
Lissa stared suspiciously at the piece of meat Chrom held out toward her, her expression failing to conceal a single ounce of her disgust.
"Bear," she said flatly.
"Bear," Chrom confirmed, looking entirely unbothered.
"Who actually eats bear, Chrom? You're out here tampering with the natural food chain." She looked wildly around the circle for support and found, to her profound dismay, that Robin, Sarai, and Khanna were all eating without the slightest sign of hesitation. "You guys,"> she accused, gesturing toward them with her hands. "You're all supposed to be on my side."
"It's just food," Sarai said with a casual shrug before taking another bite.
Robin offered a look that was almost apologetic. Almost.
Lissa slumped back with a dramatic groan. "I suppose if you've been starving long enough, a person would eat practically anything..." She held the offered morsel out at arm's length, sniffing it once, very carefully. Her nose instantly wrinkled. "This smells like old boots. No-worse than boots. At least boots have the basic dignity of being made of leather."
"Just eat the bear, Lissa," Chrom sighed, displaying the infinite, hard-earned patience of a man who had been having minor variations of this exact argument his entire life.
Frederick, who had remained standing quietly at the edge of the firelight with his hands neatly clasped behind his back, had been pointedly and consistently avoiding eating anything throughout the entire exchange. Lissa's sharp eyes locked onto him.
"Frederick," she said, adopting the sweet, dangerously measured tone of someone setting a bear trap. "Why aren't you eating?"
A pause. A remarkably brief, almost imperceptible hesitation from a man who was usually exceptionally good at never pausing at all. "I partook of quite a substantial lunch before we departed," Frederick replied evenly. "I simply find I am not particularly hungry this evening."
"You had lunch hours ago."
"It was a very large lunch."
"Frederick."
"I am merely not-"
"You don't want to eat the bear either, do you?"
"I assure you-"
"Frederick."
"...The bear," Frederick stated with the immense, crumbling dignity of a man conceding a bitter point he fully intended to take to his grave, "is not entirely to my particular taste this evening."
Lissa threw her hands up in absolute victory. Beside her, Roy-who had been listening to the exchange with far too much sheer entertainment-had to bury his face in his forearm to muffle his snorts. Across the flames, Odyn caught Khanna's eye, and Khanna pressed her lips into a thin, straight line that wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, capable of hiding her grin.
---
The fire burned down to glowing embers in the dark.
One by one, the members of the group found their spots on the soft grass, and the initial murmur of conversation gave way to the slow, heavy quiet of a camp at rest. Talk melted into steady breathing, and breathing slipped seamlessly into sleep.
Chrom lay still on his back for a long time, staring into the dark and listening to the night.
He couldn't quite pinpoint what was keeping him awake-it wasn't any specific thought or worry he could put into words. It was just a feeling. The particular, low-grade alertness that sometimes prickled at the back of his neck in the dead of night, refusing to fade until it was far too late to ignore. He stared up at the canopy overhead, the leaves tracing jagged black silhouettes against a sky full of indifferent stars, and waited for the sensation to resolve itself into something he could dismiss and set aside.
It didn't.
With a slow sigh, he sat up.
Beside him, Lissa stirred almost instantly, proving she hadn't been sleeping nearly as deeply as she appeared. She blinked up at him sleepily, her hair escaping its usual arrangement. "What's wrong?"
"I'm not entirely certain yet," he kept his voice to a low murmur. "Something just feels... off."
She sat up fully, the last traces of sleep vanishing from her blue eyes. "Off how?"
"I'm going to take a look around."
"Not by yourself, you aren't." She was already reaching for her healing staff, pushing herself to her feet in one fluid motion.
He looked at her. Her expression wore that stubborn set that meant the matter was entirely closed to debate, and he had learned, over many years of being her protective older brother, to recognize when resistance was futile.
"All right," he said quietly, a faint, affectionate smile touching his lips. "Thank you, Lissa."
She made a small, dismissive sound that meant obviously, and fell right into step beside him as they slipped away from the quiet perimeter of the camp.
What neither of them noticed was Roy, lying completely motionless in the tall grass a few yards away, listening closely to the fading sound of their footsteps.
He waited until they were safely out of earshot so his own movements wouldn't wake the others. Then he sat up, cast a quick glance over the sleeping forms of the rest of the group, and reached out to give Odyn's shoulder a firm shake.
The forest was wrong.
It was an instinct, a visceral feeling in the air before it was anything observable-a particular quality of suffocating silence that felt entirely distinct from the ordinary quiet of a sleeping woodland. Chrom registered the wrongness in the exact same moment Lissa did; he saw her sweep her gaze across the dark trees with the uneasy expression of someone reaching desperately for words to describe an unnatural dread.
"Where are the birds?" she whispered, her voice tight.
"Gone." He answered the instant she asked, the single word hanging in the air between them with a heavy, ominous weight.
He had barely finished speaking when the ground moved.
It wasn't a slow, rolling tremor. It hit all at once-a deep, violent, bone-rattling shudder that surged up through the soles of his boots and made his teeth click together. Lissa grabbed his arm with both hands, her heavy staff swinging wildly as she lost her footing.
"CHROM!"
"Stay-" He caught his balance, grabbing her by the waist to anchor her, and then the massive trees directly ahead of them were falling-not in any direction natural wind could account for. The earth split open somewhere ahead with a deafening crack that reverberated straight through his chest, and the light surging up from the fracture wasn't the warm orange of firelight, but something angrier, deeper, and pulsing with a sickly violet hue.
Then, burning orbs of flame erupted into the air above the tree line like fiery stars flung upward by a mad god.
"*Run,*y" Chrom ordered.
"But Chrom-"
"Lissa, run!"
She bolted. He stayed right at her back, one hand outstretched to guide her frantically through the gaps between the erupting fissures in the earth, dragging her clear of the worst of it as the heat of the fire-thrown debris scorched the air. The forest around them began to strobe in stuttering, lurching bursts of violent orange and blinding red. Beneath the deafening roar of the destruction came another sound-something that wasn't fire, wasn't shattering stone, but a low, unnatural frequency he had never heard in his life.
He shoved Lissa hard behind a raised shelf of rock and threw himself flat beside her as a screaming orb of violet flame rocketed overhead, detonating violently in the cluster of trees to their right. She pressed herself flat against the stone, chest heaving for air, before her arm snapped up.
"What is that?!"
He followed the direction of her trembling finger.
The sky had torn open.
There was simply no other word for it. The dark expanse of the night sky had split wide, like a raw, bleeding wound in the very fabric of the world, and the shape filling the massive tear was vast, unnerving, and utterly wrong-ringed by a dark, oppressive light that didn't illuminate the surroundings so much as it pressed heavily against the eyes. And tumbling from within it-not descending gracefully, but falling with the terrifying, purposeful urgency of objects dropped rather than beings arriving-came solid shapes.
They smashed into the earth amid the splintered ruin of the trees ahead.
And then they stood up.
Their eyes burned a baleful, unnatural red. Where normal breath should have been, thin, dark, noxious smoke curled slowly from their parted lips as they straightened to their full, twisted height and turned. Their movements possessed an eerie cadence-simultaneously jarringly human and entirely, horrifyingly alien.
Chrom had his sword cleared from its sheath long before his conscious mind had finished processing the decision. He planted himself squarely in front of Lissa without a moment's hesitation.
"Stay behind me."
"I'm not going anywhere," she answered, her voice far steadier than she had any right to be.
The nearest creature lunged forward-a loping, aggressive charge far faster than anything human had a right to be. Chrom met it purely on reflex, his blade slicing cleanly through the arm that swung at him. The creature recoiled, but then its head rotated at an impossible, sickening angle, its joints popping, and it lunged again. He blocked the ferocious axe-swing, his boots sliding backward through the churned-up earth, before he gathered his strength and drove forward, carving out just enough room to breathe.
Stepping into the gap, he brought his sword down in a lethal arc. The creature froze. And then, instead of fading or falling limp like a normal beast, its entire form simply dissolved, unwinding into thick purple smoke that lingered for a second before evaporating into nothingness.
A sharp gasp from Lissa-not a scream, because Lissa was no coward, but the sharp, reflexive intake of breath of someone cornered without warning by something they had no means to fight-made him whip his head around. She was pressed flat against the trunk of a tree with her heavy staff raised in desperate self-defense, while another of the monsters closed the remaining distance, and then-
Another tear ripped across the sky, opening directly above them.
And someone came straight through it.
Chrom registered the motion as through, which meant whoever had arrived had entered from somewhere entirely outside their world. The staggering implications of that thought raced through his mind, but he instantly forced them aside; there was no time for philosophy when a figure was already dropping hard between Lissa and the approaching horror-landing with barely a sound, a blade clearing its scabbard with fluid speed, and a parry executed before the monster's heavy axe had even finished its downward arc.
The sharp, metallic clang of steel echoed fiercely through the burning trees.
The newcomer held the line. Just barely-there was visible strain in their stance, weight shifting desperately down to absorb the brute force of the creature's blow-before they pivoted sharply. The flickering firelight caught the dark, intricate curves of a butterfly mask, and the striking blue-and-red uniform was entirely foreign to anything Chrom had ever seen. He had zero information about who this mysterious person was, or what side they were on.
"*Help,*y" the masked figure called out, their voice carrying the crisp, practical tone of someone who had correctly assessed that they were outnumbered and had wisely discarded pride in favor of survival.
"Right!" Chrom was already moving.
He slammed into the creature from the opposite flank, splitting its attention wide open just long enough for the masked person to shove it completely off balance. Without a single word spoken to coordinate their efforts, they fell into a seamless rhythm-two blades closing in from opposite sides, cutting off all escape until the creature dissolved into a cloud of purple smoke.
The forest suddenly grew quieter by one degree.
Lissa stepped out from behind the trunk of the tree, visibly shaky but standing upright, staring at the masked figure with eyes that had completely transitioned from blind terror to bewildered gratitude.
Chrom took a slow circle around the newcomer, keeping his sword raised and ready, carefully analyzing their posture. Young-far younger than their authoritative bearing had initially suggested. The sword resting at their hip was silver with a gleaming gold handle, bearing a strange, familiar weight to the design of its hilt that he couldn't quite place. The dark mask, however, gave absolutely nothing away.
"That was quite an entrance," Chrom said carefully. "Do you happen to have a name?"
The stranger calmly sheathed their blade. They turned their head toward him slightly, pausing as though weighing his question against some hidden, private calculation.
"Chrom! Lissa!"
The urgent shout broke through the crackling noise of the tree line. A second later, the rest of the group burst into the clearing-Robin and Frederick in the lead, followed closely by Odyn, Khanna, Roy, and Sarai, crashing through the brush with expressions that blended raw relief and combat-readiness into equal parts.
Frederick's eyes swept over both royals in the brisk, professional sweep of a man whose primary trade was assessing structural damage. "Are either of you hurt?"
"Are such abominations common in these lands?" Robin's voice had snapped into that sharp, analytical register he used when furiously processing raw data into a tactical framework. His gaze scanned the burning perimeter with the focused intensity of someone who hated going into a fight blind.
"They are definitely not from Ylisse," Chrom said with far more absolute certainty than he currently felt. "Beyond that, I can tell you nothing."
"Good enough for now," Sarai said, already drawing her own blade from its scabbard. "That's one variable we don't have to guess about."
"No one's hurt?" Frederick's tense posture eased by a fraction. "Thank the gods."
"Thank him," Lissa corrected, gesturing sharply toward the masked stranger. "He was here before anyone else. I'd have been-" She stopped abruptly, shaking her head. "Thank you. Truly."
Roy had already cleared his sword, his eyes locking onto the shifting shapes moving silently within the shadows beyond the firelight. More of the creatures were massing at the edge of the dark, and his expression settled into the grim, quiet focus of a soldier who knew the time for questions had passed.
"We can figure out who they are later," Roy said tightly.
"Agreed," Frederick added, raising his shield. "Eyes open, everyone. We know nothing about these things."
The creatures surged forward.
---
Odyn slipped into the trees without a word of announcement, reading the chaotic field instinctively as he moved. Two of the monsters converged on him simultaneously from different directions-he stepped smoothly between their lunging attacks, let both of them overshoot their mark, and sliced straight back through the gap.
"Ghost Wolf."
He cut twice in one continuous motion, and the first creature unwound into purple smoke before it had even finished turning around. He pivoted on the ball of his foot to track the second, parrying three rapid strikes with the minimalist style of a veteran fighter who had learned to waste as absolute little motion as possible. The moment the opening presented itself-
"Reigning Slash!"
Loose dirt and debris were hurled violently into the air in the technique's wake. The creature split cleanly down its mid-line and dissolved, and Odyn was already scanning for the next target before the last wisp of smoke cleared.
To his left, Roy had spotted an archer among the ranks of the creature-forms and was distinctly displeased by its presence. He ducked the initial shot without breaking his forward stride, brought his footing firmly set, and answered back.
"Sword Rain: Alpha."
The rapid-fire stabs arrived faster than the erratic firelight could follow them-precise, relentless, each strike placed with total economy. He took a single step back, evaluated what remained of the target, found nothing worth finishing, and spun around just in time to see a second archer drawing a bead on him. His eyes narrowed.
"Demonic Chaos."
Swirling waves of energy erupted from his blade in cascading arcs, the final wave carrying a potent surge of lightning that caused the archer to seize and convulse violently before dissolving into nothingness. Roy rolled his tired shoulder and moved on without ceremony.
Khanna had found herself flanked-two lance-wielding fiends leveling their weapons from opposite sides-and wore the composed, faintly irritated expression of someone who found this exact tactical configuration tedious. She had dealt with it before. The solution she had discovered then was the exact same solution she applied now.
She tossed her heavy battleaxe straight into the air and leaped after it.
Catching the weapon at the apex of her jump, the heavy head was already glowing with a fierce, deep, howling green-the unmistakable color of gathered wind energy-and she angled downward hard.
"Falling Storm."
The violent impact between the two lancers kicked up a towering, narrow column of wind that was furious and entirely indiscriminate. The creatures were swept up inside the vortex, the razor-sharp edges of the wind doing their work without a shred of sentiment. What remained of the first lancer, Khanna finished off with a single, brutal swing of the hammer end of her weapon.
"Flaming Meteor."
The hammerhead dragged low across the earth for half a stride before driving upward directly into the face of the final creature. The monster was launched skyward at terrifying speed and did not return intact. Khanna flipped the weapon over once with practiced ease, brought it down to a ready stance, and cast a cold eye over what was still moving in the trees.
"Well?" she challenged quietly.
They came.
Near the cathedral ruins at the edge of the forest, Sarai had stopped keeping track of the numbers long ago.
She had initially started out with the intention of logging them properly-building a mental picture of what had poured through the sky-tears and understanding their composition and tactical approach. But the math had quickly stopped cooperating, the creature variants were mixing in ways that completely disrupted standard responses, the enemy crowd was pressing in from three separate directions, Frederick was pinned at her right flank, and the angles were closing in ways she deeply disliked.
She kept working through the chaos-dealing with the most immediate threats, keeping the surrounding monsters off-balance, and staying fiercely mobile. Yet, there was a threshold where pure containment became mathematically impractical, and she could feel the exact shape of that breaking point approaching.
Roy appeared instantly at her shoulder. "Do you need-"
"Watch." Her voice carried zero heat, only absolute focus.
She let the inner fire come all the way up.
The hilt grew scorching hot against her palm as the flame took complete hold-not just the surface warmth of a channeled arte, but something much deeper, surging straight from the core of the blade outward until the steel radiated pure light. When she moved, it was entirely devoid of the half-second mental calculation she usually allowed herself, relying instead on the absolute muscle memory of someone who knew every inch of her body and intended to use every ounce of its force.
"Explosive Ring."
The glowing emblem flared brilliantly at her back, and then she was a blur of motion.
What followed next wasn't a sequence of individual attacks so much as a single, continuous, overwhelming answer to every threat the surrounding monsters posed. Her fire-charged slashes came in wide arcs that anticipated the enemy weapons before they had even finished moving-the shield-bearing lancers lost their heavy defenses to the sheer heat before they comprehended what was happening, their armor shattering on the third exchange. The axe-wielding units were systematically disarmed and neutralized in the same flowing motion. The archers at the rear were addressed last, the raging flames making thorough work of them, before she launched herself bodily off the ground.
"Rising Phoenix."
The roaring shape of fire that accompanied her descent was unmistakable-enormous, wings outspread, and utterly furious. When she finally slammed back into the earth, the shockwave rolled outward in a devastating concussive wave that swallowed up everything her previous techniques had missed. The ground shuddered once, deeply, and then the entire clearing fell dead silent.
Roy had not moved an inch from where he had stopped. Sully, who had arrived somewhere within the last frantic minute brandishing a lance with formidable energy and had witnessed the last thirty seconds from the periphery of the fray, was similarly frozen. Both of them stared at Sarai with the specific look of people who had just witnessed something that hadn't quite finished registering in their minds.
Sarai casually flicked the residual dark blood from her sword with a practiced sideways snap of her wrist and cleanly sheathed it.
Roy walked over, extending his hand.
She met it without breaking stride. The sound of their high-five was crisp, sharp, and final.
"Nice work, sis."
"Same to you, brother."
Sully stared at both of them for a beat. Then she simply shook her head, turned back to the remaining pockets of the battle-because that was the only rational response left-and hurried off to assist Frederick with the stragglers.
---
At the eastern edge of the camp, Robin worked with the quiet, calculated focus of someone who had long since decided that thinking and fighting were not mutually exclusive activities, organizing his participation with mathematical precision.
His spells fell precisely where they were needed-Elthunder doing its devastating work efficiently and without ceremony whenever the tactical angles aligned. When the creatures managed to close the distance inside the range where his heavy tome was impractical, his steel sword was right there waiting, serving its purpose without complaint.
Khanna effortlessly kept the stragglers off his flanks without needing to be asked, signaling clearly that she had already mapped out his role and dynamically adjusted her own position to complement it. Robin found this specifically and genuinely useful, distinct from merely being good, and made a mental note to express something to that effect later when the battlefield situation permitted.
"Odyn!" He caught the geometry of the threat long before Odyn had a chance to acquire it-three monsters converging on Chrom from the left, entirely outside Chrom's current sightline, at an angle only visible from Robin's specific vantage point. "Three o'clock, on Chrom-"
Odyn was already pivoting on his heel.
The intercept was brutally clean. He stepped smoothly into the space between the creatures and Chrom, absorbing all three attack vectors in a single tight guard. The heavy impact pushed him backward by half a step, but not an inch further, and then he redirected the gathered kinetic energy outward.
"Demon Fang."
The shimmering wave crossed the ground low and fast, slamming squarely into the cluster of foes. While they were still reeling from the concussive force, Chrom and Frederick converged from their respective angles, and the problem was neatly closed.
Chrom glanced back briefly. His expression was a mix of intense gratitude and startled awe.
Yet, the leader of the creature-pack was still upright-absorbing damage that would have pulverized the lesser minions, and drawing back its throwing arm with the calculated intent of a predator targeting Chrom's unguarded back.
The heavy hand axe left its grip.
Wind Blade intercepted it mid-air-Sarai, arriving precisely at the exact microsecond the geometry required, executing the sweeping arc before the throw had even finished its motion. The weapon spun wildly off-course and buried itself deep in the trunk of a distant tree, far from anyone who mattered.
The leader stumbled. Sarai closed in instantly, followed by Odyn in a rapid series of fluid exchanges that systematically stripped away the monster's guard, leaving it completely exposed. They stepped back simultaneously, leaving the final space open for Chrom.
He leapt upward. The raw gravity of the aerial angle added massive downward momentum to his blow, and the leader's dark weapon shattered under the combined force. The monster dissolved just like the others-the violet smoke boiling upward, thinning out, and vanishing into the night.
A short distance away, Frederick cleanly extracted his lance from the last of the lesser beasts and straightened his posture. The forest fell dead quiet once more.
Eight people stood together in the smoking aftermath, catching their breath.
"That," Robin said after a moment, looking around the clearing, "appears to be all of them."
The masked figure had fought remarkably well throughout the chaos.
Chrom had caught glimpses of it in frantic fragments-motion at the very edge of his vision, a flashing silver blade, and creatures dissolving in directions that none of his own group were accounting for. When the fighting finally ceased, the figure was standing unhurriedly near the tree line, acting as though the last several minutes had been a minor inconvenience rather than a brutal skirmish.
Lissa stepped forward. Her voice was uncharacteristically quiet, carrying the weight of genuine feeling rather than any performative surprise.
"I never thanked you properly. Before-when you came through the..." She gestured upward toward the jagged tear where the sky-wound had closed. "You saved my life. Thank you. That was... very brave."
Chrom studied the stranger more closely now that there was a moment to breathe. The intricate mask covered the upper half of their face, giving away nothing readable. Young-that much was clear from their build and height. Yet, their posture carried an elusive quality he couldn't quite pin down, hovering somewhere between entirely unfamiliar and strangely reminiscent, like a half-remembered song heard from a distance.
"You saved my sister's life," Chrom said, stepping closer. "My name is Chrom. Might I ask yours?"
A brief pause followed. Then, measured and deliberate:
"You may call me Marth."
Chrom raised an eyebrow. "Marth. As in the Heroic King." He turned the thought over in his mind for a moment. "You certainly fight like one, at the very least. Where did you study?"
"I am not here to speak of myself," the low, controlled voice replied. "What you witnessed tonight is merely a prelude, not an isolated event. The world is moving toward a massive convergence, and what came through those tears is only the opening note." A brief, telling pause. "Consider yourself warned."
They turned. Walked away. The dark expanse between the trees accepted them silently, offering nothing back in return.
"Wait-" Lissa took a half-step forward, reaching out. "What is teetering exactly? You can't just-hey-"
But the forest had already closed over the stranger completely.
The group stood in the heavy, lingering quiet. Odyn looked at the empty space between the trees for a long moment, then glanced at Sarai, noticing that her stillness was specific and deliberate, quite different from simply watching someone leave.
"Something on your mind?" he asked quietly.
She remained silent for a beat. "I don't know them," she said slowly. "I know for a fact I don't. But I..." She shook her head, letting the thought hit its invisible boundary and stop. "There was something about them. I can't quite put my finger on it."
Odyn held the thought alongside her without trying to force an explanation. Some things didn't resolve into words right away; you just held onto them and waited for clarity.
"Not much of a conversationalist, are they?" Robin observed, still staring at the empty space where the stranger had vanished.
"Perhaps they consider the sword a more natural language." Frederick turned away from the tree line, his gaze sweeping over the group with the brisk, cataloging efficiency of a man returning to the immediate present. "Regardless, I am deeply concerned about the capital. We should make haste without delay."
"Agreed," Chrom said, turning his attention back to his companions. "Everyone all right?"
Eight nods answered him-varied in personal expression, but entirely unified in direction.
They moved out.
---
Some distance away in the dark, hidden safely behind the thick screen of the tree line where no one had followed, a lone figure slumped against the rough bark of an ancient trunk and let themselves slide the rest of the way down to the damp grass.
The butterfly mask came off.
Long dark blue hair spilled forward. The face beneath it was young-considerably younger than her authoritative battlefield bearing had suggested-with the subtle, elegant point to the ears that spoke of deep heritage, a faintly tanned complexion, and eyes that, when they finally fluttered open, were bright and brimming with tears.
She pressed her forehead tightly against her knees and let the tears come quietly, the way they only ever come when someone has been holding a crushing weight for a very long time and has finally found a private enough moment to let go.
Father. Mother. Uncle Odyn. Uncle Roy. Aunt Khanna.
I was in time.
She let herself fully experience that-the massive, overwhelming relief of the thing that mattered most actually working out. She had made it. They were alive. Every single one of them, whole, upright, and moving.
There was still so much ahead of her. So many variables she would have to navigate with surgical precision, so many things she couldn't explain yet without fracturing events she wasn't ready to change. The road stretching out before her was infinitely longer and more complicated than the one she had left behind, and she knew it well.
But right now, in this exact moment, in the dark behind a tree in a forest that still smelled faintly of smoke and cooling night air-
I was in time.
She stayed in the comforting quiet for a little while longer, letting herself anchor in that truth.
Then, another thought crept in, the way stray thoughts always do once the first sharp wave of relief begins to settle. She frowned slightly into the fabric of her sleeves.
Who was the blue-haired man?
She turned the question over carefully, examining it from every tactical angle she could manage. He was with them-he had fought right by their side, knew their names, and moved like someone they implicitly trusted. Yet, he wasn't anywhere in her memories or historical records. He was a wild variable she hadn't accounted for.
That is definitely worth watching closely.
With a soft sigh, she tucked her stray locks back behind her ears, straightened the dark mask, and climbed slowly back to her feet.
There was still more work to do. There always was. This was merely the prologue to a story she intended to end very differently this time around-and she would be fully prepared for whatever came next.
She walked on, and the forest closed silently behind her.
They reached the gates of Ylisstol the following morning.
The capital city emerged gradually from the low-hanging morning mist-first the pale stone of the outer walls catching the golden early light, then the layered, terracotta rooftops, and finally the full, sprawling expanse of the city as the rising road brought them up to the grand main gate. After the terrifying dark, the chaotic fire, and the strange dissolution of the monsters the night before, the peaceful ordinariness of the capital felt almost startling. Ordinary things have a way of feeling genuinely extraordinary when you've been away from them for a very long time.
"So this is Ylisstol," Robin murmured, his eyes sweeping over the bustling thoroughfares. There was a strange note in his voice-not quite wonder, and not quite pure recognition, but a quiet chord that suggested rightness, even if he couldn't yet explain why.
Odyn looked out over the lively crowds filling the streets below and felt that familiar, distinct sensation of not home that had clung to him ever since he woke up in the grass-still present, still true, but something he had grown far better at carrying without letting it drag him down. He mentally catalogued the feeling and kept walking.
"The capital appears entirely undisturbed," Frederick observed, and the relief in his seasoned voice was specific and entirely genuine. "Whatever that violent tremor was last night, it was mercifully contained to the forest. Thank the gods for small favors."
"Thank goodness," Lissa echoed, her posture noticeably relaxing into something much lighter now that concrete evidence of safety was right in front of her.
The street near the gate was already humming with the vibrant energy of morning-merchants shouting out their wares, citizens bustling about, and the ordinary rhythm of a city going about its day-when the crowd suddenly shifted in that subtle, synchronized way it always did when something significant moved through it. The pedestrians near the center of the road edged respectfully aside, and a grand procession came into view: armored soldiers marching in strict, measured formation, elite Pegasus knights flanking at a careful distance, and at the very center of it all, a woman who walked with the unhurried, serene grace of someone who understood that true stillness is its own authority.
She was blonde, with clear blue eyes, dressed in flowing robes of pure white and green. A delicate headpiece rested in her hair-something that might easily have been mistaken for a royal crown if you weren't paying close attention-and a distinct mark rested on her brow, echoing almost precisely the sacred emblem Chrom bore proudly on his arm. She looked out at the ordinary people around her with an open warmth entirely devoid of performative pretense. She was simply, genuinely glad to see her people safe and sound.
"The Exalt herself," an old man nearby whispered, his face lighting up with the distinct joy of someone holding good news who had finally found the right audience to share it with.
"That would be Lady Emmeryn," Frederick answered, casually preempting Robin's unspoken question before he even had a chance to voice it.
"Is it actually safe for her to walk among the common people like this?" Robin asked, his tone analytical rather than critical-the automatic inquiry of a man who evaluated everything through the lens of risk management.
"Safe enough," Chrom replied, watching Emmeryn with an expression utterly free of guards or tension. "And quite necessary. With Plegia constantly pushing at our borders and public nerves running high, the people need to see that she is with them." He paused, softening. "She is a living reminder of what we are protecting. And of why we protect it."
"She's also the absolute best big sister in the whole world," Lissa added cheerfully.
She paused, suddenly noticing the abrupt, dead silence coming from Robin. She turned her head to find him staring directly at her with the wide-eyed expression of a man frantically performing rapid, increasingly uncomfortable mental arithmetic.
"Big sister?" Robin repeated carefully.
"Mm-hm."
"Which would logically make you and Chrom-"
"The Prince and Princess of Ylisse, yes." In a single breath, Frederick managed to convey an exquisite blend of profound patience and very mild disappointment. "You managed to recall milord's name with absolute clarity yesterday, and yet this rather glaring detail somehow managed to escape your notice."
"You told me you were just Shepherds!" Robin stammered.
"And so we are," Chrom smiled, entirely unoffended by the slip. "We simply tend a rather large flock." His blue eyes drifted knowingly toward Odyn, Roy, and Sarai-the latter of whom had already adopted the calm, unrepentant posture of someone caught red-handed who had decided to completely lean into it. "Though I suspect at least some of our newer recruits had already figured it out."
"Caught completely red-handed," Sarai confirmed smoothly, without a single shred of visible regret.
"So I see," Chrom laughed, the warmth in his voice entirely genuine.
Robin had gone rather pale-the distinct pallor of a man retrospectively reviewing every single casual, informal thing he had foolishly said to members of a reigning royal family over the past twenty-four hours and arriving at a tally he found deeply terrifying. "Prince Chrom-Sire-I beg of you to forgive my absolute, unforgivable failure to-"
"Just Chrom," the prince interrupted firmly, kindly, and with the absolute finality of a man who was putting his foot down once and for all. "For all of you. I have never been remotely comfortable with royal formality, and I have zero intention of starting now."
Robin opened his mouth to argue. Seemed to visually make peace with the reality of it. Then closed it.
"The prince and the princess," Robin murmured mostly to himself, staring off into space. "Well, that certainly explains why Frederick tolerates all of your-" He gestured vaguely in the direction of every single sarcastic exchange he had witnessed between Frederick and the royal siblings.
Frederick let out a slow, long-suffering exhale through his nose. "The sacrifices one must make," the knight intoned dryly, "solely for the good of the realm."
"Shall we?" Chrom nodded toward the grand, towering gates of the palace ahead. "I believe it is well past time you all met Emm properly."
---
The throne room of Ylisstol was magnificent in the grand, sweeping way of halls built specifically with momentous occasions in mind-high-ceilinged, brilliantly lit by stained glass windows, and far more welcoming in its open proportions than it was intimidating. The Exalt stood near the far end of the dais, accompanied by Phila, the steadfast captain of the Pegasus Knights, turning gracefully at the sound of their entry with a gentle smile that appeared effortlessly and held without a shred of performative pretense.
"Chrom. Lissa." Then, directing the same pure, unvarnished warmth toward the newcomers: "Frederick. Welcome home."
The group trailing behind the trio responded in several distinct ways at once. Robin inclined his head with the careful, polite courtesy of a man still rapidly adjusting to crucial information he had received a mere twenty minutes ago. Odyn, Sarai, Roy, and Khanna smoothly dropped to one knee without a word exchanged between them-the motion fluid, instinctive, and carrying the ingrained posture of people who had grown up thoroughly understanding what it meant to stand respectfully before a reigning sovereign.
Emmeryn looked down at them, her expression soft. "Please, rise. Be at ease. There is no need for such formality here."
"Forgive us, Your Grace," Odyn said, rising slowly to his feet with the others following suit. "In our homeland, kneeling before another nation's sovereign is a gesture of deep respect. I only hope our customs were not taken amiss."
"Not at all," Emmeryn replied gently. And the calm sincerity with which she spoke made it entirely true rather than merely polite.
Chrom stepped forward, taking the lead. "These are Robin, Odyn, Roy, Sarai, and Khanna. They fought fiercely alongside us against the brigands yesterday-and stood with us against those strange creatures in the forest last night." He paused, casting a proud look over his new companions. "I have formally asked them to join the Shepherds."
"They were absolutely incredible, Emm," Lissa chimed in eagerly.
"Then Ylisse owes them a profound debt," Emmeryn said.
"Please, Exalt Emmeryn," Sarai offered quietly, her voice ringing with absolute sincerity. "Think nothing of it. We were merely glad to help when help was needed."
Frederick stepped forward then, wearing the composed, dutiful expression of a man about to voice something he found deeply necessary rather than personally pleasant.
"Forgive me, Your Grace. I feel I must be entirely direct." He inclined his head respectfully. "Sir Robin claims to have lost his memory completely, and we currently have only his word to go on. As for these other four-while I find them thoroughly credible and do not for a moment believe they are lying, the bizarre circumstances of their sudden arrival, coupled with the total absence of any memory surrounding it, remains deeply irregular." He paused, glancing briefly at the group. "I raise this not to impugn their character, mind you, but merely to ensure that the appropriate caution is observed."
"Frederick," Chrom warned, a slight edge in his tone.
"No," Emmeryn intervened. Her voice was remarkably soft, requiring no amplification to command absolute silence in the hall. "Frederick is entirely right to voice his concerns. Prudence is a virtue we cannot afford to abandon." She cast her calm, discerning gaze over the assembled group, devoid of any trace of judgment. "Chrom-do these young men and women have your absolute trust?"
"They do," Chrom answered without a single second of hesitation. "They fought tooth and nail for people they had no earthly obligation to protect. That is more than enough for me."
"Then it is enough for me as well." She held the silence long enough to let the words sink in and carry real weight. "Robin, Odyn, Sarai, Roy, Khanna-you have Chrom's trust. And by extension, you have mine."
"We will not squander it, Your Grace," Roy promised quietly.
"I know you won't." Emmeryn turned her kind eyes toward Frederick, a soft amusement playing at the corner of her lips. "And Frederick-thank you. As always. Chrom and Lissa are extraordinarily fortunate to have so watchful and dedicated a guardian. I only hope they remember to actually tell you so."
Something in Frederick's rigid posture shifted-a microscopic adjustment of a man who had unexpectedly received precisely the validation he needed to hear. "They manage something roughly in the general vicinity of gratitude on rare occasions, Your Grace," he dryly noted.
"The creatures," Phila interrupted, stepping forward from the edge of the dais with a grim look. "They have already been sighted across various parts of Ylisse, milady. This was tragically not an isolated incident."
Emmeryn received the grim intelligence without a trace of panic-and that total absence of fear was, in itself, a powerful anchor of steadiness, demonstrating the rare capacity to hear terrible news without adding panic to the fire. "Then it appears we have much to discuss. Chrom-I was hoping you would join me in the council chamber immediately."
"Of course," Chrom agreed.
Lissa immediately brightened with the restless energy of someone who had been waiting patiently for her cue. "Which means the rest of us get to-" She turned excitedly to the newly minted Shepherds. "Come on! There's somewhere special I want to show you all."
None of them had the faintest idea where they were actually being dragged.
Following Lissa around, they were quickly beginning to learn, was almost always a great deal more interesting than staying put.
They left the grand throne room behind-all except Chrom, who remained for the urgent council meeting, and Frederick, who naturally went wherever Chrom went-and followed Lissa out through the sunlit palace corridors. They spilled out into the open air of the courtyard, passing through the grand outer gates and directly into the bustling heart of the city proper.
Odyn walked near the rear of the group, quietly observing the vibrant morning life swirling around them. Market stalls were rolling open their canvas awnings; children were already darting playfully between the heavy-footed draft horses; and the rich, comforting scent of fresh-baked bread drifted from somewhere down a side alley, making his stomach rumble appreciatively. Ylisstol was a genuinely real place filled with very real people, individuals simply going about the ordinary, beautiful work of existing. There was something profoundly grounding in that-the simple, irreducible fact of it-that struck him deeply, the way things always do when you tumble blindly into an unfamiliar world with zero expectations and find it unexpectedly, vibrantly alive.
He still didn't know how long they would be here. He still had no answers for what had dragged them across the veil into this kingdom, or what it ultimately meant, or what lay waiting down the road. The persistent absence of those answers was a heavy backpack he had been carrying ever since he woke up in the grass with a throbbing head and an empty mind, but he had grown reasonably adept at setting it aside without pretending it wasn't there.
Whatever came next, they were at least together. And they had somehow acquired a growing circle of allies who had proven themselves entirely worthy of trust-people who had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them in a monster-infested forest, refusing to break.
That, he decided, was more than enough of a starting point.
Ahead of them, Lissa was pointing animatedly at a towering clock tower with her staff, explaining its history at the absolute top of her lungs. Roy stood beside her, nodding along with the attentive, polite interest of a man who had decided he was going to find whatever she was talking about utterly fascinating. A short distance away, Khanna and Sarai walked side by side, Khanna murmuring something low that coaxed a genuine, unguarded smile from Sarai-the real one, the easy one she rarely let strangers see.
Odyn allowed himself to fully feel the moment, dropping his mental guard for just a second. The profound, undeniable relief of we're going to be all right. Even here. Even without the answers.
They were going to be just fine.
He picked up his pace, keeping stride as the bright morning opened up wide before them. Whatever trials waited around the next corner, they could wait a little longer for their turn.
To be continued...
Next Chapter - Chapter 3: Shepherds and... More Risen?!
Author's Notes & Chapter Wrap-Up
Hey guys, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter!
As you probably noticed by now-yes! Sarai is indeed the character paired with Chrom in this story. I thought it would be a fascinating twist to have Lucina carry mixed blood originating from one of our original characters.
As for the rest of the pairings, most are still undecided, aside from the main couple. (Yes, Odyn is paired with Lucina-my apologies to all the Robcina fans out there!) I did genuinely consider going the Robin x Lucina route for a while, but I ultimately decided to take a completely different creative direction for both characters. Now, the rest is entirely up to you guys!
Take a look at the polls below and let me know who you think everyone should end up with:
Who should Robin end up married to?
A. Maribelle
B. Khanna
C. Cordelia
D. Nowi
E. Sumia
F. Miriel
G. Lissa
H. Panne
I. Nah
J. Severa/Selena
K. Olivia
L. Flavia
M. Noire
N. Tiki
O. Aversa
P. Tharja
Q. Emmeryn (later in the story)
R. Kjelle
S. Sully
T. Say'ri
U. Cherche
V. Anna
W. Cynthia
Who should Roy end up married to?
A. Anna
B. Lissa
C. Female (future) Morgan
D. Cordelia
E. Severa/Selena
F. Nowi
G. Nah
H. Kjelle
I. Sully
J. Sumia
K. Cynthia
L. Noire
M. Maribelle
N. Tiki
O. Aversa
P. Say'ri
Q. Cherche
R. Miriel
S. Panne
T. Tharja
U. Olivia
V. Flavia
W. Emmeryn (later in story)
Who should Khanna end up marrying?
A. Donnel
B. Robin
C. Frederick
D. Stahl
E. Vaike
F. Ricken
G. Priam
H. Male (future) Morgan
I. Libra
J. Henry
K. Gerome
L. Owain
M. Yarne
N. Basilio
O. Yen'Fay
P. Laurent
Q. Brady
R. Inigo
S. Gregor
T. Gaius
U. Lon'qu
V. Kellam
W. Virion
Let me know in the comments which characters other than the main two pairings you want to see end up together. I already have a general idea of where I want to take some of these relationships, but I am super curious to see what you guys think!
Just as a quick note on character inspirations: Sarai is written to channel a vibe sort of like a female version of Alphen (the main protagonist from Tales of Arise). As for Odyn, Roy, and Khanna, we'll see how they continue to grow and develop as the plot unfolds. Odyn's dynamic and eventual pairing with Lucina should be especially fun and unique to write.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Peace out until the next one!