Velrath was not a kingdom that looked like it belonged in a story of ruin.
Its walls stood clean and unbroken, pale stone catching the sunlight in a way that made everything seem brighter than it truly was. The roads within its capital were well kept, the markets full, the people unhurried. Even the wind felt softer there, as if it had been taught not to disturb anything too greatly.
It was the kind of place where danger felt distant.
The kind of place where people believed things would remain as they were.
And for a long time, they had.
The palace stood at the center of it all, not as a symbol of power meant to intimidate, but as something steady. Something that had always been there and always would be.
Behind its walls, away from the noise of court and duty, lay the gardens.
David Spector liked the gardens best.
At five years old, the world was still small enough that it could be understood in pieces. The hedges were walls. The paths were roads. The trees were places to hide things or find them again. Everything had a place, even if that place changed depending on how he chose to see it.
He ran along one of the stone paths now, chasing after a flicker of wings that had already slipped out of reach.
"Hey, wait." He called, a small laugh catching in his breath. "Come back."
The bird did not.
It vanished into the branches above, leaving only a few drifting leaves in its wake.
David slowed, looking up.
"…I almost had it." He muttered.
"Did you."
He turned quickly.
His mother stood a short distance behind him.
Queen Elenora Spector did not need to announce herself.
Even standing still, there was something about her that settled the space around her. Not heavy. Not overwhelming. Just… certain.
She wore no crown, no heavy adornment, nothing that would draw attention at first glance. But it did not matter. The way she carried herself made it clear enough.
David didn't think about any of that.
He just smiled.
"Mother."
He ran to her, arms wrapping around her without hesitation. He bumped into her harder than he meant to, nearly losing his footing.
She caught him easily.
"You will fall one day if you keep running like that." she said.
"I won't," he said quickly. "I'm not gonna fall."
"You say that now."
Her hand came up, brushing his hair back into place. Her fingers lingered for a moment longer than needed.
"…What." David asked, tilting his head.
"Nothing." she said softly. "Just looking at you."
"…Why."
"Because I can."
He frowned slightly, not fully satisfied, but he let it go.
After a moment, he leaned against her again.
"Are we still going," he asked.
"Yes," she said. "We are."
His head lifted immediately.
"Really."
"Yes."
A grin spread across his face.
"Okay."
The journey was prepared without attention.
No gathering crowd. No announcement to the court. Just a carriage waiting near the gates and a small group of guards already standing ready.
David held onto his mother's hand as they approached.
"Is it far," he asked.
"Not too far," she said. "You will be fine."
"I won't get tired," he said quickly.
"I did not say you would."
"…I still won't," he added.
She gave him a small look, then continued walking.
The guards stood in formation.
Six of them.
Each wore the crest of Velrath across their armor, but it was not the armor that set them apart. It was the stillness in them. The way they stood without shifting. The way their attention moved without their bodies needing to follow.
There was something else, too.
A faint pressure in the air around them. Subtle enough that most would never notice it.
David did.
He didn't know what it was.
But it made them feel… strong.
One of them looked down at him.
"Stay close to your mother, Your Highness."
"I will." David said.
The guard nodded once, then turned his attention back to the road beyond the gates.
The gates opened.
The world outside stretched ahead.
At first, the journey felt like something new.
David leaned against the side of the carriage, watching as the city slowly disappeared behind them. The buildings gave way to open fields, the horizon stretching farther than he had ever seen before.
"It's really big," he said quietly.
"Yes," Elenora replied.
"Have you been here a lot."
"Many times."
"…Is it scary."
She paused, just slightly.
"It can be."
David nodded, like that made sense.
Time passed.
The road went on.
And slowly, things began to change.
The fields became uneven. The road narrowed. Trees began to gather closer, their shadows stretching across the ground.
David shifted in his seat.
Something didn't feel right.
He didn't know why.
"Mother."
"Yes."
"…why is it so quiet."
Elenora looked outside.
Her expression changed.
Not fear.
Awareness.
"Stay close to me," she said.
The guards had already noticed.
Their formation tightened. Hands moved closer to weapons. One of them closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again with a sharper focus.
"Something's wrong," he said.
The air felt heavier.
David could feel it now.
Like something pressing down on everything.
The forest closed in.
The light dimmed.
Then the first arrow came.
It tore through the air faster than it should have.
The lead guard reacted instantly.
His hand rose, and for a split second, the air around it tightened.
The arrow struck.
And slowed.
Not enough.
The second arrow followed.
Faster.
Stronger.
It struck him clean through the throat.
He fell.
"Ambush."
Everything broke.
The guards moved as one.
Steel rang out as blades were drawn. One slammed his foot into the ground, sending a sharp ripple through the air that knocked the next volley of arrows off their path just enough to keep them alive.
The carriage jerked violently as arrows struck wood and metal.
"Protect the Queen."
David grabbed onto his mother.
"M-Mother!"
"I'm here," she said.
Her voice didn't shake.
She moved.
Not away.
She pulled him close, one arm wrapping tightly around him as she stepped out of the carriage.
The moment her feet touched the ground, her gaze lifted.
Not toward the men rushing them.
Past them.
Into the trees.
"I see you," she said quietly.
The first man rushed her.
He moved fast.
Too fast for someone untrained to follow.
Elenora did not step back.
Her hand lifted.
The air burned.
Golden fire formed in an instant, wrapping around her fingers, bright and controlled.
David froze.
She stepped forward.
And struck.
The golden flame slammed into the man's chest.
It exploded.
The force threw him backward, his body hitting the ground hard enough that it didn't rise again.
For a moment,
everything went still.
Then the forest answered.
More figures stepped out from the trees.
Weapons raised.
Closing in.
And somewhere within the shadows behind them,
something else moved.
Watching.
Waiting.
The night had already begun.
The man who had rushed them first lay twisted in the dirt, smoke rising faintly from the place where Queen Elenora's power had struck him. For a heartbeat, no one moved. The clearing seemed to draw in a sharp, stunned breath, as though the trees themselves had not expected a queen in a traveling dress to answer steel with fire.
Then the next wave came.
They came from both sides of the road, boots pounding over root and stone, blades bare, faces half-covered with strips of dark cloth. There were more of them now than David had first thought. Not six or seven. More than a dozen, and perhaps more still in the trees.
One of the guards swore under his breath.
"No," he said, and this time there was recognition in his voice, something colder than alarm. "No, that cannot be."
Another guard drove his shoulder into a charging bandit and sent him reeling back. "What is it?"
The first man bared his teeth as he drew his sword across the chest of an attacker who came too close. "Night Bandits."
Even in the middle of fear, the name struck the air with a strange weight.
David had never heard it before. It meant nothing to him. But it meant something to the adults. He saw it in the hard set of the guards' mouths. In the way one of them went pale beneath the blood and dust on his face. In the way his mother's eyes sharpened, all softness vanishing at once.
The guard who had spoken spat into the dirt. "I thought they were stories."
"They are not stories," Elenora said.
Her voice was low. Controlled. Older than the panic around them.
Another bandit lunged. One of the guards met him, sword turning with a sharp burst of pale mana that ran like lightning along the fuller of the blade. Their weapons crashed together. Sparks flew. Not all of them were sparks from steel. Some were blue-white and strange, hissing as they fell into the grass.
The Night Bandit twisted away and slashed low. The guard barely turned in time.
"They do not raid for coin alone," Elenora said. "They take what they are paid to take, and kill what they are paid to kill."
David stared up at her, not fully understanding the words, only the shape of them. Only the terrible certainty with which she said them.
One of the guards turned sharply toward the rear of the formation. "Send the signal. Now."
The youngest of the six, a broad-shouldered man with a scar through one eyebrow, hesitated for less than a breath. He stepped back, forcing space between himself and the nearest attacker with a violent swing that drove the man away. Then he dropped to one knee and slammed his palm to the ground.
David felt the road shiver.
Not much. Just enough.
The guard's other hand flashed to a small metal cylinder fixed at his belt. He tore it free, crushed something inside it with his thumb, and thrust it upward. For a moment nothing happened. Then a lance of silver-blue light shot into the sky with a crack like split stone, streaking above the treetops before bursting far overhead into the shape of Velrath's crest.
It shone there only for a moment. A crown of light hanging above the road.
Then it shattered into drifting embers.
David had never seen anything like it. If he had not been so frightened, he might have thought it beautiful.
"Good," said Elenora, though her eyes never left the men surrounding them. "If the road wardens see it, the castle will know."
"If," muttered one of the guards.
It was not defiance. Only honesty.
The signal had gone up. That did not mean help would arrive in time.
The bandits understood that too.
A whistle cut through the clearing. Sharp. Deliberate.
The men pressing them did not rush blindly now. They spread out. Some stayed in front, keeping the guards engaged. Others slipped between the trees, moving where the road fell into shadow. Their steps grew quieter. Too quiet.
One of the guards cursed again. "They've got a veil-walker."
He had barely spoken before the shadows beside the road moved.
Not naturally. Not like the shifting of leaves under cloud. This was different. The dark at the roots of the trees thickened and pulled together, sliding over the ground in a long, fluid shape that did not belong to any living thing.
David saw it first as only a wrongness. A patch of darkness too deep to be evening shade.
Then it rose.
A man stepped from it as if he had always been there.
He wore no rattling armor, only layered black cloth that swallowed light rather than reflected it. His face was hidden from nose to throat. Only his eyes showed, and they were the sort of eyes that did not look startled or angry or eager. They looked empty in a practiced way. He held no torch, no bright blade. In one hand was a short curved knife blackened along the edge. In the other, nothing at all.
Yet the darkness around him moved as though it recognized him.
David pressed harder against his mother.
"M-Mother?"
Elenora's arm tightened around him for half a second.
Her gaze never left the newcomer.
"So," she said, and there was something almost bitter in the calmness of her tone. "Someone spent very dearly tonight."
The shadow user inclined his head, just slightly. A gesture that might have been mocking respect.
One of the older guards moved closer to the queen's left side. "Your Majesty, if he is what I think he is, then this is no roadside ambush."
"No," Elenora said. Golden light flickered at her fingers again, brighter than before. "It is an execution attempt."
The words seemed to strike the men around them harder than any blade.
David did not fully understand that either. He only knew his mother had said something final. Something grown-up and terrible.
The shadow user vanished.
Not ran. Not leapt.
Vanished.
One instant he stood there and the next the darkness near the wheel of the carriage bulged outward.
A guard reacted on instinct, whirling. His sword came up just in time to stop the black knife from sliding into his throat. Metal rang. The guard stumbled back with a cry as the second blow came from nowhere, not from the man's hand but from the shadow itself, which rose in a thin spear and tore through the leather guarding his side.
The guard dropped, teeth clenched so hard David could hear it.
The world erupted again.
The Night Bandits surged in as if that brief appearance had been a command.
Three came at once for the right flank. Two more drove at the injured guard on the left. Another swung for the horses, perhaps to sow greater panic, perhaps to destroy any chance of escape. A guard met him with a roar and cut him down before the blade could land, but the moment cost him. A second attacker slammed into him from behind and they went down together in the dirt.
Queen Elenora stepped forward again.
This time the warmth around her hand did not remain only warmth.
Golden fire bloomed.
It spilled over her palm and fingers in a tight, controlled flame, not red, not orange, but bright gold with white at the heart, as if a piece of the sun had consented to become smaller and crueler. It wrapped itself around her wrist and up the line of her forearm in faint trailing ribbons. The heat hit David an instant later, not enough to burn him, but enough that his eyes widened and tears sprang to them.
He had seen hearth fire. Candles. Torches. This was not like those.
This fire looked alive.
A bandit rushed her from the front.
She did not retreat. She drove her hand forward.
The golden flame struck him in the chest and burst.
There was a sound like a furnace door slamming open. The man flew backward in a spray of sparks and ash, his body hitting a tree hard enough to crack bark. A second bandit behind him took the edge of the blast and screamed as his sleeve and shoulder ignited.
Elenora turned and cast another arc of flame toward the shadows by the carriage wheel. The fire hit the ground and exploded outward in a half-circle, blasting up dirt and stone. For one sharp instant the shadow user reappeared within it, cloak scorched at one edge, body twisting unnaturally to avoid the worst of the blast.
So he could be touched.
That mattered.
One of the guards saw it too. "He bleeds. Pin him down."
Two guards moved together at once, trained enough to understand one another without speech. The first charged directly. The second came wide, using the first as bait. Mana shone faintly under their skin, not as Sigils, not as some grand awakening, but as old training turned instinctive. Their strength sharpened. Their speed tightened. Every movement became just a little more than a normal man should have been able to manage.
For a moment, it worked.
The shadow user flowed backward, evading the first guard's strike by inches. The second nearly reached him.
Then the dark under the carriage thickened again.
A ribbon of black rose from the ground and caught the second guard around the ankle.
He went down hard.
The first turned to help him and died for it. A Night Bandit came from the trees and buried a blade between his ribs.
David flinched so hard his teeth clicked together.
His chest hurt. He realized dimly that he had stopped breathing, then dragged air in too quickly and nearly choked on it. The smells around him had changed. Blood. Smoke. Burned cloth. Hot metal. Damp earth torn open under boots.
Everything was too much.
His mother's voice cut through it.
"David. Look at me."
He did.
It took all of him, but he did.
Elenora crouched just enough that her face came into view. There was soot along one cheek now, and a thin line of blood at her temple that had not been there moments before. She did not look frightened. Not on the outside. But she looked very focused, and there was a firmness in her expression that made David want to cry for reasons he could not explain.
"Listen to me," she said. "You are going to stay behind me no matter what happens. Do you understand?"
David opened his mouth.
"I-I…"
The words tangled.
Her eyes softened. Only a little.
"It is all right. Nod if you understand."
He nodded quickly. Too quickly.
She touched his hair for the briefest instant, then rose.
A blade came for her the moment she turned. She caught it on a burst of golden flame that blasted out from her palm. The attacker was thrown clear. Another came from the left and she struck low this time, sending a spear of golden fire across the road. It hit his leg and burst, flinging him spinning into the ditch.
But every use of it seemed to cost her.
David noticed because children noticed strange things at strange times. Her breathing was no longer even. It came deeper now. Heavier. Her shoulders rose and fell more sharply. A small line had appeared between her brows.
One of the guards noticed too.
"Your Majesty," he said, forcing back an attacker with a shield punch backed by a pulse of mana. "You cannot keep spending it like that."
"I am aware."
"Then we must move."
"To where?"
No one had an answer.
The carriage was useless now. One horse had broken its traces and fled screaming into the trees. The other kicked wildly where it had fallen, one leg bloodied by a blade strike. The road ahead was blocked by men. The road behind by more of them. The forest on either side had become a trap of moving shadow and hidden steel.
This had been planned.
Not a chance attack. Not greedy men leaping at a royal carriage because fortune had smiled on them.
Planned.
One of the surviving guards, a grizzled veteran with a broken nose, cut down a bandit and spat blood onto the road. "They knew the route."
Elenora's face did not change. "Yes."
The answer seemed to strike him harder than if she had shouted.
Another whistle sounded. A different one this time. Shorter. The Night Bandits shifted again, as though obeying unseen hands. They were not charging madly anymore. They were wearing the defenders down. Testing. Probing. Letting the shadow user strike where fear had already opened holes.
The darkness near the trees thickened.
The black-clad man stepped from it once more, farther back this time, his gaze resting not on Elenora but on David.
A coldness ran through the queen's expression then. Not panic. Not anger in the simple sense. Something older. More dangerous.
She raised her hand.
The golden fire gathered larger than before.
It spun around her forearm in tightening rings, bright enough now that the nearest men recoiled from it on instinct. David could hear it. A low, hungry sound. Not crackling, not like wood fire. More like breath moving through something vast and hot.
The shadow user's eyes narrowed.
Elenora thrust her hand downward.
The road exploded.
Golden flame tore outward in a wave, racing low across the ground before erupting upward in a line of violent bursts. Dirt and stone leapt into the air. Three bandits were thrown clear. One vanished into the undergrowth on the force of it. The shadow user was caught along the edge and rolled through the blast with impossible speed, his cloak burning at the hem, one sleeve ripped open to show flesh beneath. Blood ran dark down his forearm.
The guards did not waste the opening.
"Now."
Two of them charged the broken flank, trying to widen the gap before the bandits recovered. One drove his blade into a man's stomach and kicked him away. The other slammed his shoulder into a second and sent him sprawling. For a moment, it looked almost possible. A hole in the ring. A chance to break through toward the road.
Then more men poured from the trees.
David made a small sound he did not mean to make.
The opening vanished under bodies and steel.
The guard nearest it died with a spear in his back.
The other barely staggered free before a knife opened his arm to the bone.
Numbers.
His mother was strong. The guards were strong. Stronger than anything David had known before tonight.
It did not seem to matter enough.
A bandit came in too close on the queen's right. She turned and drove a burst of golden flame into him at point-blank range. The explosion threw him bodily through the air, but it also forced her to pivot hard, and in that instant another attacker got near from her blind side.
A guard intercepted the strike.
He did it by throwing himself there.
The blade meant for her shoulder sank into his neck instead.
He dropped without a sound.
David's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
The world had become a place where grown men simply stopped being alive between one breath and the next.
He hated it.
He hated all of it.
"M-Mother," he whispered.
She heard him. She always heard him.
"I know," she said, though she could not have known what he meant because David himself did not know. "Stay with me."
The shadow user vanished again.
This time the grizzled guard shouted in warning. "Behind."
Too late.
Darkness rose from the queen's own shadow, stretching upward like a hand made of ink and night. It reached for David, not her.
Elenora moved with a speed born from terror at last.
Golden fire erupted from both hands, not one. The blast tore through the shadow construct and exploded against the road, ripping a crater into packed dirt and stone. Heat punched through the clearing. David cried out, more from fright than pain, and stumbled backward as embers rained around them in bright gold streaks.
The shadow user reappeared farther off, one side of his mask blackened and torn.
He had not expected her to answer that quickly.
But answering had cost her.
Elenora swayed.
Only slightly. So slightly another child might not have seen it.
David saw it.
Her free hand pressed once, unconsciously, to her side.
There was blood there.
Not a great deal yet. But enough.
One of the remaining guards saw it too. Fear flashed across his face, quickly buried.
"Majesty."
"I know."
Her voice remained composed, but it came a little thinner now. As if each word needed deciding.
The signal to the castle had gone up. Somewhere behind them, perhaps riders were already mounting. Perhaps wardens along the road were seeing the broken crest of light and turning their horses toward Velrath. Perhaps the king himself was being told this very instant that his wife and son had been attacked.
Perhaps.
But the forest was wide, and night was creeping closer, and perhaps was a small comfort on a blood-soaked road.
The Night Bandits knew that too.
Their leader, if there was one among those in sight, did not grandstand or laugh. A hand rose from somewhere in the trees. Another signal.
The bandits tightened the ring.
The shadow user did not move.
He only watched.
Waiting for the right opening.
David felt the waiting too, though he did not know how. It was in the silence between clashes. In the way all the men seemed to be breathing for one same terrible moment that had not arrived yet.
He wanted to ask what was happening. He wanted to ask where his father was. He wanted to ask why bad men knew where they would be and why the trees looked so dark and why the road that had seemed merely long before now felt endless and impossible.
Instead he stood there shaking with tears hot on his face and one hand clenched in his mother's dress so tightly his fingers hurt.
Another attacker came.
Then another.
And another.
Elenora met them all.
Golden flames burst from her hands in fierce, precise arcs. One blast struck a man in the chest and threw him spinning into a tree. Another hit the ground near two bandits and exploded upward, hurling both backward in a spray of dirt and burning cloth. For a few breathless seconds she looked less like a queen and more like one of the old stories. Some fierce woman from a legend who had stepped down off stained glass to remind the world that grace and destruction could share the same hands.
Then reality answered.
There were too many men.
Too many angles.
Too many blades.
A thrown knife sliced across her upper arm before she could turn. A second bandit reached the edge of her range and slashed, forcing her to spend another burst of flame just to keep him off David. One of the guards on the left fell to a spear thrust. Another took down his killer and nearly collapsed over the body.
Only three of the original six still stood now.
Three, and one of them was bleeding badly from the leg.
The shadow user stepped from the dark again.
Closer this time.
Close enough that David could see the scorch on his sleeve and the blood on his arm.
Close enough that his gaze on David felt personal.
Predatory.
As if everything else here had become inconvenience.
As if David was the purpose.
Queen Elenora saw it too.
And in that single instant something changed in her expression.
Not fear.
Decision.
She drew one slow breath through the smoke and blood and raised her hands once more. Golden fire coiled there, brighter than before, unstable at the edges, as if it wanted to burst free before she commanded it.
The nearest guard looked at her and understood something David could not.
"No," he said.
She did not look at him.
"Hold them."
"Majesty, if you do this here, you will…"
"Hold them."
Her voice cut through him like a blade.
The guard swallowed hard and turned back toward the oncoming men, face set with the horrible obedience of a man who knows he has just been given an order he cannot survive.
David stared up at his mother.
Her face looked different in the firelight.
Older somehow.
Beautiful in a way that made his stomach twist with fear.
"M-Mother?"
She glanced down at him at last.
And smiled.
Not because anything was all right.
Because it was not.
Because mothers sometimes smiled at frightened children in the middle of disaster as if by doing so they could command the world to be gentle for one more second.
"Stay near me," she said.
David nodded because he could not do anything else.
The Night Bandits came on.
The shadow user moved.
And the golden fire in Queen Elenora's hands began to roar.
There were three guards left.
David did not count them.
But there had been six… or at least he thought there were six.
And now there were three.
The road no longer felt like a road.
It felt smaller.
Like the world had folded inward around them and decided this was where everything would end.
Steel rang again.
One of the remaining guards drove forward with a strained shout, his blade cutting deep into the shoulder of a man who had rushed too close. The strike was backed by a flare of mana that rippled along the steel like pale lightning.
The man fell.
Another stepped over him.
Then another.
They did not stop.
The shadow user stood just beyond the reach of the fighting.
Watching.
Waiting.
Queen Elenora moved again.
Golden flames burst from her hands, controlled but fierce. One blast struck two men at once, the explosion throwing them into the trees with bone-breaking force. Another tore across the ground, erupting upward and forcing the attackers back.
For a moment, she held them.
For a moment, it almost felt like enough.
Then the next wave came.
A blade slipped through.
Not toward her.
Toward one of the guards.
He turned.
Too slow.
Steel flashed.
The cut was clean.
He fell.
Two left.
David made a sound he didn't recognize as his own.
"M-Mother…"
"I'm here," she said.
Her voice was still steady.
But it was thinner now.
Like something beneath it was being worn down.
The remaining guards closed in tighter.
One stepped forward, placing himself directly in front of her and David. His stance lowered, shoulders tight, breathing heavy.
"Your Majesty," he said, "you must leave."
"There is nowhere to go," she replied.
The shadow moved.
This time, David saw it.
Not clearly.
But enough.
The darkness near the road twisted.
Folded inward.
And the man stepped out of it.
Too close.
The last guard saw him.
He moved instantly, turning to intercept.
The blade came from below.
It pierced through him.
Clean.
The guard's body stiffened.
Then went still.
One left.
The final guard roared.
It wasn't a shout of command.
It was defiance.
He charged.
His blade burned with the last of his strength, mana flaring along its edge as he threw himself into the attackers.
He cut one down.
Then another.
For a moment, impossibly, he held them back alone.
Then the numbers swallowed him.
A spear drove into his side.
Another blade struck from behind.
Then another.
He dropped.
No guards remained.
The road changed.
It wasn't quieter.
It wasn't calmer.
It just… shifted.
David's breathing broke apart.
His chest hurt.
His hands trembled as he clung to his mother like she was the only thing left in the world.
"M-Mother… I… I don't… I don't…"
The words wouldn't come.
Nothing made sense.
Elenora stood still.
For the first time,
she did not move to attack.
The golden flames around her hands flickered.
Dimmed.
Then surged again.
Stronger.
She looked down at him.
Not past him.
Not through him.
At him.
Her expression softened.
Just a little.
"…David," she said.
Her voice had changed.
It wasn't just calm anymore.
It was final.
He shook his head.
"N-No… I…"
Her hand reached down.
Not to pull him closer.
To push him away.
It broke his grip.
"Run…" she said.
David froze.
"M-Mother?"
"Run."
There was no room to argue.
No softness left in it.
Only command.
"I-I don't w-want to…"
"David."
That was all.
And something inside him listened.
He stepped back.
One step.
Then another.
Behind her, the bandits moved.
Closing in.
The shadow user stepped forward.
And Elenora Spector raised her hands.
The golden flames erupted.
Not controlled.
Not contained.
They exploded outward from her body in a violent surge, expanding in all directions at once.
The ground shattered beneath her feet.
The air roared.
Golden fire consumed everything.
Men were thrown.
Bodies lifted from the ground.
Shadows ripped apart under the light.
"RUN!"
David turned.
He ran.
He didn't think.
Didn't choose.
His body moved on its own.
The trees blurred past him.
Branches tore at his clothes, scratched his skin.
The ground felt uneven, wrong, like it might give way at any moment.
"M-Mother…"
The word broke apart as it left him.
Behind him the light grew brighter.
Too bright.
It filled everything.
He looked back.
Just for a second.
Just long enough to see the explosion tearing through the road.
Golden fire swallowing men whole.
The forest bending under the force of it.
And then… Something cut through it.
A shape moving against the light.
Too fast.
Too precise.
A blade.
And his mother.
For a single, impossible moment,
everything slowed.
Her body stood within the storm of golden fire.
Unmoving.
Unyielding.
And then… her head separated.
It lifted into the air.
Spinning.
Blood followed.
David's mind refused to understand it.
His foot caught a branch.
He fell.
The ground slammed into him.
Pain burst through his head.
Sharp.
Blinding.
The world twisted.
Spun.
The light behind him blurred.
The fire faded into something distant.
Muted.
His vision darkened.
Edges fading into black.
"M-Mother…"
The word barely existed.
Everything slipped.
And then…
A sound.
Distant.
Faint.
A voice.
Raw.
Shattered.
"ELENORA!"
It tore through the distance.
Not controlled.
Not royal.
Broken.
"Noooo!"
The sound of hooves.
Metal.
Men shouting.
But that voice… It carried above all of it.
Grief.
Rage.
Despair.
David couldn't see him.
But he knew.
Somewhere beyond the darkness taking him,
his father had arrived.
Too late.
And as that realization brushed against what little consciousness he had left.
Something inside him broke.
Not loudly.
Not all at once.
But deeply.
And then everything went black.
End of Chapter 1