Foreword: Once Upon a Time

A quiet invitation into the old tale of Alsbans.

Some of you began reading out of curiosity. Some arrived here without knowing what they hoped to find. And some of you may have passed over these words so quickly that the story has not yet had the chance to enter you.

How do I know?

Because I know myself.

There are stories we choose, and there are stories that seem to wait for us long before we are ready to hear them. This one was first written by the hands of a young person whose eyes had closed against the ordinary world and opened somewhere else—somewhere rain meant blessing, forests remembered the names of the dead, and a child could be born beneath a star without knowing that the world had already begun to fear him.

Perhaps none of it happened.

Perhaps all of it did.

That is the mercy of old tales: they do not ask to be believed before they begin.

They ask only to be heard.

Once upon a time, there was an Alsbans…

Chapter 1: The Baby Born in Humpellia

Talis grows up beneath the shadow of absence, enters Trixalisse, and returns to a village waiting at the edge of war.

Humpellia was a country of green forests and pink meadows, where narrow rivers curved between farms and every roof seemed to lean toward the warmth of another. Its people knew hunger, sickness, and hard winters, as all people did, but happiness had lived among them for so long that they had begun to mistake it for the natural order of the world.

At dawn, smoke rose from stone chimneys. Children chased geese through wet grass. Old men argued over whose apples were sweetest, and women laughed while hanging linen between trees. Even grief, when it came, was carried together.

There was only one name that could empty a room without anyone leaving it.

Meras.

Some called him king. Others called him conqueror. In Humpellia, where children were taught not to speak his name after sunset, he was known simply as the punishment of the lands.

In one of Humpellia’s most beautiful villages, rain fell heavily, as it did on most mornings. It struck the roofs in silver threads and gathered along the road in shallow pools that reflected the pale sky. Windows stood open despite the cold. Families placed bread, fruit, warm milk, and roasted roots upon their tables, then drew close to one another as though the rain had given them an excuse to remain together a little longer.

No one complained. In Humpellia, rain was not bad weather.

Rain was a blessing.

Then, from deep within the forest, another rhythm entered the morning: the slow, uneven beat of hooves against mud.

At first, only the dogs noticed. They lifted their heads but did not bark. Then the children fell quiet. One by one, the villagers turned toward the road.

The village governor, Uzak, was returning from distant lands.

He rode alone.

His cloak hung heavy with rain. Mud covered his boots and the legs of his horse. The journey had hollowed his face, but it was not exhaustion that unsettled those who saw him. It was the way he looked at the village—as though he had returned to a place already lost.

Birds sang in the branches above him. Their songs were bright and careless. Yet the sorrow in Uzak’s eyes outweighed every sound.

At the entrance to the village, among the children who had gathered beneath the dripping trees, he pulled the reins and stopped. For several breaths, he remained motionless. The horse stamped beneath him, impatient to reach shelter, but Uzak seemed afraid of what would happen once he moved forward.

At last, he drew a long breath.

“People of my village,” he called into the rain. “Gather yourselves. I have an announcement.”

The change was immediate.

Laughter disappeared from the houses. Heads appeared at open windows. Some villagers stepped outside with bowls or pieces of bread still in their hands. Others hurried to wake those who had slept late. Doors opened along the road until the entire village seemed to be holding its breath.

Uzak dismounted and walked toward the square.

His boots sank into the mud. Water ran from his hair across his face, though those nearest to him could not tell whether all of it was rain. Babies stopped crying in their mothers’ arms. The animals near the trough lowered their heads but did not drink. Even the wind appeared to weaken as he passed.

He had carried the news for seven days. With every step toward home, he had imagined himself speaking it. He had found brave words in the mountains, gentle words beside the rivers, and honest words while riding beneath the stars.

Now, surrounded by the people who trusted him, he could remember none of them.

Should he say it now?

Could a few more minutes of peace be considered a gift, or would they only become another cruelty?

Then a child’s voice broke through the silence.

“Father.”

Uzak froze.

Talis was running toward him, too young to understand why no one else moved. His bare feet splashed through the mud. His dark hair clung to his forehead, and the smile on his face was so open that Uzak nearly turned away from it.

Instead, he bent and caught his son in both arms.

“Where were you?” Talis asked, clinging to his wet cloak. “We missed you so much. Mother said you had gone far away. I was scared you would not remember the road home.”

For one brief moment, Uzak buried his face against the boy’s hair. He breathed in the smell of rain, smoke, and sleep. It was the smell of his own house. The smell of a life he had believed would remain waiting for him.

Then he forced himself to stand.

“Do not worry, my son,” he said. He tried to smile, but the expression hurt. “Who would dare cause trouble while a governor like me stands here?”

Talis searched his father’s face. Children often recognize fear long before they understand its cause.

“Are you going away again?”

Uzak’s voice hardened because gentleness would have broken it.

“We will speak later. Go to your mother now.”

The boy did not move until one of the village women took his hand. Even then, Talis kept looking back.

Uzak reached the center of the square. Around him stood farmers, hunters, craftsmen, widows, children, and old soldiers who had once sworn never to hold a sword again. These were not merely people under his protection. They were the names he spoke when he prayed.

“My people,” he began, “today I bring news from distant lands.”

Whispers rose through the crowd.

“What news?”

“Is it Meras?”

“Say it already,” someone murmured, too frightened to remain patient.

Uzak lowered his head. When he raised it again, his face belonged to the governor rather than the father.

“All fathers, and all men who once took part in the Tree Contest, must gather their belongings. We are leaving.”

For a moment, no one understood.

The sentence seemed too small for what it meant.

Then the village erupted.

“Leaving for where?”

“On whose command?”

“For how long?”

“Why only the fathers?”

“Is Meras calling us to war?”

Uzak heard every question, but he could answer none without revealing more than he had been permitted to say. He had seen what happened to messengers who returned with forbidden truth upon their tongues. Worse, he had seen what happened to the families of men who refused.

“Prepare yourselves,” he said. “We leave before noon.”

A woman struck him across the chest with both hands.

“You cannot take my husband.”

Another began to weep before anyone had touched her.

Some men stared at the ground, already understanding that obedience might not save them and resistance would certainly doom those they loved. Others shouted that they would not go, but their voices weakened when they looked toward their children.

The rain continued to fall, yet no one called it a blessing anymore.

That morning, Humpellia ceased to be the place it had been before.

The men returned to their homes and packed what little they could carry. Swords were taken down from walls. Old boots were pulled from chests. Mothers wrapped bread in cloth with hands that would not stop trembling. Children asked whether their fathers would return before the next harvest, and fathers lied because love sometimes had no gentler language.

Uzak entered his own house last.

His wife stood near the table with Talis pressed against her side. She had not cried while he was gone. She had told herself that tears belonged to those who knew the worst had happened.

Now she knew.

“We will wait for you,” she said. “However long it takes. Do not forget us.”

Uzak crossed the room and held her. The walls seemed smaller than he remembered. On the table lay the breakfast they had prepared for him, still warm, untouched.

“I could forget my own name before I forgot either of you,” he whispered. “I promise I will see you again. Not once, but ten times if I must. I will always love you.”

His wife closed her eyes. She knew a promise was not the same as a future, but she accepted it because it was all he could leave behind.

He kissed her one final time and turned toward the door.

The handle would not move.

Uzak tried again, then looked back.

Talis was gone.

The keys were gone with him.

Outside, the boy’s voice rose through the village.

“My father is not leaving! No one will take him from me!”

Uzak’s face changed.

He struck the door with his shoulder. The wood groaned but held. He struck it again, harder, until the lock tore loose and the door flew open into the rain.

Talis was running through the square with the keys clenched in his fist. Two villagers tried to stop him, but the boy kicked, twisted, and screamed with the strength of someone who believed love itself could become a weapon.

“Let me go!” he cried. “He promised!”

Uzak reached him and pulled him into his arms.

For several moments, neither spoke. Talis beat his small fists against his father’s chest, then clung to him so tightly that Uzak could feel the boy’s heartbeat through both their clothes.

“Don’t go,” Talis whispered.

It was no longer a command. It was a prayer.

Uzak looked over his son’s shoulder at the other fathers mounting their horses. Some avoided his eyes. Some watched him with anger, because the governor’s grief was no greater than their own. The road waited beyond them, black with rain.

“I have to,” Uzak said.

Talis pulled away as though struck.

“You left me again! Go, then. Go! You are not my father anymore.”

His mother gathered him into her arms. Talis fought her at first, then collapsed against her, sobbing.

Uzak mounted his horse.

He wanted to explain everything: that courage did not always look like standing one’s ground, that sometimes a man walked willingly toward the thing he feared because the people behind him mattered more than the life ahead. He wanted to tell Talis that fathers were not immortal, only practiced at hiding their terror.

But the boy was too young, and there was no time.

“Whether you hate me or not,” Uzak said, “the day you become governor, you will understand. We are going to Meras because I love you more than I love myself.”

Talis shook his head wildly.

“I will never understand you!”

Perhaps that was the last thing Uzak heard his son say.

He raised his voice over the rain.

“We are leaving. Everyone, mount your horses.”

The men formed a line and rode toward the forest.

Behind them rose the cries of wives, mothers, sons, and daughters. Talis screamed until his voice became raw, calling for a father who did not turn around.

None of the departing men looked back.

Not because they did not love those behind them.

Because they did.

One backward glance might have been enough to destroy what courage remained.

And so they rode beneath the dripping branches until the village vanished, carrying its voices within them long after all sound had faded.

Days became weeks, and weeks became months.

At first, Talis woke each morning believing that day would be different. He would hear hooves upon the road. The door would open. His father would enter wearing the same rain-dark cloak, lift him into the air, and laugh at how foolish everyone had been to worry.

By evening, Talis would sit beside the window and watch the road disappear into darkness.

No one came.

Seasons turned. The rain softened, the pink meadows flowered, and the harvest passed without the men who had once worked the fields. The village learned to survive around their absence. Women repaired roofs, guided ploughs, settled arguments, and stood guard at night. Boys grew into the clothes their fathers had left behind. New babies were born who knew those men only from stories.

Talis continued asking.

“Mother, it has been so long since Father left. Why has he not returned?”

“I do not know.”

“Did he reach Meras?”

“I do not know.”

“Is he alive?”

At that question, his mother’s hands always became still.

“There is nothing we can do but wait,” she would say. “We must wait, Talis.”

Waiting became the shape of their life.

For years, his mother placed a third bowl on the table during the first rain of every season. She never explained why, and Talis never asked. Sometimes he hated her for continuing to hope. Sometimes he hated his father for making hope necessary. Most of all, he hated himself for listening whenever hooves sounded in the distance.

Ten years passed.

The angry child became a quiet young man with his father’s shoulders and his mother’s watchful eyes. He learned to work the fields, to settle disputes among younger boys, and to hide his loneliness behind the responsibilities others placed upon him. The villagers had begun calling him the governor’s son, though there had been no governor in Humpellia for years.

Then came the season of the Tree Contest.

No one remembered who had created the trial. Some said the first governors had invented it to teach their sons endurance. Others claimed the trees themselves chose which boys would become men and which would be swallowed by the wild lands. The rules had survived longer than any explanation.

Every boy of age was sent away alone. Each was given four things: a long rope, a piece of wood, a small paper naming the land he must reach, and a tiny bottle of poison. The rope was for survival. The wood was for fire, shelter, or a weapon. The paper was a command. The poison was called mercy.

If a boy found himself captured, crippled, or certain to die, tradition demanded that he choose his own ending rather than surrender his honor.

Talis held the small bottle between his fingers on the morning of departure. The liquid inside was clear. It looked harmless, almost pure.

His mother took it from him and closed his hand around it again.

“Do not use this because you are afraid,” she said. “Fear passes. Death does not.”

“Did Father carry one?”

She looked away.

“Every man did.”

All the mothers gathered upon the mountain path to bid farewell to their sons. The morning was cold, yet no one complained. Some boys stood proudly in new boots and tried to appear eager. Others stared at the roads marked upon their papers and fought the urge to remain children for one more day.

Talis embraced his mother.

She felt smaller than she once had. There were silver strands in her hair that he did not remember seeing the week before.

“If I return and Father is here,” he said, “tell him how long I waited. Tell him to keep the promise he made to me.”

His mother held him at arm’s length.

“What promise?”

“That he would see us again. Ten times, if he had to.”

Her expression changed, not because she had forgotten, but because she remembered too well.

“Your father never promised you anything,” she said quietly.

Talis stared at her.

“He did. I know it. I feel it.”

She almost answered. Instead, she pulled him against her and held him with a desperation he would understand only years later.

The announcer climbed onto a flat stone above the gathered families. His voice carried across the mountain.

“Mothers, be seated. Sons, stand before them.”

The crowd obeyed.

"Know this: the spirits of the fathers are with us. They have always been with us. Today, we send our young men beyond the safety of Humpellia. Today, they will learn what it means to be a man.

"Some of you will return. Some of you will not.

"Do not mistake survival for greatness. A man may live a hundred years and never become worthy of the breath he was given. Strength without judgment is the weapon of a beast. Wisdom without courage is a lamp hidden beneath the earth.

"Being a man is wisdom—and strength ruled by wisdom.

“You may go now.”

The mothers rose.

Around Talis, boys embraced younger siblings who suddenly refused to release them. A mother pressed dried flowers into her son’s palm. Another repaired a loose button while crying too hard to see. No one said goodbye directly; the word sounded too final.

“Do not forget,” the mothers whispered. “I am proud of you for who you are.”

Talis kissed his mother’s forehead.

“I will return.”

“Return as yourself,” she said. “That will be enough.”

He did not understand why those words frightened him.

The boys separated at the base of the mountain, each following the direction written on his paper. Talis waited until he was alone before unfolding his.

A single name had been written there in dark ink.

Trixalisse.

He had heard the name only in warnings. Hunters refused to enter its forests. Travelers claimed the trees were so tall that daylight died before reaching the ground. Some said the last ancient sorcerers lived there, while others insisted nothing lived there at all—nothing that could still be called living.

Talis folded the paper and placed it against his chest.

Then he began walking.

The road was longer than any he had known. It led him beyond the farms of Humpellia, over bare hills where the wind seemed to push him backward, and through valleys whose streams tasted of iron. Each path was harder than the one before it. The rope cut his palms when he climbed. The wood grew damp. His food disappeared faster than he had planned.

On the fifth night, hunger prevented him from sleeping. He lay beneath a tree listening to something large move among the brush. At first, fear told him to remain still. Then hunger told him that fear was a luxury.

Using the rope, he made a trap as his mother had taught him. Near midnight, a horned deer became tangled in it. The animal fought with such terror that Talis nearly released it. Its eyes reflected the moon. For a moment, he saw himself within them—young, frightened, and caught by a path he had not chosen.

“I am sorry,” he whispered before killing it.

That night, he ate well, but the meat carried no triumph. In the morning, he buried what remained beneath stones so the wolves would not scatter it.

At dawn, he continued.

Days later, after crossing the last mountain, he saw the trees of Trixalisse.

They did not appear to rise from the earth. They appeared to hold it down.

Their trunks were broader than houses, black with age and moss. Their tops vanished into a ceiling of branches so high that no wind seemed able to reach them. Even from a distance, the forest gave the impression of watching.

Talis stood at its edge until the afternoon began to fade.

He thought of turning back.

No one would know. He could invent a wound, claim the road had collapsed, say the paper had been lost in a river. His mother would welcome him. The villagers might whisper, but whispers could be survived.

Then he remembered his father riding into the rain without looking back.

“For him,” Talis said, though he no longer knew whether he meant he would continue for his father or in defiance of him.

He entered Trixalisse.

Within a dozen steps, Humpellia vanished behind him.

The air changed first. It grew colder and carried the scent of wet bark, old ash, and something sweet that had begun to rot. The ground was soft beneath layers of fallen leaves. Above, the branches swallowed the sky until the world became a narrow circle around the flame in his hand.

“Why is it so dark here?” he whispered. “What is that sound?”

At first, he heard only the drip of water.

Then voices answered from every direction.

“Help me, my son.”

Talis stopped.

The voice came again, closer now.

“Please. Help me.”

His breath caught in his chest.

“Father?”

A branch cracked behind him.

“Father, is that you? Where are you?”

The flame in his hand bent sideways although there was no wind. Then it went out.

Darkness closed over him so completely that he could no longer see his own fingers. He turned too quickly, struck his shoulder against a tree, and stumbled. Somewhere nearby, something moved around him in a slow circle.

“Talis,” the voice whispered.

No stranger should have known his name.

Panic entered him like cold water. He crouched beneath the roots of a tree and pressed both hands over his mouth, afraid the sound of his breathing might reveal him. Minutes passed—or hours. He could not tell whether night had fallen or whether Trixalisse simply had no day.

He thought of the poison in his pocket.

The bottle seemed suddenly heavy.

He drew it out and held it in the dark. His mother’s warning returned to him: Fear passes. Death does not.

Talis closed his fist around the bottle, then put it away.

He had not come this far to die from a voice.

More than that, he could not return without something to prove that the years of waiting had not made him weak. Somewhere within his fear lived a stubborn, wounded pride. It dragged him to his feet.

“Leave me alone!” he shouted. “I did not come to harm you. I came for my father!”

The forest answered in Uzak’s voice.

“Then save me, my son.”

Hope moved faster than reason.

Talis ran toward the sound, striking branches aside with both arms.

“Where are you? Father, I am coming!”

The ground vanished beneath his next step. His foot caught against stone, and he crashed forward. His palms tore open. Pain shot through his knee.

When he reached out, his fingers touched carved letters.

A grave.

Laughter rose all around him.

It did not sound human. It sounded like many mouths remembering how humans laughed.

Talis remained on the ground, breathing hard. Shame burned hotter than the pain in his hands. He had known the voice was impossible. He had followed it anyway.

Slowly, he stood.

“Do you think I do not know?” he called into the dark. “Do you think I cannot see that you are deceiving me? That those voices were not my father’s?”

The laughter grew louder.

Talis wiped blood from his palm against his clothes.

“I know,” he said. “But hope…”

The word caught in his throat.

For ten years, hope had woken him at every distant sound. Hope had made his mother place a third bowl upon the table. Hope had hurt them more faithfully than despair ever could.

Yet without it, what would have remained?

“Hope is like this,” he said. “It makes a fool of you, and still you follow it.”

The laughter stopped.

The silence that followed was deeper than the darkness.

“Who are you?” Talis demanded. “Show yourselves.”

Something snapped above him.

In an instant, daylight flooded the forest.

Talis threw an arm across his eyes. When his vision returned, he found himself surrounded.

Eight ancient sorcerers stood among the trees.

They were old beyond any age he understood. Their bodies were bent and scarred, their robes stitched from cloth of different centuries. One had no eyes, yet turned his face toward Talis with perfect attention. Another had arms ending at the wrist, though small blue flames hovered where his hands should have been. Their faces were ugly not because time had touched them, but because something within them had reshaped the flesh.

“Why have you come here, boy of Humpellia?” one asked. His voice was the same voice that had called Talis son. “What business could you possibly have in this place?”

Talis looked from one figure to another.

“Hope brought me here.”

The handless sorcerer lifted one blue flame.

“You call it hope. I call it poison given for death.”

His gaze settled upon the small bottle beneath Talis’s cloak.

The others smiled.

Something in Talis’s answer had pleased them—not because they admired hope, but because they understood the cruelty of it.

“Come with us, child,” one said.

Talis pointed at the sorcerer with the blue flames.

“How can you be a wizard without hands?”

For a breath, no one spoke.

Then several of them laughed—not mockingly this time, but with genuine surprise.

The handless sorcerer approached. He was taller than he had first appeared, though his spine curved sharply near the shoulders.

“What is your name?” he asked. “Begin with that.”

“Leave me alone. I did not come here to listen to your nonsense.”

Another wizard stepped forward. Small bones were woven into his beard.

“Did you come to defy us, child? What is your purpose?”

Talis thought of the correct answers expected in Humpellia: honor, manhood, service, strength. None felt true enough to speak before creatures who had pulled his father’s voice from his memory.

“My aim is to grow,” he said at last. “To become strong and brave.”

The wizards laughed again.

All but the handless one.

He studied Talis as if the boy were a locked door and he had heard something moving behind it.

“Be silent while others laugh,” said the Grand Wizard from beneath a hood of grey feathers. “A person often reveals more in humiliation than in victory.”

The handless wizard moved closer.

“Why have you come here, Talis?”

Hearing his own name from that mouth chilled him.

“I…” Talis looked toward the grave over which he had fallen. “I came for my father. Yes. For my father.”

This time, no one laughed.

The sorcerers exchanged glances. Talis did not understand what passed between them, but he felt the forest itself listening.

“Tell me,” the handless wizard said, “what is the name of your greatest power?”

Talis thought of the rope, the knife at his belt, the strength in his legs, and the anger that had kept him walking.

“I do not know.”

The wizard turned to the others.

“What is the greatest power?”

“Speed,” one answered.

“Strength.”

“A spell that cannot be broken.”

“The power to make another kneel.”

Their voices overlapped until the forest seemed crowded with certainty.

From behind them, Talis spoke quietly.

“Wisdom.”

The answers ceased.

The handless wizard looked back at him and smiled. It was not a kind smile, but neither was it empty.

“My name is Trakless,” he said. “Follow me.”

They led Talis deeper into Trixalisse. As they walked, the daylight followed them in a narrow circle, though Talis could not discover its source.

“These are the finest trees in the forest,” Trakless said.

Talis tilted his head until his neck hurt, but he could not see their tops.

“Why are they so tall?”

“They are not tall,” Trakless replied. “We are small. Remember the difference.”

At last, they reached an ancient hut leaning between the roots of a vast tree. It looked abandoned from a distance. Up close, Talis saw that the walls breathed faintly, expanding and settling like the chest of a sleeping animal. Eight crooked chimneys rose from the roof, though only one released smoke.

This was the home of the last eight wizards of Trixalisse.

“You will remain here,” the Grand Wizard said.

Talis looked toward the path behind him. It had already disappeared.

“For how long?”

“Until the forest has taken what it wants from you,” Trakless answered, “or given you what you came to steal.”

Talis did not trust them. He did not like them. But the Tree Contest demanded more than survival, and some wounded part of him still believed that if he became powerful enough, he could cross every land, enter Meras, and bring his father home.

“I will stay,” he said.

The first winter nearly killed him.

The wizards did not teach as men taught. They gave no clear instructions and offered no praise. Trakless once left Talis alone beside a frozen river and told him to cross without breaking the ice. When Talis asked how, Trakless replied, “If I knew how you would do it, there would be no reason for you to go.”

Another wizard taught him to hear the direction of an arrow before it was released. A third made him sit in darkness while voices repeated every cruel word he had ever heard. The Grand Wizard demanded that he carry water in a broken bowl, then punished him whenever a drop was lost.

At first, Talis believed every lesson was intended to make him stronger.

Years passed before he understood that the wizards were not trying to build him. They were trying to discover what remained after everything unnecessary had been stripped away.

He learned to move through the forest without flame. He learned which roots healed fever and which caused a painless death. He learned to fight men larger than himself and to refuse fights he could win. Trakless taught him that anger was useful only while held by the throat; once released, it chose its own master.

Yet for every truth the wizards gave him, they revealed another reason not to love them.

They could watch an animal suffer without mercy. They could enter another person’s memory and leave wounds behind for curiosity alone. They spoke of ordinary people as brief creatures whose lives mattered only because they ended quickly. Once, when Talis asked whether they had ever loved anyone, three of them laughed and one became so furious that the windows cracked.

Only Trakless sometimes seemed troubled by the cruelty of the others. Even he possessed a coldness Talis could not forgive.

During his final year, Talis asked him, “Did you know my father?”

Trakless was silent for so long that the fire between them sank to embers.

“I know many fathers,” he said at last. “Most of them become sons again at the moment of death.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I will give you.”

Talis rose and left the hut before his anger made him foolish.

By then, the boy who had entered Trixalisse no longer existed. In his place stood a strong and watchful man, shaped by hunger, humiliation, learning, and years spent listening to creatures who understood power but not goodness.

On the morning he chose to leave, no ceremony awaited him.

The Grand Wizard slept. The others pretended not to notice him gathering his belongings. Trakless stood at the edge of the path, blue flames hovering where his hands should have been.

“Do I have your permission?” Talis asked.

“Would permission change your decision?”

“No.”

“Then it would be wasted.”

Talis looked back at the hut. It had been his prison, his school, and, for longer than he wished to admit, the closest thing he had known to a home.

“I never want to see this place again,” he said.

Trakless’s expression did not change.

“People often return to the places they hate. Hatred remembers the road better than love.”

Talis stepped closer.

“The goodness in my heart does not live in any of you.”

“That is why you survived us.”

Talis waited, uncertain whether the words were praise or warning. Trakless turned away before he could ask.

He left Trixalisse without looking back.

This time, it was not because looking back would break his courage.

It was because he feared some part of him might still wish to remain.

Beyond the forest, the sky seemed impossibly large. Sunlight hurt his eyes. The road toward Humpellia stretched across mountains and open fields, and with every step, anticipation grew within him.

He had conquered the Tree Contest. He had endured the last eight wizards. He was returning as the future governor, prepared to take his place and repair all that the long years had broken.

More secretly, beneath every plan and every hard-earned piece of wisdom, lived the hope of the child he had once been.

Perhaps his father had returned.

Perhaps his mother would be standing at the edge of the pink meadows.

Perhaps the door of his old home would open, and the years between them would collapse into nothing.

After the bitter cold of the mountains had passed, Talis finally saw Humpellia in the distance.

The sight stopped him where he stood.

The green forests were exactly as memory had preserved them, and beyond them lay the pink meadows, pale beneath the evening sky. From so far away, the village appeared untouched by time. Smoke rose from chimneys. Small lights glowed in windows. For a moment, Talis imagined that if he walked quickly enough, he might arrive before anything had changed.

But it was already night.

According to village custom, anyone returning from the Tree Contest had to enter at noon, beneath the full witness of the people. A man who crossed the boundary in darkness was believed to bring the shadows of the road home with him.

Years in Trixalisse had taught Talis to distrust superstition, but he would not break the first tradition waiting for him.

He lay among the pink flowers and folded his cloak beneath his head. The earth smelled of rain and warm grass. Above him, the stars appeared brighter than they had anywhere else.

One star, near the western edge of the sky, shone so fiercely that Talis could not look away.

“What a beautiful star you are,” he whispered. “Yes, you—the brightest one. What is your name?”

The question made him smile at himself. After years among wizards, he had learned that names were rarely harmless. To name a thing was to invite it closer.

Still, he lifted one hand toward the light.

“I will call you Bans. You are mine now.”

The star seemed to flicker.

Talis closed his eyes.

That night, he dreamed of his father standing beneath a tree with no leaves. Uzak’s back was turned. No matter how loudly Talis called, the man would not look around. At his feet lay a newborn child wrapped in red cloth, staring upward with eyes full of stars.

Morning came softly.

While Talis slept among the flowers, several village children noticed him from the road. They had never seen him before. To them, the scarred man in the travel-worn cloak might have been a dead soldier, a thief, or some creature washed out of the old stories.

“Who is that?” one whispered.

“Do not go near him.”

“He is not moving.”

Curiosity, as it often does, defeated fear one step at a time. The children crept closer, hiding behind one another whenever Talis shifted in his sleep. At last, the boldest leaned over him.

“Is he dead?”

“Touch him.”

“You touch him.”

They were beginning to retreat when a ripe pear fell from a nearby tree and struck one boy on the head.

His cry tore through the morning.

Talis woke with one hand already reaching for a weapon.

“What happened?”

The children saw the speed of his movement and scattered in terror.

“Wait,” he called after them. “I will not hurt you.”

None stopped.

Talis watched them disappear over the rise. A laugh escaped him before he could prevent it. It felt strange, almost forgotten.

“Ah, never mind.”

He washed at a stream and continued through the meadows, forcing himself not to hurry. The village bell rang once, then twice. When the sun reached its highest point, Talis stepped across the boundary stones.

The first people who saw him did not recognize him.

He walked toward the square while conversations ended around him. Women paused with baskets upon their hips. An old man set down his carving knife. Children followed at a careful distance, whispering that the dead man from the meadow had come to life.

Talis reached the center of the village.

“I have returned,” he announced.

No one answered.

A woman near the well narrowed her eyes.

“Who are you?”

The question wounded him more than he expected. For years, this place had been the center of his identity. Yet the village had continued living without him long enough for his face to become foreign.

“I am Talis,” he said. “Son of Uzak. I completed the Tree Contest.”

Recognition moved slowly through the crowd.

Someone whispered his name. Another repeated it. An old woman covered her mouth with both hands.

“Talis?”

He straightened.

“I am your governor.”

One by one, the villagers bowed their heads.

“Welcome home, Governor.”

More people gathered until the square was full. Some touched his shoulders as though testing whether he was real. Others asked about the road, the contest, and Trixalisse. Talis answered little. He searched the faces around him for only one person.

“Where is my mother?”

The crowd changed.

Eyes lowered. Smiles vanished. A path opened before him without anyone speaking.

Talis understood before they began walking.

He followed them beyond the houses to a hill where small stones marked the dead. The grave they stopped beside was simple. His mother’s name had been carved into it by a hand that had tried to make every letter beautiful.

For several breaths, Talis stood without moving.

The whole journey home had contained this possibility. He had known it. Ten years was long enough for any cruelty. Yet knowledge had not prepared him for the smallness of the stone.

“When?” he asked.

“Five years ago,” someone answered. “A sickness came during winter. She fought it for many weeks.”

“Was she alone?”

“No. We were with her.”

“Did she say anything?”

The villagers exchanged glances. At last, the woman who had lived nearest to his mother stepped forward.

“She asked us to keep your room untouched. She said you would come back hungry and pretend you were not. She also said…”

The woman stopped.

“Say it.”

“She said not to tell you that she waited. She was afraid you would spend your life blaming yourself for arriving too late.”

Talis fell to his knees.

The sound that left him was not the cry of a governor or a man who had survived Trixalisse. It was the sound of the boy who had watched one parent ride away and had now returned too late for the other.

He pressed both hands against the earth above her.

“I came back,” he whispered. “Mother, I came back.”

No answer rose from the ground.

The villagers began to withdraw.

“Leave me alone,” Talis said. “Please. I will stay with my mother.”

When the last footsteps faded, he remained beside the grave until the sun had crossed half the sky. He told her things he had never said while she lived: that he had been angry at her for defending his father, that he had imagined returning with enough strength to make every year of waiting meaningful, that sometimes he had forgotten the exact sound of her voice and hated himself for it.

He placed the untouched bottle of poison from the Tree Contest upon the grave.

“You told me fear would pass,” he said. “You were right. But you did not tell me what comes after it.”

The wind moved through the grass.

At last, Talis bowed his head.

“I promise you this: I will find Father. Whether he lives or lies beneath a stone like you, I will learn the truth.”

He rose only when darkness began to gather.

His old house stood where it always had, though the door was painted a different color. Talis entered without knocking and found a family seated around the table.

They rose in alarm.

“Who are you?” Talis asked, harsher than he intended.

The father recognized him and lowered his head.

“We are the owners of this house, my governor. Your mother gave it to us when our own home burned. We lived here with her. We cared for her when she became ill.”

His wife stepped forward.

“We never entered your room. She would not allow it. If you wish, we will leave tonight.”

Talis looked around.

A child’s wooden horse rested near the hearth. Bundles of herbs hung where his father’s coat had once been. The table had been repaired along one edge. It was his home, and it was not. Life had entered every empty space he believed belonged to memory.

He could have taken it back. No one would have opposed the governor.

Instead, he looked toward the narrow hall.

“My room is enough for me,” he said. “Stay. A house that kept people alive should not be emptied for the sake of a ghost.”

His room smelled of dust and cedar. The blanket his mother had woven remained folded at the foot of the bed. On the wall, beneath a thin layer of age, were the marks measuring his height as a child. The final line had been drawn the week before Uzak left.

Talis touched it with one finger.

For the first time since leaving Trixalisse, he wished he had never grown.

He slept badly. In dreams, he wandered through the village calling for people who stood just beyond his sight.

Morning found him seated beside the window.

Grief remained, but duty had already begun knocking at the door. Disputes had gone unresolved for years. Fields had been divided unfairly. Hunters argued over forest boundaries. Meras demanded grain the village could not spare. Talis understood that mourning would have to share him with the living.

He became governor not through ceremony, but through work.

He listened before deciding. He reopened an abandoned storehouse for winter food. He ordered that no widow’s land be taken for unpaid tax. He trained young men to defend the roads, yet forbade them from drawing swords merely to prove they carried them. When people praised his wisdom, Talis remembered the wizards and wondered how much of them he had brought home.

It was during a dispute over a flooded field that he first noticed Melania.

She stood among the farmers with rain in her hair and contradicted him before the entire square.

“Your decision protects the richer family,” she said, “because they can afford to lose one harvest. The other family cannot. Justice that ignores hunger is only a clean name for cruelty.”

The crowd waited for Talis to become angry.

Instead, he asked, “What would you decide?”

Melania stepped forward and explained how the water could be redirected so both fields survived. Her plan required the village to work together for three days.

“And who will persuade them?” Talis asked.

“You are the governor,” she replied. “I assumed you were useful for something.”

That evening, Talis asked her father whether he might visit their home.

Melania was the daughter of a noble family, but nobility had not made her delicate. She rode well, carried a knife without showing it, and laughed whenever Talis tried too hard to sound wise. With her, he discovered a kind of silence different from the silences of Trixalisse. He did not have to fill it or defend himself against it.

Their love did not arrive all at once. It grew through small acts: Melania leaving food outside his door when he worked late; Talis repairing the roof of her mother’s storehouse before anyone asked; the two of them walking the boundary of the village after rain, arguing about whether duty made a person stronger or merely lonelier.

One night, Melania asked about his father.

Talis told her everything except how much he still hoped.

She heard that part anyway.

“You are still waiting,” she said.

“No.”

“You became a man around the waiting. That is not the same as leaving it behind.”

He should have been offended. Instead, he loved her more.

Their wedding took place beneath flowering trees. No palace could have made it grander. Villagers hung lanterns through the branches, musicians played until their fingers ached, and rain began just as the vows were spoken. Everyone laughed and raised their faces to it.

For one day, rain became a blessing again.

Talis and Melania built a new home near the edge of the pink meadows. It was not large, but every part of it was chosen together. Talis carved the doorframe. Melania planted herbs beside the window. At night, they spoke about the children they might have and the village those children deserved to inherit.

When Melania became pregnant, joy frightened Talis more than any danger had.

He began waking at night to make certain she was breathing. He repaired the cradle three times. He counted stores of grain as though a full cellar could protect the child from every possible future.

One evening, Melania placed his hand against her stomach.

“I cannot tell anymore,” she said. “I think it is a boy.”

Talis felt a small movement beneath his palm.

“No. It is a girl. I can feel it.”

“You felt one kick and discovered wisdom greater than every midwife?”

“I lived among wizards.”

“Then ask them.”

His smile disappeared before he could stop it.

Melania squeezed his hand.

“If it is a boy, what will you name him?”

Talis looked through the window at the evening sky.

“I do not know. The first name that comes to my heart.”

The season of the next Tree Contest arrived before the child was born.

As governor, Talis stood in the village square and read aloud the names of the young men who would leave. Their mothers listened with the same expressions he remembered from his own departure. He tried to make the ceremony gentler, but tradition had a way of keeping its old cruelties beneath new words.

Halfway through the list, Talis stopped.

The air had changed.

The pink meadows beyond the houses seemed to lose their warmth. Birds rose from the forest in a single dark cloud. Somewhere, a dog began barking and would not stop.

Then came the sound of horses.

Not one or two.

Dozens.

Forty soldiers of Meras entered the village in two disciplined lines. Their armor was dark and without decoration. Rainwater ran along their helmets though the sky above Humpellia remained clear. At their front rode a captain with a narrow face and a red cord tied around his sword arm.

The villagers moved closer together.

Talis handed the list to an elder and stepped forward alone.

“Are you Talis?” the captain asked.

“I am.”

“Governor of this village?”

“By the will of its people.”

The captain’s mouth tightened at the answer.

“We bring a message from Meras.”

“I am listening.”

The captain looked toward the crowd.

“Will the message be spoken before everyone?”

“Yes,” Talis said. “I hide nothing from my people.”

Anger moved through the square. The older villagers remembered the fathers taken years before. The younger ones had grown up beneath their absence. No one loved the men of Meras, and no one believed a message from him could arrive without hunger behind it.

The captain unrolled a sealed strip of leather.

“By order of Meras, in preparation for war against Legacy, every able man of Humpellia is to present himself for service. Each village will provide soldiers, grain, horses, and iron. Refusal will be understood as rebellion.”

A mother began to sob.

Talis heard the sentence that had never been spoken when his father left. Years of waiting, his mother’s grave, and the empty place at every table gathered inside him.

“No one will fight for Meras,” he said.

The captain lowered the message.

“I have not finished.”

“You have.”

The villagers stared at Talis. Then a voice behind him shouted, “No one will go!”

Others joined it.

“No one!”

“We gave you our fathers!”

“Not our sons too!”

The soldiers reached for their swords. The villagers had few weapons, but they closed ranks around Talis.

The captain leaned forward in his saddle.

“No one defies Meras. You do not want this, Governor. You know that well.”

Talis met his gaze.

“Tell Meras this: not one drop of Humpellian blood will be spilled for his throne. If he wants our grain, let him plant our fields. If he wants our sons, let him come and ask their mothers.”

The captain’s face became still.

“He will come.”

“Then he will hear the same answer.”

For one terrible moment, the square stood at the edge of slaughter. Talis saw the captain weighing whether forty soldiers could kill enough villagers to make obedience return.

Then a cry rose from the far end of the road.

“Talis!”

A young woman ran from the direction of his house, waving both arms.

“Talis, you have a son!”

The world narrowed to those words.

Talis turned before caution could stop him and ran.

Behind him, the soldiers remained motionless. The captain watched him disappear, then rolled the message slowly and signaled his men. Without drawing their swords, they turned their horses toward the forest.

Their retreat brought no relief. It felt like a promise.

By the time Talis reached his house, half the village had followed. Melania lay exhausted, her face pale and damp, but when she saw him, she smiled.

“You were wrong,” she whispered.

A midwife placed the newborn in his arms.

Talis had held swords, ropes, dying animals, and the hands of grieving people. Nothing had ever felt as fragile or as heavy as his son.

The child opened his eyes.

For a heartbeat, Talis saw not the room but the night sky above the pink meadows. A single star burned across his vision, bright enough to turn the darkness white.

A name entered him with the light.

He carried the child outside.

The village had gathered in silence. Fear of Meras still clung to every face, yet when Talis lifted the newborn beneath the open sky, something warmer moved among them.

“His name is Alsbans,” he said.

Melania heard the name through the open door and closed her eyes, as if some part of her recognized it.

Yes.

His name was Alsbans.

“Long live Alsbans!” someone cried.

The villagers repeated it until the name crossed the square, entered the fields, and seemed to rise toward the stars.

They celebrated because a child had been born.

They did not yet understand that, in another place, something ancient might have heard them.

None of them knew what was coming.

Chapter 2: The End of Those Who Fear Losing

Meras returns, Humpellia burns, and the child who survives is carried toward the hidden darkness of Trixalisse.

Morning came, but peace did not come with it.

The village awoke before sunrise. Men followed the tracks left by the soldiers of Meras, searching the road and the forest beyond it. They found broken branches, deep hoofprints, and one strip of red cloth caught upon a thorn. Then, less than a step from the boundary stones, the tracks divided and vanished across hard ground.

It was as if the soldiers had not retreated at all, but simply stepped out of sight.

The searchers returned carrying no answers.

Throughout the village, doors remained open. Families spoke in whispers. Mothers who had celebrated Alsbans’s birth now watched the forest from their windows. Every ordinary sound—the fall of a tool, a horse shifting in its stall, a shout between children—made someone turn in fear.

Talis had not slept.

He stood beside the cradle while Melania rested, watching his son breathe. Alsbans’s fingers opened and closed as though grasping at something in a dream. Looking at him, Talis felt joy so fierce that it bordered on pain.

He had defied Meras for children like this one.

He had also placed all of them in danger.

By midmorning, the square was full.

“Gather,” Talis called. “Everyone, gather. Today is not a day for fear to speak in separate houses. Whatever comes, we will face it with one mind.”

Before he could continue, several elders stepped forward. At their front stood Haron, the oldest man in the village, whose back had bent with age but whose voice remained hard.

“Stop there, Talis.”

The crowd shifted. No one interrupted an elder lightly, least of all before the entire village.

Haron planted his walking stick in the mud.

“You know that something great happened yesterday.”

“Yes,” Talis answered. “My son was born.”

A few people smiled despite themselves.

Haron did not.

“No. Yesterday you betrayed us for your father.”

The words struck more accurately than any accusation Talis had prepared to hear.

A murmur spread through the square.

“I acted for no dead memory,” Talis said. “I acted for our children and for the future of this village.”

“Did you?” Haron asked. “Or did you hear the same command that took Uzak from us and answer it ten years too late?”

Talis’s jaw tightened.

“Careful.”

“I am old enough to be careful without your warning. We all remember your father. We remember the men who left beside him. None returned. Yesterday, when Meras asked for our sons, you did not hear the war against Legacy. You heard a horse riding away in the rain.”

The square became painfully still.

Talis could have denied it. A governor was expected to possess clean motives, or at least the appearance of them.

Instead, he looked at the faces around him.

“Perhaps I did hear it,” he said. “Perhaps every decision a man makes is answered by the child he once was. But that does not make the decision wrong.”

Haron’s expression softened for only a moment.

“You are young and strong. You survived Trixalisse, and because of that you believe the world can be survived by courage. But Meras is not a forest. He is not a trial. He is inevitable. We are one village. If he wishes to erase us, even our graves will not remain.”

A mother called from the crowd, “Then should we give him our sons?”

Haron turned toward her.

“I say only that living slaves may one day become free. Dead rebels become soil.”

“And what do their children become?” Talis asked.

The elder did not answer.

Talis stepped closer.

“For ten years, this village lived without its fathers. We survived, yes. But survival alone is not proof that the price was just. If we kneel again, our sons will inherit the same waiting, and their sons after them. At what generation do you suggest we become human?”

Haron lowered his eyes.

“You speak beautifully. Meras kills beautifully spoken men as easily as silent ones.”

“Then let him come. As long as I stand here, nothing will happen to anyone.”

Even as Talis spoke, he knew the promise was impossible. The knowledge shamed him. Yet a governor could not answer terror with uncertainty.

He turned and left the square before anger made him cruel.

At home, Melania sat beside the window with Alsbans against her breast. She saw Talis enter and understood from his face that the argument had followed him.

“What happened?”

“The elders believe I doomed us.”

“Did you?”

He looked at her sharply.

Melania did not look away.

“I am not asking whether you were right to refuse. I am asking whether you understand what refusal costs.”

Talis crossed the room and knelt beside her.

“I will never allow anything to happen to you.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only answer I can live with.”

She touched his face.

“Then do not confuse the answer you need with the truth.”

Talis closed his eyes against her palm.

“I know they will return.”

“When?”

“Soon. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps after they have frightened us with waiting.”

Melania looked down at their son.

“What will we do?”

Talis had spent the night asking himself the same question. Now, speaking it aloud, the plan became real.

“We cannot remain. Defying the soldiers did more than refuse an order. We exiled ourselves from the part of Humpellia controlled by Meras. If we stay, they will surround us.”

“Then we all leave.”

“Not together. A village moving with children, animals, and wagons can be followed from a mountain away. The women and children must go first, quietly, toward Legacy.”

Melania stared at him.

“Legacy is at war with Meras.”

“That is why Meras will hesitate to cross the border openly.”

“And the men?”

“We ride to the other villages. We warn them and ask them to join us. If enough of Humpellia stands together—”

“You do not believe that sentence,” Melania said.

He fell silent.

She knew him too well.

“You are not planning a war,” she continued. “You are planning to place yourselves between Meras and the road we take.”

“If necessary.”

“Say it honestly.”

Talis looked at Alsbans. The child slept, unaware that his parents were dividing the future around him.

“We will buy you time.”

Melania turned toward the window. For several moments, only the soft sound of the baby’s breathing moved through the room.

“Then you expect to die.”

“I expect to fight.”

“That is how men make death sound less certain.”

Talis stood.

“I have to speak to the village.”

Melania caught his hand.

“And after that, you will come back here. You will not become governor for the rest of the night. You will be my husband and his father.”

Talis bent and kissed her forehead.

“I will come back.”

The words left his mouth before he remembered that his father had once made the same promise.

He returned to the square.

The argument had continued in his absence. Some villagers demanded that they send an apology to Meras. Others had already begun sharpening swords. Fear divided them more efficiently than any invading army.

Talis climbed the stone used during the Tree Contest ceremonies.

“Listen to me,” he called.

The voices faded.

“The soldiers may have left our road, but they have not forgotten it. They will return, and when they do, they will come in greater numbers. We cannot defend these houses forever. Nor can we pretend obedience will make us safe. The fathers taken from us proved that.”

Someone shouted, “Then what will we do?”

Another answered before Talis could.

“They were right! He sold us for his father!”

“No,” Talis said.

The accusation came again from another part of the crowd.

“You wanted revenge, and now our children will pay for it.”

Talis felt anger rise, but he remembered Trakless’s lesson: anger was useful only while held by the throat.

He waited until he could speak without becoming its servant.

“Perhaps there is revenge in me,” he said. "I will not insult you by pretending my heart is pure. But listen carefully. If there is wrong in what I have done, I will carry it. If there is right, I will carry that too.

"No one is forced to stand beside me. A governor who needs chains is only another king.

"I did not rise for glory. I did not refuse Meras because I believe songs will be written about us. I did not do it for power, and I will not lie by saying I did it only for you.

"I did it because I refuse to live on my knees. I refuse to raise children who believe obedience is the price of being allowed to breathe.

“So choose freely. Fight beside me, leave before dawn, or stand against me. But whatever you choose, choose it as a person—not as an animal waiting to discover which master will feed it.”

Silence followed.

The speech had not removed anyone’s fear. It had only made hiding behind fear more difficult.

Then a blacksmith named Saren lifted his hammer.

“I am with you.”

A farmer beside him raised a woodcutting axe.

“We have always been with you. We only forgot when fear began speaking.”

More voices joined them.

Not everyone agreed. Some elders stepped away. Two families announced they would leave immediately and ask Meras for mercy. Talis let them go. Freedom that existed only for those who agreed with him would be another form of rule.

When the square settled, he gave his orders.

“Take up every sword, bow, axe, and hunting spear. At dawn, the men will ride to the neighboring villages. We will warn them and ask them to prepare.”

A frightened woman called, “And the children?”

“The women, the elderly who cannot fight, and the children will travel west toward Legacy. Move in small groups. Take food, blankets, and water. Leave anything that slows you.”

“Legacy?” Haron demanded. “They are our enemies.”

“No,” Talis said. “Meras told us they were our enemies. Those are not always the same thing.”

“How do you know they will receive us?”

“I do not.”

The honesty frightened them more than certainty would have.

“But I know what waits here.”

The people returned to their houses to prepare. The village spent the afternoon dividing food, repairing carts, wrapping weapons, and deciding which possessions could be abandoned. Every object became a question: Was a wedding blanket worth carrying? A father’s tools? A child’s carved toy? How much of a life could be left behind before the person carrying it became someone else?

Night came too quickly.

In each home, families tried to speak normally and failed. Meals were eaten without appetite. Parents memorized the faces of sleeping children. Lovers made promises neither believed. The village that had once welcomed rain as a blessing listened for hoofbeats in every gust of wind.

Melania packed a small bag beside the cradle.

“Let me stay with you,” she said. “I can fight. You know I can.”

“I know.”

“Then do not send me away as though I am weak.”

“I am sending you because you are the only person I trust to keep him alive.”

She looked at Alsbans.

“What am I without you, Talis?”

The question stripped every answer from him.

He sat beside her.

“You are Melania. You were yourself before you loved me, and you will remain yourself if I am gone.”

“Do not speak as if you are already dead.”

“I am trying to speak before I no longer can.”

Her eyes filled.

Talis took her hands.

“You will raise our son. And you will tell him nothing about me until he is old enough to choose what the truth means. I do not want him growing up chasing his father as I did. I do not want every road to become a promise he is trying to force the world to keep.”

“You want him to grow without a father? Like you did?”

The words were cruel because they were true.

Talis lowered his head.

“No. I want him to grow without my ghost.”

Melania began to cry. She did not hide it from him.

“Hope did not save you from your father’s absence,” she said. “It only kept the wound open.”

“Perhaps. But living with hope is still better than living without it.”

“You do not know that.”

“No,” he admitted. “I only know I survived one of them.”

They held each other for a long time.

Later, when Melania finally slept, Talis remained beside the cradle. Moonlight rested across Alsbans’s face. The child moved one hand, and Talis offered him a finger. Alsbans closed his tiny fist around it.

The strength of that grip almost broke him.

“Take care of your mother,” Talis whispered. “She will pretend she does not need anyone. Do not believe her.”

Alsbans slept on.

“Perhaps one day you will know true happiness. Not the happiness people feel because nothing terrible has happened yet. Something stronger. Something no king can take by sending men on horses.”

He leaned closer.

“And if you ever hear my name, let it be only a name. Do not make a road from it.”

Talis kissed his son’s forehead.

For an instant, the room seemed to fill with the pale light of the star he had named Bans. Then it was gone.

He lay beside Melania but did not sleep for a long time.

When sleep finally came, it carried no dreams.

The screams woke them before dawn.

No one ever learned how the soldiers entered the village so quietly.

There had been watchers on the eastern road and two hunters hidden near the forest. Neither gave warning. Later, some would say Meras had sent men through the river. Others would claim the shadows themselves had opened a path.

What mattered was that, by the time the bell began to ring, three houses were already burning.

Talis came awake to red light moving across the ceiling.

For one confused breath, he thought dawn had arrived. Then glass shattered in the next room, and someone outside screamed until the sound ended suddenly.

He was on his feet before memory caught up with him.

“Melania. Take Alsbans.”

She had already lifted the child from the cradle. Smoke pressed beneath the door.

Talis took his sword from the wall and opened the shutter a finger’s width. The village had become another place.

Soldiers moved between the houses in dark armor. Some carried torches. Others dragged villagers into the road. The old storehouse burned from roof to foundation, throwing sparks across the square. A woman ran with her nightdress on fire. Two men tried to reach her and were cut down before they crossed the road.

There were far more than forty soldiers now.

Meras had not come to collect obedience.

He had come to erase refusal.

Talis rushed outside.

Heat struck his face. Smoke turned the familiar roads into narrow tunnels of flame and shadow. Everywhere he looked, people he had known since childhood were running, fighting, falling.

“To the western path!” he shouted. “Women and children to the western path! Men, gather at the square!”

A soldier charged him from the side. Talis turned, caught the man’s sword against his own, and drove a shoulder into his chest. The soldier fell. Talis struck once and moved on before the body reached the ground.

“Gather, my village!”

His voice vanished beneath screams, steel, and burning timber.

Saren the blacksmith appeared with his hammer dark with blood.

“They killed the eastern watchers,” he said. “The road is blocked.”

“Then clear it. Take whoever you can.”

“There are too many.”

“I know.”

Saren looked at him. Neither man said what both understood.

They separated.

Talis fought toward his home, where Melania stood in the doorway with Alsbans wrapped beneath her cloak. She held a short sword in one hand.

“Go!” Talis shouted.

“The western road is full of soldiers.”

“Then take the stream path. Follow it north until the stones turn black, then leave the water and cross toward Trixalisse.”

Melania stared at him.

“You told us to go west.”

“They know that. Go north.”

A group of soldiers rounded the corner. One pointed toward the house.

“There! The governor!”

Talis pushed Melania inside and closed the door behind them.

“The rear window,” he said. “Now.”

She did not move.

Outside, boots struck the road.

“Let me fight with you.”

“No.”

“Talis—”

“No!”

The word came out harder than he intended. Alsbans woke and began to cry.

Talis looked at his son, then lowered his voice.

“Listen to me. If you stay, I will spend every moment trying to keep you alive. I will watch you instead of the sword in front of me. We will all die in this room.”

The soldiers struck the door.

Once.

The wood cracked.

Melania’s face folded with grief.

“I will not leave you.”

Talis took her hands around the hilt of her sword.

“Then do not leave me. Carry me with you. Every step you take with him is a step I take too.”

The door shuddered beneath another blow.

Melania fell against him. For a moment, they stood with Alsbans between them while the world ended outside.

“How can I live without you?” she whispered.

“For us? You may not be able to.” Talis pressed his forehead to hers. “So live for him. For Alsbans, my love. For him, we can do what we cannot do for ourselves.”

The door split down the center.

Melania kissed him.

There was no time for gentleness. The kiss carried everything they would never say, every morning they had believed was still waiting, every argument left unfinished.

When she pulled away, she whispered into his ear.

“One day, there will be an answer for this. For you, for our village, and for every hand that tears love apart and calls it power.”

Talis opened the rear window.

“Go.”

Melania climbed through with Alsbans held against her chest.

She looked back once.

Talis smiled at her.

It was the same kind of lie his father had given him in the rain—a face made calm so the person leaving might survive the first step.

Then she disappeared into the dark.

The door burst inward.

Talis turned.

Three soldiers entered. The first died before he understood how close Talis stood. The second struck high; Talis ducked and drove his blade beneath the man’s armor. The third retreated into the road, shouting for help.

Talis followed.

He no longer fought to save the village. That hope was burning around him. He fought to make each breath Melania took farther from Humpellia possible.

The surviving villagers gathered near the square. Farmers stood beside hunters. An old woman held a spear with both hands. Haron, who had warned against rebellion, sat wounded against the well with a sword across his knees.

When Talis reached him, the elder laughed once, bitterly.

“It appears dead rebels do become soil.”

Talis knelt.

“You were right about the cost.”

“And you were right about the kneeling. Help me stand.”

Talis pulled him to his feet.

Together, the village made its final line beneath the burning bell tower.

The soldiers of Meras advanced.

What followed was not a battle in the way songs describe battles. There was no clean order, no moment in which courage made men invincible. People slipped in mud and blood. Friends struck one another in the smoke. Some fled. Some froze. Some who had boasted loudly died before lifting their weapons, while others who had trembled all night fought with terrible calm.

Talis moved among them like the man Trixalisse had made. He heard blades before they came. He used the firelight against his enemies. He refused anger its freedom and allowed it only enough breath to strengthen each strike.

One soldier fell.

Then another.

Then another.

But Meras had sent too many.

Saren disappeared beneath spears. Haron died standing, his walking stick still tied across his back. The bell tower collapsed, scattering burning timber across the square.

The pink meadows beyond the houses became black beneath smoke and red beneath blood. By sunrise, no trace of their former color remained.

An arrow struck Talis high in the shoulder.

The force turned him halfway around and drove him to one knee.

He broke the shaft and tried to rise.

A second arrow entered his side.

The village tilted.

Through the smoke, Talis saw a figure standing beyond the soldiers. The man wore no helmet. A red cord was tied around his sword arm.

The captain from the day before.

“You should have listened,” the captain said.

Talis laughed, though blood filled his mouth.

“You should have finished your message.”

The captain drew his sword.

Talis tried once more to stand. His legs failed. He fell onto the earth where he had played as a child, not far from the road along which his father had vanished.

At the final edge of his life, he did not think of being governor. He did not think of Meras or Legacy, victory or defeat.

He saw his mother placing a third bowl upon the table.

He saw Melania laughing in the rain.

He felt the small fist of his son wrapped around one finger.

And beneath all of it, older than reason, he heard the child within him call once more for the man who had ridden away.

“Father,” Talis whispered.

Then life left him.

Humpellia burned behind Melania as she ran.

She did not look back. The sky ahead was dark, but the sky behind her glowed red enough to cast her shadow across the road. Alsbans cried beneath her cloak. She pressed him against her body, trying to keep smoke from his lungs.

The stream path was narrow and hidden by reeds. Twice, soldiers passed so close that Melania could hear their armor. She sank into the cold water and held Alsbans above it, whispering into his hair while he trembled.

“Quiet, my star. Quiet.”

The words were not enough. She tore a strip from her sleeve, dipped it into the stream, and held it gently over his mouth to cool the smoke. He stared at her with wide eyes, too young to understand fear but old enough to feel it entering the body that held him.

For hours, Melania moved north.

Her feet bled inside her shoes. Hunger weakened her. Milk would not come because terror had dried it within her, and Alsbans’s cries grew smaller. Each time they weakened, panic gave her another measure of strength.

At midday, she found bird eggs in a low nest and swallowed one raw so she would not collapse. She fed what she could to the child. By evening, she had reached the stony land near Trixalisse.

The forest stood in the distance, darker than the approaching night.

Melania had heard stories about it. Every child of Humpellia had. She also knew that soldiers feared stories more than desperate mothers did.

Near the base of a hill, she found a narrow cavern hidden behind hanging roots. The air inside smelled of damp stone and old leaves. She crawled deep enough that the opening could no longer be seen from the road.

There, between two rocks, she discovered a hollow just large enough to hide Alsbans.

She wrapped him in her cloak and placed him inside.

“You must forgive me,” she whispered. “For every moment you are cold. For every moment you believe I left you.”

The child reached toward her.

Melania placed one finger in his hand.

For an instant, she understood Talis’s final night beside the cradle.

Then a voice came from the darkness behind her.

“Who is there?”

Melania turned, sword already drawn.

A man stepped into the faint light near the entrance. His armor bore the mark of Meras. Blood darkened one side of his face, but the red cord around his sword arm remained clean.

The captain.

“I found you,” he said. “Did you truly believe you could escape?”

Melania moved between him and the hollow.

“Who are you?”

“The man who gave your husband one last chance to live.”

His smile was thin.

“I watched Talis die. I thought you should know before I do the same to you.”

Grief entered Melania so violently that for a moment the cave lost sound. She had known. From the moment she climbed through the window, some part of her had known. Yet knowledge became a different wound when spoken by the mouth of the killer.

“No,” she said.

The captain raised his sword.

Melania attacked.

She was exhausted, wounded by the road, and carrying the weakness of hunger, but she had trained beside Talis. Her first strike opened the captain’s cheek. The second drove him backward against the stone.

Surprise made him careless.

Rage made her dangerous.

For several breaths, the cave rang with steel. Melania fought not to survive but to prevent the man from taking one more step toward her child. She cut his arm. He struck her ribs. She drove her shoulder into him and nearly reached the entrance.

Then his blade entered beneath her side.

Melania gasped.

The captain pulled the sword free.

She fell to one knee.

He approached slowly now, anger replacing amusement.

“Where is the child?”

Melania looked toward the opposite wall.

The captain followed her gaze.

That was the mistake she wanted him to make.

With the last of her strength, she lunged. Her sword entered beneath his breastplate. He staggered, struck her once across the back, and collapsed near the mouth of the cave.

Melania crawled toward the hollow.

Each breath filled her with fire. She could no longer feel her legs. Behind her, the captain made a wet, broken sound, but he did not rise.

Alsbans was crying.

“I am here,” she whispered. “I am here.”

She reached the hollow and lowered herself across it, covering the child with her own body. Her blood warmed the stone around him.

Melania thought of Talis beneath the flowering trees on their wedding day. Rain had gathered on his eyelashes. He had looked nervous when speaking his vows, though he had faced ancient wizards without trembling.

She wanted to return there.

Instead, she pressed one hand against the rock and listened to her son breathe beneath her.

“Live,” she whispered.

It was her final command, prayer, and act of love.

When the soldiers of Meras later searched the cavern, they saw two bodies and darkness. They did not find the child hidden beneath his mother’s lifeless form.

By nightfall, Humpellia no longer existed as a living village.

Only Alsbans survived.

He lay in the cold hollow, hungry and unable to understand why the warmth above him would not move. His cries echoed through the cave, growing weaker as the hours passed.

No human ear heard him.

But something did.

Alsbans knew nothing of death.

He knew warmth and the absence of warmth. He knew hunger, darkness, and the smell of the person whose heartbeat had once been the whole world. He pushed against Melania’s still body until a narrow space opened beside the stone.

His small body rolled.

For a moment, he fell through darkness.

Then the cave was gone.

He landed upon soft leaves without crying. Around him, everything was green and strangely still. Pale light drifted through branches that did not move. The air smelled of rain, though no rain fell. It was a garden hidden beneath the earth—or beyond it—a place untouched by the fire that had consumed his village.

Alsbans moved his arms and looked around.

He had seen almost nothing in his brief life, yet one thing drew his gaze immediately.

A single red rose stood alone among the leaves.

No wind touched it. No insect rested upon it. Its petals were perfectly smooth, without bruise or tear, and the color seemed deeper than red—as if every fire, wound, and sunset in the world had been gathered into one flower.

Alsbans crawled toward it.

There was no reason for him to do so. Infants do not understand beauty, prophecy, or danger. Perhaps he followed the warmth of its color. Perhaps the rose called to something older than understanding.

His fingers touched one petal.

The rose became cold.

Not cool like stone or water. Cold like a memory from before birth.

The ground beneath him opened.

Alsbans fell again.

This time, he landed beneath the leaves beside a narrow path leading into Trixalisse.

Jelin found him there.

She was walking ahead of the others, collecting pale mushrooms that grew only where the forest had recently dreamed. Jelin was still a child by the measure of ordinary people, though children raised among the wizards of Trixalisse learned early not to measure themselves ordinarily.

She heard a sound beneath the leaves.

At first, she thought it was an injured bird. Then the leaves moved.

Jelin knelt and pushed them aside.

A baby stared up at her.

For several breaths, she only stared back.

“And who are you?” she whispered.

Alsbans began to cry.

The sound startled birds from branches far above. Jelin lifted him awkwardly, supporting his head the way she had once seen a traveler hold a child in a memory stolen by one of the wizards.

“Listen to how frightened he is,” she called to the others.

Three wizards approached. Their expressions held curiosity but no tenderness.

“Put it down,” one said.

“He is not an it.”

“Everything is an it until it proves otherwise.”

Jelin wrapped part of her cloak around the child.

“He is cold.”

“Then he will become colder. That is the habit of abandoned things.”

Jelin glared at them.

“You are a child yourself,” another wizard said. “How would you care for him?”

“You all care for me. Why not him?”

The wizards looked at one another.

It was not a question they enjoyed. They had fed Jelin, taught her, and kept her alive, but whether any of that deserved the name care was something none wished to examine.

Then Trakless appeared between the trees.

He said nothing at first.

His blue flames dimmed as he looked at Alsbans.

The child had stopped crying. He stared directly at the handless wizard with an attention no infant should have possessed.

For one heartbeat, the forest around them grew silent.

Trakless saw a flash of something he did not understand: a burning meadow, a dying woman, a star reflected in a man’s eyes, and beneath all of it a red rose opening in darkness.

Then the vision vanished.

“The child stays,” he said.

The others turned toward him.

“We do not keep human infants.”

“We do now.”

“By whose law?”

Trakless’s flames rose brighter.

“Mine, until someone stronger objects.”

No one did.

The wizards drifted apart, muttering. Jelin remained beside Trakless with Alsbans in her arms.

“Why did you agree without asking where he came from?”

Trakless looked toward the place beneath the leaves where the child had appeared.

“I do not know.”

It was the first answer Jelin had ever heard him give without hiding another answer inside it.

She looked down at Alsbans. His fingers had closed around the edge of her cloak.

Jelin was still a child herself. She knew nothing of mothers except what she had seen in dreams and stolen memories. She did not know how often babies ate, why they cried, or how much a person could love someone who had done nothing to earn it.

But standing beneath the ancient trees, she made a decision that would shape both their lives.

She would care for him.

And if the darkness of Trixalisse reached for him, it would have to pass through her first.

Chapter 3: The Long Journey

Alsbans leaves Trixalisse behind and begins the harder search for a home that will not cast him away.

Alsbans learned to walk beneath trees so tall that he believed the whole world lived in their shadow.

He learned to speak in a house where words were rarely used for kindness. The wizards taught him the names of roots, bones, stars, wounds, and poisons before anyone thought to teach him the names of ordinary things. For years, he believed every child knew how to recognize a lie by the change in another person’s breathing, but had to ask what a birthday was.

Jelin taught him the rest.

She taught him that warm food should be eaten slowly when there was enough of it. She showed him how to make small animals from folded leaves and how to listen for rain traveling through the upper branches long before it reached the ground. When he woke from dreams he could not describe, she sat beside him until his hands stopped trembling.

The wizards did not object to her affection. They regarded it as one might regard a harmless weakness in a useful creature.

From the beginning, there was something about Alsbans no one could explain.

He understood people.

Not merely their words. Words were easy and often false. He understood the pressure beneath them—the thought someone had swallowed, the fear hidden beneath anger, the hope a person was ashamed to admit. He could not always name what he sensed, but he reacted to it before others revealed it.

When one wizard praised him, Alsbans moved away because he felt the cruelty waiting behind the praise. When another threatened him without intending harm, the child remained calm. He avoided certain rooms before arguments began inside them. Once, he woke Jelin in the middle of the night and led her outside moments before part of the hut’s roof collapsed.

“How did you know?” she asked.

Alsbans looked at the broken beams.

“The house was afraid.”

Jelin laughed at first. Then she saw that he was serious.

As he grew, the wizards began testing him.

They placed sealed boxes before him and asked which contained a living creature. They sent him into the forest to find people who did not wish to be found. They told lies and demanded that he explain not only which words were false, but why the speaker needed them to be believed.

Alsbans rarely answered in the way they expected.

One evening, Jelin crouched beside him with a wooden spoon.

“You have not eaten,” she said. “I made this for you.”

The bowl contained a thick stew of roots and bitter herbs. Jelin had burned part of it and tried to hide the taste with salt.

Alsbans looked into the bowl.

“You do not like it either.”

“That is not important.”

“Then why must I eat it?”

“Because I made it with love.”

He considered this.

“Does love always taste bad?”

Jelin struck him lightly with the spoon, and he smiled.

The door opened.

Trakless stepped inside.

Alsbans’s smile vanished. Without a sound, he moved behind Jelin.

Trakless noticed. He noticed everything, though he often pretended otherwise.

“He has grown,” the wizard said. “It is time he began working.”

“He works every day.”

“He follows you through the forest and asks questions. That is not work.”

“He has only just learned to speak properly.”

“Has he?”

Trakless looked at Alsbans.

The blue flames above his wrists gave no warmth.

“Then let him answer something simple. Who does he love most?”

Jelin drew a breath. The question disturbed her, though she could not have said why. Among the wizards, simple questions were often traps wearing clean clothes.

Alsbans stepped partly from behind her.

He looked at Trakless, then at Jelin.

“I love the one who loves me most.”

The answer entered the room and changed it.

Trakless said nothing. For the briefest moment, his expression revealed something close to sorrow. Then he turned and left.

Jelin remained still until his footsteps faded.

“Then you love me,” she said softly.

Alsbans looked up at her.

“Why?”

“Because I love you most.”

He searched her face, listening for what lay beneath the words.

Then he put both arms around her.

Time moved differently in Trixalisse. Seasons could be seen only in the color of the moss and the kinds of voices that traveled between the trees. Alsbans grew taller. His body became lean from climbing, running, and the work the wizards gave him. He learned to fight with a staff and a short blade. He learned how to escape a grip, how to fall without breaking bone, and how to remain still while fear moved through him.

The wizards tried to teach him spells.

Most failed.

Magic bent strangely around Alsbans. Flames would approach his hands and then separate, as if refusing to touch him. Symbols that opened doors for Jelin faded beneath his fingers. Once, when the Grand Wizard ordered him to repeat an ancient word, every candle in the hut went out and a red petal appeared in the bowl before him.

No one explained what it meant.

After that, they watched him more carefully.

There was always something about Alsbans that people felt before they could name it. He seemed one step ahead—not because he knew the future, but because he noticed the beginning of things others recognized only after they had happened.

He heard the cruelty in a joke before anyone laughed. He felt a departure inside an embrace. He knew when Jelin was lying to protect him and when Trakless was telling the truth to cause pain.

This made him difficult to deceive.

It did not make him impossible to wound.

Jelin understood before he did that the wizards had begun to fear him.

They spoke in silence when he entered a room, using glances and movements too small for ordinary people to notice. They sent him farther into the forest and waited longer before calling him home. One suggested that he should be taken beyond Trixalisse and left near the southern marshes. Another argued that whatever had brought him to them would eventually return to claim him.

Trakless defended him at first.

Then even Trakless began asking questions he would not explain.

“Do you dream of a flower?”

“Sometimes.”

“What color?”

“You already know.”

The blue flames above Trakless’s wrists darkened.

“Do not answer questions with accusations.”

“Do not ask questions when you fear the answer.”

Trakless struck the table hard enough to split it.

Alsbans did not move.

From the doorway, Jelin saw both of them understand the same thing: the child was no longer afraid of the wizard.

That frightened her more than if he had been.

The day of departure arrived disguised as play.

Jelin ran between the trees, laughing over her shoulder.

“You cannot catch me!”

Alsbans walked after her without hurrying.

“I am not trying to.”

“That is what slow people say.”

She disappeared behind a broad trunk, then emerged farther ahead. Alsbans knew she was making the path seem ordinary. He also knew something had been wrong with her since morning. Her laughter came too quickly, and she had not once looked directly into his eyes.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To the edge of the forest.”

“Why?”

“To say goodbye to Trixalisse.”

He stopped.

Jelin continued several steps before realizing he was no longer behind her.

“Not again,” he said.

They had spoken about leaving before. Whenever the wizards became cruel, Jelin told him there were places beyond the forest where ordinary people lived beneath open skies. Sometimes she promised they would go together. By morning, the promise always became a joke.

“I mean it this time,” she said.

“You said that last time.”

“This is different.”

“Because you are afraid.”

Jelin’s face tightened.

“Come with me.”

“Tell me first.”

She walked back and placed a hand upon his shoulder.

“Look at me.”

Alsbans resisted for a moment, then raised his eyes.

Jelin had learned to shield her thoughts from him, but emotion still reached through. He felt love, fear, guilt, and a decision already made.

“You do not belong here,” she said. “You are not like us.”

The words reached the oldest wound in him, though he did not know where that wound had begun.

“I can be like you. I will learn. I will do the spells.”

“You have tried.”

“Then I will try longer.”

“That is not what I mean.”

He pulled away.

“You all say I am wrong because your magic does not want me. Perhaps your magic is wrong.”

“Alsbans—”

“I can become whatever I need to become.”

Jelin held his gaze.

“That is what I am afraid of.”

He said nothing.

She lowered her voice.

“You are too good for this place.”

Alsbans almost laughed. He had seen Jelin steal memories from sleeping travelers. He had watched her turn a snake into smoke because it frightened her. Goodness, in Trixalisse, was a word used mostly as an insult.

“You are saying that because you want me to leave.”

“Yes.”

“Then say you do not want me.”

Pain moved across her face.

“I cannot say what is not true.”

He turned from her and walked back toward the hut.

That night, Jelin came to where Alsbans slept.

The room was narrow and open to the roots beneath the hut. Moonlight entered through a crack in the wall. Alsbans lay on his side with one hand beneath his face, appearing younger in sleep than he ever allowed himself to seem while awake.

Jelin sat beside him.

She had been taught a form of seeing that the other wizards called the Deep Gaze. It was forbidden to use it upon someone she loved because love made the vision difficult to survive. She placed two fingers against Alsbans’s temple anyway.

At first, she saw only fragments.

A village beneath rain.

A man lifting a newborn toward the stars.

A woman running while fire consumed the horizon.

Blood upon cave stone.

A red rose standing where no rose should grow.

Then the vision moved forward.

Jelin saw Trixalisse burning with a fire that gave no light. She saw Alsbans older, standing among people who knelt without being commanded. She saw his hands covered in blood, though she could not tell whether he had killed or tried to save someone. Above him, stars vanished one by one.

A voice spoke from somewhere beyond the vision.

If he remains, he will become what survives this place.

Jelin pulled away.

Her nose was bleeding. She wiped it with her sleeve and looked at Alsbans until her breathing slowed.

The vision might have been warning, possibility, or deception. Trixalisse showed truth in shapes designed to wound the person seeing it.

But one thing was clear.

The wizards would eventually use him, fear him, or destroy him. Perhaps all three.

A child had to leave this place.

This child could not stay.

In the morning, Jelin woke him gently.

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“I will tell you about the day I found you.”

Alsbans sat up at once.

She had always refused to speak about it.

They left before the others woke. As they walked, Jelin told him how she had heard crying beneath the leaves, how he had appeared near the path without footprints or a mother nearby, and how Trakless had allowed him to stay without explanation.

Alsbans listened without interruption.

Then the questions came.

“What was I wearing?”

“A torn cloth. It smelled of smoke.”

“Was there blood?”

Jelin hesitated.

“Yes.”

“Mine?”

“I do not know.”

“Did anyone look for me?”

“Not where we could see.”

“Did you search?”

Jelin’s silence answered.

Alsbans looked ahead.

“Why did you never tell me?”

“Because I wanted Trixalisse to feel like the beginning of your life, not the place that came after someone abandoned you.”

“You do not know that I was abandoned.”

“No.”

“Then do not make my family guilty because you need them to be gone.”

The words struck her with the precision of his gift.

They walked beyond the familiar paths. The trees slowly thinned. For the first time in his memory, Alsbans saw an open piece of sky between the branches. It was painfully blue.

“Jelin, we have come very far.”

“I know.”

“Trixalisse is behind us.”

“I want to show you something.”

They reached a low hill where roots hung across the mouth of a cave. Jelin pulled them aside and entered. Alsbans followed.

The cave was small, dry, and empty except for a little food, a water skin, and an old blanket placed near the wall.

He looked at the supplies, then at Jelin.

“There is nothing here.”

Stone ground against stone behind him.

Alsbans turned.

Jelin had stepped outside and pushed a great rock across the entrance. Only a narrow crack remained near the top.

For a moment, he did not understand what he was seeing.

“Jelin.”

She continued pushing until the last daylight became a thin blade.

“What are you doing?”

No answer.

Alsbans ran to the entrance and struck both palms against the stone.

“Why did you do this? Open it.”

Jelin leaned her forehead against the other side.

“Listen to me carefully. When you find your way out, you will not return to Trixalisse.”

“Open the stone.”

“You will go south until you reach running water. Follow it beyond the black rocks. There are settlements there. People.”

“Open it!”

His voice filled the cave and returned to him from every wall.

“Do you understand me?” Jelin asked.

Alsbans felt her fear through the stone. He felt her love too, and that made the betrayal worse. Hatred from an enemy was simple. Love that chose to hurt him was a door with no safe side.

“I will come back,” he said.

Jelin closed her eyes.

“No.”

“I will come back, and I will kill you. Do not forget that.”

The threat did not sound like a child’s anger. It sounded like a promise he was creating because she had taken every other promise from him.

Jelin began to cry silently.

Her disappointment was not in him. She understood that his rage meant he still believed she was worth returning to. If he had simply accepted the abandonment, Trixalisse would already have taken something worse from him.

“Jelin,” he called after a while.

She did not answer.

“Jelin.”

Her footsteps moved away.

The cave became completely still.

Alsbans struck the stone until his hands bled. He shouted her name until the word lost its meaning. When exhaustion forced him to stop, he sat with his back against the entrance and listened for her return.

Evening came. The thin light above him faded.

He discovered the food and water but refused them at first. Eating would mean accepting that she had planned his imprisonment. Hunger eventually proved stronger than pride.

Each day, Jelin came to the crack above the stone. She dropped bread, fruit, and small pieces of meat through it. Sometimes Alsbans saw the shadow of her hand.

She never spoke.

He tried kindness.

“Jelin, I am not angry anymore. Open it.”

He tried guilt.

“You said you loved me most.”

He tried cruelty.

“When I die, it will be because you were afraid.”

He tried silence, believing she might become frightened enough to enter.

Nothing changed.

Alone in the cave, Alsbans began studying every surface. Jelin had told him when he found his way out, not if. Somewhere inside the betrayal, she had left him confidence.

That knowledge kept him from surrendering.

Then, one afternoon, voices sounded beyond the entrance.

Not Jelin’s voice.

Men.

“Did you hear that?”

“There is someone inside.”

Armor scraped against stone. Alsbans moved away from the entrance and picked up a sharp rock.

“Who is in there?” a man called. “What is your name?”

Alsbans thought of the wizards, of the stories about Meras, and of the red marks he had once seen on a soldier’s armor in a stolen memory. He did not know who the men were, but he knew names could become chains.

“Kales,” he answered. “My name is Kales.”

The men laughed.

“A child. Move the stone. We can sell him with the others.”

There were four soldiers of Meras.

They shifted the rock just wide enough for one man to enter. He expected to find a starving prisoner too weak to resist.

Alsbans struck him in the throat with the sharp stone.

The soldier fell backward. Alsbans moved through the opening before the others understood. He took the man’s short sword, cut the arm of the second soldier, and drove his shoulder into the third.

He fought the way Trixalisse had taught him: without fairness, warning, or wasted movement.

But he was still a child, and the soldiers were trained men.

One struck him across the back. Another caught his hair. Alsbans twisted free, leaving blood in the man’s hand, and retreated into the cave before they could surround him.

The soldiers did not follow.

For several moments, he heard only their breathing and curses.

Then one said, “Smoke him out.”

They gathered dry wood and pushed it through the crack. The first flame caught slowly. The next spread along the pile. Smoke rose toward the ceiling and rolled through the cave.

Alsbans covered his mouth with the old blanket.

“Come out, Kales,” a soldier called. “You might still live.”

Alsbans knew the voice was lying.

Heat filled the entrance. Fire crawled across the food Jelin had brought him. The blanket began to smolder in his hands.

He moved deeper into the cave.

There, near the back, he felt cool air against his face.

A crack ran through the stone wall, hidden behind loose earth. Alsbans dropped the blanket and dug. His fingernails tore. Smoke made his eyes stream. He clawed at the earth with both hands, then used the soldier’s short sword as a lever.

The opening widened one stone at a time.

Behind him, the cave burned brighter.

His hair singed. Heat blistered one shoulder. He thought of Jelin outside the entrance, feeding him in silence. He thought of Trakless asking whom he loved most.

I love the one who loves me most.

The sentence now seemed like something spoken by another child.

The final stone gave way.

Cold air rushed through the gap.

Alsbans forced his body into it, scraping skin from his arms and back. For one terrible moment, his hips became trapped. Fire cracked behind him. He exhaled, twisted, and pulled until the stone tore his clothes and released him.

He fell onto the forest floor.

The soldiers remained near the entrance, waiting for him to scream or crawl through the smoke. One of their own had fallen unconscious inside and did not rise. Eventually, believing both the child and their companion dead, they left.

Alsbans lay beneath the trees until evening.

His body was torn, burned, and exhausted. Each breath hurt. He could have followed Jelin’s directions south.

Instead, he began walking toward Trixalisse.

He told himself he was returning to keep his threat. He would find Jelin and make her feel the fear she had given him.

But beneath the anger lived another need.

He wanted her to see that he had survived.

He wanted her to run toward him.

Every step hurt, but the thought carried him through the dark.

That night, Jelin returned to the cave with food.

She knew something was wrong before she reached the hill. The air carried smoke. No insects sounded in the grass. One of the hanging roots near the entrance had burned through and lay curled upon the ground.

Jelin dropped the food and ran.

The great stone had been moved. Heat breathed from the narrow opening. She forced it wider with magic, cutting her palm against the rock in her haste.

“Alsbans?”

Smoke answered.

She entered.

The ground was black. The blanket had burned to ash. Blood marked the stone near the entrance. Farther inside lay the body of a soldier, his clothes and skin damaged by fire.

Jelin saw the size of the body. She saw the armor. She should have understood.

Grief understood first.

“Alsbans.”

She moved toward the body but could not make herself touch it. The smoke stung her eyes. His name left her again, weaker this time.

She remembered his threat: I will come back, and I will kill you.

She had thought the anger meant he would survive.

Now the cave appeared to hold the proof that she had mistaken cruelty for protection.

Jelin began to cry before she had finished looking.

She did not discover the opening at the rear. She did not see the blood leading through it. Her own fear showed her only what she believed she had caused.

She ran back toward Trixalisse.

Alsbans reached the edge of the forest shortly after her.

He heard her before he saw the hut. Jelin was calling his name between sobs, stumbling through the trees. Alsbans stepped behind a trunk. He did not yet know why he hid. Perhaps some part of him wanted to hear what people said when they believed the dead could no longer listen.

Jelin entered the clearing.

The wizards emerged one by one.

“Alsbans is dead,” she said. “I saw him. The cave burned. I saw him burning.”

Trakless’s blue flames went completely still.

“Show me what you saw.”

“No.”

“Jelin.”

“I will not let you enter my mind. Not now.”

The other wizards exchanged glances.

One shrugged.

“He was already finished for us.”

Another smiled faintly.

“Then the forest corrected our mistake.”

Jelin turned on him.

“He was a child.”

“So were you once. It passed.”

“I killed him.”

“Then you have finally learned something useful.”

The words echoed across the clearing.

Trakless looked toward the trees. For a moment, Alsbans believed the wizard could see him. Their eyes almost met through the darkness.

But Trakless turned away.

The wizards began to leave.

Some said nothing. Some wore expressions of relief. One laughed softly as he entered the hut. No one approached Jelin. No one placed a hand upon her shoulder. No one told her that grief could be shared.

She stood alone in the center of the clearing and cried.

Alsbans watched all of it.

He had returned imagining her running into his arms. Instead, he heard the people who had raised him dismiss his death as the removal of an inconvenience. He saw Jelin break beneath guilt, yet he could not separate her grief from the stone she had pushed across the cave.

Love and betrayal existed in the same place, and he was too young to hold both without choosing one.

He chose betrayal.

For a long time, he remained behind the tree. Then he turned away from Trixalisse.

He did not speak Jelin’s name.

He did not keep his promise to kill her.

There are moments when leaving is a harsher punishment than revenge, though the person leaving rarely understands that at the time.

Alsbans walked until the clearing disappeared behind him.

He needed a new home.

He walked like a person with somewhere to be.

At first, he walked calmly.

Then the words he had heard began repeating within him.

Already finished for us.

The forest corrected our mistake.

He began to run.

Branches struck his face. Roots caught at his feet. He ran farther into the trees and screamed at people who could no longer hear him.

“Traitors!”

His voice cracked.

“You are all traitors!”

He shouted Jelin’s name once, then hated himself for it.

“Alsbans is dead to you!” he cried. “Do you hear me? He is dead!”

The forest returned pieces of the sentence from different directions.

He ran until his lungs burned and his legs lost strength. Still, he continued. Hunger twisted inside him. His burns pulled painfully whenever he moved. He knew he needed water, rest, and help.

He did not care.

Pain was the only thing that felt honest. It did not claim to love him before closing a stone across the door.

His foot caught beneath a root.

Alsbans fell hard, striking his cheek against the earth. For a while, he remained where he had landed. Leaves clung to the blood on his hands.

“I do not want anyone anymore,” he whispered.

No one answered.

“I do not want to be unhappy anymore.”

The second sentence made him angry because it sounded like a child’s wish. He had been trained to survive smoke, blades, hunger, and fear. Yet no lesson had taught him how to stop wanting people who could hurt him.

He pulled dry leaves over his body and curled beneath a tree.

Before closing his eyes, he made himself a promise.

He would never again love someone merely because they claimed to love him most.

Morning found him feverish.

Hunger woke him first. Then thirst. Sunlight moved between unfamiliar branches, and for several moments, he did not know which direction led back to Trixalisse.

The discovery brought relief.

Through the trees, he saw a thin column of smoke rising far away. Smoke could mean soldiers, fire, or people cooking food. Any of those possibilities was more useful than remaining beneath the leaves.

Alsbans stood.

He was still angry, but anger had changed during the night. It no longer pushed him to run without direction. It settled deeper, becoming something colder and more patient.

He wanted to live.

That desire surprised him.

He followed the smoke through land that belonged to no village he knew. The forest grew thinner. Small stones marked paths made by human feet. Once, he found the remains of a cart and searched it for food, discovering only a broken wheel and a child’s shoe.

Near midday, he heard running water.

He pushed through a wall of bushes and found a stone fountain built beside the road. Clear water poured from the mouth of a carved animal whose face had been worn smooth by time.

Alsbans dropped to his knees and drank with both hands.

The cold water hurt his empty stomach. He drank anyway.

“That is enough.”

A man stood on the other side of the fountain.

His clothes were torn, and dust covered his beard. A leather bag hung across one shoulder. He smelled of sweat, road, and smoke. His eyes were sharp but not entirely focused, as though he were watching something behind Alsbans as well as the child himself.

“Get away,” the man said. “This water is mine.”

Alsbans wiped his mouth.

“Why is it yours?”

“Because I found it before you.”

“The stone was here before you.”

“Then it belongs to the stone. The stone has given it to me.”

Alsbans almost walked away. The man was either mad or trying to appear harmless.

Then the stranger tilted his head.

“Alsbans,” he said, testing the name. “That is what they called through the forest.”

Alsbans moved before thought.

He seized the man by the throat and forced him against the fountain.

“How do you know my name?”

The stranger did not resist as strongly as he could have.

“I heard it last night,” he gasped. “A girl was shouting. Then someone else screamed that Alsbans was dead. The whole forest knew your name before you arrived.”

Alsbans tightened his grip.

“What girl?”

“I did not see her. Only heard. How could anyone near those trees not hear you? Why are you so angry?”

Alsbans released him.

The man rubbed his throat but did not reach for a weapon.

“You should be more careful with names,” he said. “They travel faster than bodies.”

Alsbans looked at the water.

“Take it. It is yours.”

He turned to leave.

“Alsbans.”

The child stopped.

“What?”

The stranger’s expression had changed. The madness remained, but grief had appeared beneath it.

“Will you tell her I love her very much?”

“Tell who?”

The man looked toward the smoke in the distance.

“She will know.”

Then he ran.

He moved with sudden speed, disappearing between the trees before Alsbans could ask another question.

Alsbans watched the empty road.

“Madman,” he muttered.

Yet the request stayed with him.

Tell her I love her very much.

He hated that the sentence sounded like something said before a person left forever.

The smoke led him to a small settlement hidden between low trees. There were no more than ten people and four rough houses built around a shared fire. Strips of cloth hung between branches. A thin goat stood tied beside a cart. The place looked temporary, as though its inhabitants expected to leave the moment the world noticed them.

Alsbans crouched behind a bush and watched.

A woman stirred a pot over the fire. Two children repaired a fishing net. An old man sat sharpening a knife, though his eyes appeared too weak to see the blade clearly. No one wore the armor of Meras.

Alsbans studied their movements. He searched for concealed weapons, fear, and lies. He told himself he was deciding whether to steal food after dark.

What he did not know was that the people had seen him long before he found the courage to approach.

That night, Alsbans’s stomach was hurting from hunger.

He had not eaten properly for days. He had been surviving on a few fruits he found in the forest, some water, and whatever else he could manage to find. But hunger was something that knew how to silence even a person’s pride.

Alsbans whispered to himself,

“I have to do it tonight.”

He sat there quietly for a while.

“Yes… I’m hungry. I’m starving. If I steal because I’m hungry, what will happen? That doesn’t make me a bad person.”

He repeated the words to himself, as if he were trying to convince someone else.

“I’m not a bad person. Why would I be? I need it. They already have food.”

He waited a little longer.

Then he stood up.

Under the cover of darkness, he began walking toward the settlement.

In the distance, a few windows were still glowing with light. Others had already gone dark. Alsbans stood at the edge of the settlement for a while, watching the houses.

Eventually, he chose the house whose lamp had been the last to go out.

“Everyone must be asleep.”

He approached quietly.

With every step, he looked around. Whenever a branch snapped beneath his feet, he froze, held his breath, and waited several seconds before moving again.

He slowly pushed the door open.

He stepped inside.

The house was dark.

For a moment, he could see nothing. Then his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He could hear the people sleeping inside, their breathing soft and steady.

Alsbans’s heart began to race.

He had never entered another person’s home like this before.

For a moment, he thought about turning back.

Then his stomach growled.

That sound made the decision for him.

He quietly made his way into the kitchen.

He found where the food was stored.

He took a piece of bread.

Then another.

For a moment, he stared at the bread in his hands.

“No one is going to die because of this,” he whispered.

He took a little more food and placed everything into a bag.

Then, as quietly as he had entered, he slipped outside.

He closed the door.

For several seconds, he simply stood there.

No one had woken up.

No one had seen him.

Alsbans took a deep breath.

Then he ran.

He disappeared into the darkness.

He looked back several times, but he could not see anyone following him. Still, he did not stop.

He ran until his legs could carry him no farther.

When he was far enough from the settlement, he hid among the bushes. He looked around carefully.

No one would find him here.

He opened the bag.

He took out the bread.

For a moment, he simply stared at it.

Then he began to eat.

Quickly.

As though someone might come and take it away from him.

He barely finished one bite before reaching for another, trying not to let even the smallest crumbs fall to the ground.

That night, for the first time in a long while, he felt the emptiness inside his stomach slowly disappear.

When the food was gone, he leaned his back against a tree.

His eyes grew heavy.

“I’m not a bad person,” he whispered.

This time, he said it more quietly.

Perhaps even he did not believe it.

But he had no strength left to say anything else.

He closed his eyes.

And fell asleep.

When morning came, Alsbans first felt the warmth of the sun against his face.

Then he heard a voice.

“He’s awake.”

Alsbans’s eyes opened instantly.

He sat upright.

And froze.

There were people standing around him.

Not one.

Not two.

Almost the entire settlement was there.

Alsbans could barely breathe.

His bag lay beside him.

Empty.

Not a single piece of food remained.

But it no longer mattered.

Because they had found him.

Alsbans slowly backed away.

“What do you want?”

No one answered.

There was anger on their faces.

Some looked at him with contempt.

Others simply looked curious.

Finally, an old man stepped forward.

He stopped in front of Alsbans.

“Are you ready to be ashamed, young man?”

Alsbans frowned.

“Why should I be ashamed? What did I do?”

The man’s expression did not change.

“You stole our food.”

Alsbans’s eyes dropped to the ground for a moment.

Then he looked back at the man.

“You wouldn’t have given me any if I had asked!”

His voice rose.

“You wouldn’t have!”

Several people in the crowd exchanged glances.

But the old man remained calm.

“No,” he said. “Perhaps we would have.”

Alsbans fell silent.

“Sometimes a person does not want to take what they need by force. Sometimes they simply do not know how to ask. And sometimes they are afraid of being refused, so they choose the easier path.”

The man took a step closer.

“But whatever the reason, what you did has consequences.”

Alsbans clenched his fists.

“I was hungry.”

“I know.”

“I haven’t eaten properly for days.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you here?”

The old man stared at him for a long moment.

“Because being hungry does not change what you did.”

The anger slowly disappeared from Alsbans’s face.

Fear took its place.

The man glanced back at the others, then turned toward Alsbans again.

“But we will give you a choice, young man.”

Alsbans looked at him in confusion.

“What choice?”

The man’s voice became colder.

“You can stay with us.”

A brief silence followed.

“You will do all the work we do. You will work. And in return, you will be allowed to live.”

Alsbans frowned.

“So…”

The man finished the sentence.

“You will be our slave.”

Alsbans’s expression changed instantly.

“What?”

The people behind the man watched in silence.

“Or…”

The man paused.

“We kill you here.”

Alsbans’s eyes widened.

“No…”

His voice was no longer angry.

It was frightened.

“No. What do you mean?”

He took a step backward.

“A slave?”

The man said nothing.

Alsbans shook his head.

“I’m not a slave.”

“Then choose the other option.”

Alsbans looked around.

For the first time, he truly felt alone.

Trixalisse was gone.

Jelin was gone.

There was no one left to protect him.

And when he searched the people’s eyes for mercy, he found none.

“I…”

His voice trembled.

“I don’t want to be a slave.”

The man shrugged.

“Then make your choice.”

Alsbans could not answer.

For a while, he simply stared at the ground.

Finally, the man turned away.

“Then the young man has made his choice.”

The crowd slowly began to disperse.

Alsbans remained where he was, unable to move.

As the people passed him, one of them suddenly stopped.

He leaned toward Alsbans’s ear.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “They won’t kill you.”

Then he walked away as if nothing had happened.

Alsbans stared after him.

“What…?”

The man had already disappeared into the crowd.

Someone at the front turned around and shouted,

“Come on! Follow us!”

Alsbans did not move.

The man shouted again.

“Where are you, young man?”

Alsbans lifted his head.

For a moment, he watched them.

Then, slowly, he stood.

He lowered his head.

And began walking after them.

But there was something no one noticed.

Alsbans’s hands had tightened into fists.

And in that moment, for the first time in his life, he began to understand just how precious freedom truly was.

Chapter 4: A Place to Belong

As the days passed, Alsbans began to understand that life was not made of suffering alone.

In the beginning, he woke each morning with the same thought: how he might escape.

Every day among the people of Fenis felt like a day taken from him by force. He did the work they gave him, listened when they spoke, and obeyed when he had to, but none of it felt like his own choice.

To him, they were simply the people who had made him a slave.

And perhaps, in those first days, he had every reason to see them that way.

But days became weeks, and weeks slowly turned into months.

And something strange began to happen.

No one treated him like a slave anymore.

When he woke in the morning, there was no one standing over him waiting to give him orders. Instead, someone would call him to breakfast.

When he worked, the others did not merely tell him what to do. They showed him how to do it.

And when evening came, no one sent him away from the others.

They made room for him beside the fire.

At first, Alsbans did not understand it.

Perhaps he did not want to.

Hating someone was easy.

But when the person you hated began treating you with kindness, hatred became far more difficult to hold onto.

Little by little, Alsbans stopped feeling like a slave among them.

He began to feel like a friend.

No one announced the change.

No one stood before him one morning and said, You are one of us now.

It happened quietly.

One day, he realized he was laughing with them.

Another day, someone asked what he thought before making a decision.

Once, a child ran toward him, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward the others without the slightest hesitation.

Alsbans had stared at the child for a moment.

He isn’t afraid of me.

Perhaps that was what had truly changed.

People were no longer afraid of him.

And Alsbans was slowly learning not to be afraid of them.

He began to love the place.

He tried to live as they lived, to understand what they understood, to learn what they knew.

But there was something else happening inside him.

Something he did not yet recognize.

Alsbans was not only learning about their world.

He was learning about himself.

He had no idea how much potential existed within him.

He did not even think of it as talent.

He was simply curious.

And perhaps the thing Alsbans loved most in the world was learning.

If he did not know something, he asked.

If he did not understand the answer, he asked again.

If one person’s answer was not enough, he found another person.

Sometimes he asked so many questions that people laughed and sent him away.

The next morning, Alsbans would return.

And ask another.

He learned to fight.

In the beginning, he swung a sword with nothing but anger. To him, strength meant striking harder than the person standing in front of him.

Over time, he learned that strength was something else entirely.

He learned where to place his feet.

He learned to notice the smallest movement of an opponent’s shoulder and understand where the next attack would come from.

He learned when to strike.

More importantly, he learned when not to.

He learned to read.

At first, letters had looked like meaningless marks scratched across a page.

Then those marks became words.

Words became sentences.

And sentences opened doors to worlds he had never known existed.

One day, Alsbans closed a book and stared at its cover for a long time.

The thought fascinated him.

A person could die, disappear from the world for hundreds of years, and yet still speak to someone through the words they had left behind.

He learned to write.

He learned to take the thoughts trapped inside his mind and leave them on paper.

He learned to think.

He began to understand people not only through what they said, but through what they chose not to say.

He learned how to grow.

How to lose.

Sometimes, how to forget.

Sometimes, how to remember.

And perhaps the most difficult thing he had ever learned…

was how to be loved.

Alsbans had known what it was like for people to need him.

But he had never understood that someone could remain beside him without needing anything from him at all.

He had never truly believed that someone might love him simply because he was himself.

In Trixalisse, they had cared for him.

Jelin had protected him.

But everything that happened afterward had tied love and fear together inside his heart.

Whenever Alsbans loved someone, a part of him expected them to leave.

That was why trusting the people of Fenis had taken so long.

He expected every good thing to end.

But the days continued to pass.

And no one left.

The child who had once stolen their food and stood trembling before them had become a young man known by everyone in the settlement.

Children ran toward him when they saw him.

The elderly invited him to sit beside the fire and listen to stories of times long gone.

The young trained with him, worked beside him, argued with him, and laughed with him.

The boy people once watched with suspicion had become someone they were happy to see.

And time did not stop for him.

Alsbans was growing.

The last traces of childhood were slowly disappearing from his face.

He was becoming a young man.

He was handsome, of average height, with striking blue eyes. People sometimes told him so, though Alsbans rarely cared much about his appearance.

Other things interested him far more.

Questions.

Conversation.

Knowledge.

He could sit across from someone and speak for hours.

Perhaps his favorite word had always been:

Why?

Why do people fight?

Why are we afraid?

Why do we love?

Why do some people become good while others become cruel?

And perhaps the question that interested him most was this:

Can a person truly change?

One evening, he and his closest friend, Cesa, sat outside the settlement.

The sun was slowly disappearing behind the trees, and the color of the sky was growing darker.

Cesa had been watching Alsbans for some time.

Eventually, he broke the silence.

“How are you, Alsbans?”

Alsbans looked at him.

“I’m fine.”

Cesa waited.

He knew Alsbans too well to believe that would be the entire answer.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, Alsbans continued.

“But I feel strange.”

“Strange how?”

Alsbans pulled his knees closer to himself and stared into the distance.

“I feel as though my life is somewhere else.”

Cesa frowned.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

Alsbans searched for the right words.

“It feels like everything is moving so quickly.”

“Everything does move.”

“No. That’s not what I mean.”

Alsbans shook his head.

“People are growing. Things are changing. Everyone seems to know where they are going. Something happens every day. Everyone keeps moving forward.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“But sometimes I feel as though I’ve stopped.”

Cesa watched him.

Alsbans continued.

“As though the entire world is passing in front of me while I’m standing in the same place.”

Cesa smiled faintly.

“You know something, Alsbans?”

“What?”

“Maybe we’re all like that.”

Alsbans turned toward him.

“All of us?”

“Yes.”

Cesa picked up a small stone from the ground and turned it between his fingers.

“Sometimes we run.”

He threw the stone into the distance.

“Sometimes we walk.”

Then he looked at Alsbans.

“And sometimes we stop.”

“Isn’t that a bad thing?”

“Who said it was?”

Alsbans had no answer.

Cesa shrugged.

“Maybe sometimes a person has to stop before he can understand where he’s going.”

Alsbans thought about it for a few seconds.

Then he smiled.

“You might be right.”

“I am right.”

“And how are you so sure?”

“Because I said it.”

Alsbans laughed.

Before he could answer, a voice came from the settlement.

“CESA! ALSBANS!”

They both turned.

Kesal was calling them.

“Food is ready! Where have you two been?”

Cesa immediately stood.

“Run.”

Alsbans looked at him.

“Why?”

“Because if we’re late, everyone else will eat the best food.”

Cesa started running.

Alsbans shouted after him.

“That’s cheating!”

“Life isn’t fair!”

Laughing, Alsbans ran after him.

They reached the others together.

That evening, the tables seemed more crowded than usual.

Food had been placed everywhere. People sat beside one another, conversations overlapping as laughter rose from one side of the table and arguments from another.

Alsbans sat beside Cesa.

Everything seemed normal.

Then Kesal stood.

He held a cup in one hand.

With a spoon, he struck it gently.

The conversations slowly faded.

Kesal looked around.

“People of Fenis!”

Everyone turned toward him.

“Today is an important day.”

The people at the tables exchanged confused looks.

Alsbans looked at Cesa.

Cesa shrugged.

Kesal continued.

“Today, someone new will join us.”

Whispers immediately spread across the tables.

“Someone new?”

“Who?”

“Did someone come here?”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

Cesa leaned toward Alsbans.

“What’s happening?”

Alsbans shook his head.

“Why are you asking me? I don’t know either.”

No one at the table seemed to understand.

Kesal watched their confusion for a moment.

Then his eyes settled on one person.

“Alsbans.”

The whispers stopped.

Alsbans looked around before pointing toward himself.

“Me?”

Kesal smiled.

“Yes. You. Come here.”

Alsbans slowly stood.

He had no idea what was happening.

Everyone was watching him.

He walked toward Kesal.

“What happened?”

For several seconds, Kesal said nothing.

Then he placed a hand on Alsbans’s shoulder.

“Alsbans.”

His voice was calm, but serious.

“Do you remember the first day you came here?”

How could Alsbans forget?

He remembered waking among the bushes.

The people surrounding him.

The fear.

The bread he had stolen.

And the two choices they had given him.

He nodded slowly.

“I remember.”

“We gave you a choice.”

The smile disappeared from Alsbans’s face.

Kesal continued.

“You would work for us.”

A short silence followed.

“And you would be our slave.”

No one at the table spoke.

Alsbans looked into Kesal’s eyes.

He could still feel the man’s hand resting on his shoulder.

“But today…”

A small smile appeared on Kesal’s face.

“You are no longer a slave.”

Alsbans did not move.

It was as though he had heard the words but his mind had not yet understood them.

Kesal stepped slightly closer.

“From this day forward, you are not merely a young man who happens to live among us.”

He raised his cup.

“You are a free man.”

Alsbans’s eyes widened.

Then Kesal raised his voice so that everyone could hear him.

“You are now a true Humpellian.”

For a single moment, there was complete silence.

Then everything erupted at once.

People rose from their seats.

Cups were lifted into the air.

Voices filled the settlement.

“ALSBANS!”

Cesa jumped from his seat and wrapped his arms around him.

“I knew it!”

Alsbans still did not know what to say.

People slapped him on the back, embraced him, shouted his name, and laughed with such joy that some of them looked almost like children.

But in the middle of all that noise, Alsbans suddenly heard nothing.

Only Kesal’s words remained inside his mind.

You are no longer a slave.

He was free.

Alsbans closed his eyes.

He remembered the days when he had thought death would be better than remaining in this place.

He remembered how deeply he had hated these people.

The nights he had imagined escaping.

Then he thought of Cesa.

Of Kesal.

Of the words he had learned.

The first sword he had held.

The first book he had read.

The first evening someone had moved aside and made room for him at the table.

They were all pieces of the same life.

And that night, Alsbans understood something important.

Becoming someone new did not mean he had to kill the person he had once been.

The child from Trixalisse was still him.

The child who had screamed at Jelin was still him.

The child who escaped death inside the cave was still him.

The child who stole food was still him.

The slave was still him.

And the young man now standing before everyone was still him.

They were all Alsbans.

He could not erase his past.

Perhaps he was never supposed to.

Because the new Alsbans had not been born from the destruction of the old one.

He had been built upon him.

That night, he understood that everything he had learned had to stand beside everything he had once been.

His pain.

His anger.

His fears.

The people he had loved.

The people he had hated.

Everything he had lost.

Everything he had found.

The old Alsbans and the new Alsbans were no longer two different people.

They were one.

And perhaps that was what growing up truly meant.

Not escaping your past…

but becoming strong enough to carry it with you.

Chapter 5: The Price of Brotherhood

Alsbans was no longer a child.

The years he had spent in Fenis had changed more than his face and body. They had changed the way he looked at people, the way he spoke, the way he walked, even the way he remained silent.

The boy who had once been caught stealing food and forced to choose between death and slavery had grown into a young man.

And according to the traditions of Fenis, another time had come for him.

The time to find a partner.

In Fenis, reaching the age when a young man was expected to seek a companion was no ordinary occasion. On that day, the men dressed more carefully than usual, fixed their hair, wore the finest clothes they owned, and stood before the women hoping to leave the best impression they could.

Some tried to display their strength.

Some their wealth.

Some their intelligence.

Others simply tried to be themselves.

Alsbans found the whole tradition rather strange.

He stood before a mirror for a long time while getting ready.

He brushed back his blond hair and put on one of the finest outfits he had been given.

Against the pale fabric, his blue eyes appeared even brighter.

Cesa was already waiting outside and had begun to lose his patience.

“Alsbans!”

“I’m coming.”

“You’ve said that three times.”

Alsbans opened the door.

Cesa looked at him.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Alsbans raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

Cesa shook his head.

“Nothing.”

“You were about to say something.”

“No.”

“Cesa.”

Cesa sighed.

“I’m going to hate you today.”

Alsbans laughed.

“Why?”

“You’ll understand soon enough.”

They walked toward the square together.

And it did not take long for Alsbans to understand what Cesa had meant.

Young men had gathered on one side of the square, while the women stood on the other. People talked, laughed, and studied one another from across the open space.

But when Alsbans entered the square, several conversations stopped.

A few heads turned toward him.

Then a few more.

And soon, almost everyone was looking.

When Alsbans noticed, he leaned awkwardly toward Cesa.

“Why is everyone staring at me?”

Cesa did not even look at him.

“I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“That I was going to hate you today.”

Alsbans laughed.

“You’re exaggerating.”

He was not.

There was hardly a woman among them who did not find Alsbans attractive.

The other young men had prepared for this day for months. They had worn their finest clothes and done everything they could to stand out.

Yet most of the attention had settled on Alsbans.

Cesa folded his arms.

“Wonderful.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying again.”

“I’m having the greatest day of my life, Alsbans.”

Alsbans laughed.

“I can tell.”

When the choices were made, the result was hardly surprising.

Alsbans had been chosen by far the greatest number of women.

Cesa was among the most popular as well, but beside Alsbans, the attention he received seemed almost insignificant.

Everyone assumed the competition was already over.

Then Kesal stepped forward.

He raised a hand.

“Wait.”

The crowd fell silent.

Kesal looked at the young men.

“It is easy to choose a person by looking at his face.”

A few people smiled.

“But you will not spend your life looking only at his face.”

He paused.

“You will see his anger.”

“You will see his sorrow.”

“You will see his silence.”

“And years from now, when the beauty of his face has changed, what will remain is his mind and his soul.”

Alsbans listened carefully.

Kesal smiled.

“So today, the winner will not be decided only by the women’s choice.”

The crowd stirred.

“This year, we will do something different.”

Kesal pointed toward Alsbans and Cesa.

“The two men who received the most choices, come forward.”

Cesa looked at Alsbans.

“Of course.”

Alsbans smiled and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Come on, soul brother.”

They walked to the center of the square.

They were seated opposite one another.

Kesal turned toward the crowd.

“Everyone, close your eyes.”

People exchanged confused looks.

“Close them.”

This time, everyone obeyed.

Kesal continued.

“Now you will not judge beauty.”

“You will only listen.”

“Each of them will speak one short poem. It does not need to be long.”

Cesa opened his eyes.

“Who starts?”

Kesal looked at him.

“You.”

“Why me?”

A few people in the crowd laughed.

Kesal answered without hesitation.

“Because fewer people chose you.”

Laughter erupted.

Cesa lowered his head.

“Thank you, Kesal.”

Alsbans bit his lip, trying not to laugh.

Cesa looked at him.

“Don’t laugh too much.”

Then he took a deep breath.

He thought for a moment.

And spoke.

"The meaning is not hidden in books written about love.

It is hidden in the worth of every sentence you read."

The crowd remained silent.

Kesal nodded.

“Good.”

Then he looked at Alsbans.

“Your turn, Alsbans.”

Cesa turned toward him.

“Let’s hear it, soul brother.”

Alsbans closed his eyes.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then he spoke.

"With every breath I take,

let your scent become the air inside me.

And tonight…

let us become

the song sung by the stars."

A few quiet breaths could be heard from the crowd.

Alsbans opened his eyes.

Cesa was staring at him.

Alsbans smiled.

“Soul brother.”

Cesa raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“You can’t defeat my heart.”

Cesa’s smile disappeared.

“Come on,” Alsbans said. “Your turn.”

This time, Cesa spoke more seriously.

The warmth in his voice had been replaced by the beginning of anger.

"I am a lonely man

waiting at the edge of your lips.

And wherever I may fall…

every place I fall

becomes your heart."

The crowd reacted more loudly this time.

Alsbans looked at his friend.

Cesa really was good.

But the small smile on Alsbans’s face only irritated him further.

Alsbans leaned forward.

“Then I want you to know something, soul brother…”

He paused.

The playfulness disappeared from his voice.

"The greatest pain

is to be abandoned while you still love."

Cesa looked at him.

Alsbans continued.

"Not once…

but twice."

For a moment, he remembered Jelin.

He remembered Trixalisse.

He remembered standing in the darkness and listening to the people he had once loved speak as though his death meant nothing.

"Not dying once…

but twice."

The crowd had become completely silent.

Alsbans did not take his eyes from Cesa.

"And I think tonight…

I will die here once again."

Cesa was about to answer.

But Kesal raised his hand.

“Enough.”

Cesa fell silent.

Kesal turned toward the crowd.

“In that case…”

“Everyone choose your side.”

One by one, the people made their choice.

One side for Cesa.

The other for Alsbans.

At first, the numbers seemed close.

Then Alsbans’s side began to grow.

One person.

Then another.

Then another.

Until the result became undeniable.

Alsbans had won.

The crowd applauded.

Alsbans rose with a smile.

The first person he looked toward was Cesa.

But Cesa was not smiling.

He stood.

Without saying a word to anyone, he began walking away from the crowd.

Alsbans immediately tried to follow him.

But Kesal caught him by the wrist.

“Wait.”

“Cesa is leaving.”

“Let him.”

Alsbans watched his friend disappear into the distance.

Kesal turned toward him.

“Now it is your turn.”

“My turn for what?”

Kesal gestured toward the women.

“Who do you choose?”

The conversations in the square stopped again.

Everyone looked at Alsbans.

Alsbans looked toward the women.

Then toward the direction Cesa had gone.

He thought for a moment.

“No one.”

Kesal frowned.

“What?”

“I’m choosing no one.”

Angry murmurs rose from the crowd.

“So many people chose you!”

“Are you insulting us?”

“What do you mean, no one?”

Alsbans did not answer.

Suddenly, he turned and ran.

“Alsbans!”

Kesal shouted after him.

But Alsbans was already gone.

He caught up with Cesa.

He grabbed him by the arm.

“Soul brother.”

Cesa pulled his arm away.

“Leave me alone.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying again.”

Cesa stopped.

Slowly, he turned toward Alsbans.

There was an anger in his eyes that Alsbans had rarely seen before.

“You stole what should have been mine.”

Alsbans stared at him.

“What?”

“You took it from me!”

“Cesa, it was only a competition.”

“For you, maybe.”

Cesa struck his own chest.

“For me, it wasn’t.”

Alsbans fell silent.

Cesa shook his head.

“Go.”

“Where?”

“Go choose the most beautiful one.”

“I chose no one.”

“How noble of you.”

“Cesa—”

“We are brothers, aren’t we?”

Alsbans answered without hesitation.

“Yes.”

Cesa laughed bitterly.

Then he shouted:

“You aren’t even from here, Alsbans!”

Every expression vanished from Alsbans’s face.

Cesa realized the weight of what he had said.

But it was already too late.

“What did you say?”

Cesa was breathing heavily.

Anger had spoken before thought could stop it.

“Go!”

“Cesa…”

“Go choose the most beautiful girl!”

His voice rose even higher.

“And then don’t come back!”

Alsbans said nothing.

For a moment, Fenis disappeared.

Cesa disappeared.

The years disappeared.

Alsbans was a child again.

The child standing alone at the edge of Trixalisse.

The child no one wanted.

The child sealed inside a cave.

The child who had listened from the shadows as the people who raised him spoke as though his death meant nothing.

You aren’t even from here.

Those words hurt more than everything else Cesa had said.

Because Cesa was his closest friend.

The person he called his soul brother.

The closest thing Alsbans had ever had to a real brother.

And now that person was telling him that he did not belong.

Alsbans’s lips moved slightly.

But no words came.

Cesa turned away.

He began to walk.

Alsbans did not stop him.

He simply watched him disappear.

That night, both of them returned to their homes.

When morning came, a strange silence hung over Fenis.

No one knew exactly what had happened.

But everyone could feel that something had changed.

Alsbans did not leave his house.

He did not answer anyone who came to his door.

Even when food was brought to him, he pretended not to hear.

Kesal knocked several times.

“Alsbans.”

No answer.

“Open the door.”

Still nothing.

Eventually, Kesal left.

He went to Cesa’s home.

The same silence greeted him there.

“Cesa.”

No answer.

Kesal shook his head.

“You’re both idiots.”

Then he walked away.

Hours passed.

The sun had climbed high into the sky as noon approached.

But that day, noon suddenly became night in Fenis.

First came the sound of horses.

Then dust.

Then shouting.

“SOLDIERS!”

People rushed out of their homes.

Within minutes, the square was full.

At the entrance to Fenis stood soldiers of Meras.

There were many of them.

Their armor shone beneath the sun.

Their weapons were ready.

Kesal stepped forward.

“What do you want?”

One of the soldiers moved his horse several steps closer.

“Kesal.”

Kesal said nothing.

The soldier pulled out a scroll.

“By the great command of Meras.”

Silence settled over the square.

“Every man capable of holding a weapon will come to Meras.”

Kesal’s expression hardened.

The soldier continued.

“For the war.”

Kesal looked at the people around him.

Fenis was small.

Very small.

Nearly all of its young men were already standing there.

“We cannot.”

The soldier raised an eyebrow.

“What did you say?”

“We cannot.”

Kesal raised his voice.

“There are already too few of us. If you take every man from this place, there will be no people left here to survive.”

The soldier watched him for a moment.

Then shrugged.

“Very well.”

Kesal hesitated.

Was it really going to be that simple?

At that moment, Cesa stepped out of his house.

He had not slept the entire night.

His anger was gone.

All that remained was shame for the words he had spoken.

He wanted to find Alsbans.

He would knock on his door and apologize.

Perhaps Alsbans would send him away.

Perhaps he would not even look at him.

But Cesa needed to say it.

You aren’t even from here.

Those words had echoed through his mind all night.

“What have I done?” he had whispered to himself.

When he stepped outside, he saw the soldiers gathered in the square.

He stopped.

One of them noticed him.

“You!”

Cesa began walking toward the square.

Kesal looked at him.

“Cesa, go back.”

But it was too late.

One of Meras’s soldiers lifted his bow.

Before anyone understood what he was doing, he drew the string.

Kesal shouted.

“STOP!”

The arrow was released.

Its flight was almost silent.

It struck Cesa.

Cesa stumbled backward.

He looked down.

He saw the arrow.

Then his knees gave way beneath him.

The square erupted into screams.

“CESA!”

People began running.

Some dragged children back toward the houses.

Others reached for weapons.

A woman screamed.

Kesal drew his sword.

And at that moment, Alsbans stepped outside his home.

He had heard the shouting.

At first, he had refused to leave.

Then he heard a name.

Cesa.

Alsbans looked toward the square.

He saw someone lying on the ground among the people.

There was blood on the pale earth.

And it took him only a second to understand who it was.

“Cesa…”

He ran.

“CESA!”

He pushed through the crowd and dropped to his knees beside him.

Cesa was still breathing.

Barely.

Alsbans pulled him into his arms.

“No.”

Cesa struggled to open his eyes.

“Soul…”

“Don’t speak.”

Alsbans saw the arrow.

“We can fix this.”

Cesa shook his head weakly.

“Alsbans.”

“Be quiet.”

“Listen.”

“No.”

Alsbans’s voice trembled.

“Don’t speak. I’ll carry you. We’ll find someone.”

Cesa managed the faintest smile.

"For once…

you’re asking very few questions."

Alsbans’s eyes filled with tears.

“Shut up.”

Cesa struggled for another breath.

“Yesterday…”

Alsbans shook his head.

“We are not talking about yesterday.”

“We are.”

Cesa’s voice was growing weaker.

“I’m sorry.”

Alsbans closed his eyes.

“I know.”

“No.”

Cesa slowly lifted his hand.

Alsbans took it.

“I need you to know.”

One breath.

Then another.

“You belong here.”

A tear fell from Alsbans’s eye.

Cesa continued.

"I was…

angry."

“I know.”

“You are my…”

His voice disappeared.

Alsbans leaned closer.

“I’m your what?”

Cesa smiled faintly.

“My soul brother.”

Alsbans tightened his grip on his hand.

“And you’re mine.”

Cesa’s eyes began to close.

“Forgive me.”

Alsbans did not hesitate.

“I forgive you.”

A faint sense of peace crossed Cesa’s face.

Then his hand became heavy inside Alsbans’s.

“Cesa?”

No answer.

“Cesa.”

Alsbans shook him gently.

“Soul brother.”

Silence.

“Cesa!”

The sounds of the square disappeared for Alsbans.

The angry words they had exchanged the night before meant nothing now.

The competition.

The women.

The poems.

Who had won.

None of it mattered.

Alsbans slowly lowered Cesa’s body to the ground.

Then he stood.

The grief did not leave his face.

But something else rose beneath it.

Rage.

He picked up the sword lying on the ground.

He looked toward the soldier of Meras.

The man who had fired the arrow was still standing there.

Alsbans began walking toward him.

Kesal shouted:

“Alsbans!”

Alsbans did not stop.

The soldier drew his sword.

Alsbans ran.

The first clash came in the middle of the square.

The sound of steel echoed between the houses of Fenis.

Then everything began.

The people of Fenis reached for their weapons.

The soldiers of Meras dismounted.

A bloody battle erupted.

Alsbans had fought many times before.

But never like this.

This time, he was not fighting to prove something.

He was not even fighting simply to survive.

Cesa lay dead only a few steps behind him.

Alsbans saw him with every strike.

A soldier rushed toward him.

Alsbans blocked the attack.

Turned.

Struck back.

The man fell.

Another came.

Then another.

The people of Fenis were few.

But they knew their homes.

They knew their streets.

They knew one another.

And they knew exactly what they stood to lose.

The battle did not last long.

But to them, it felt like hours.

At last, not a single soldier of Meras remained standing.

Silence returned.

But it was not the silence of the morning.

This time, bodies lay upon the ground.

People of Fenis.

Alsbans let his sword fall.

He wanted to turn back toward Cesa.

Then someone shouted.

“Kesal!”

Alsbans ran.

Kesal was leaning against the wall of a house.

A deep wound had opened across his stomach.

The people beside him were trying to stop the bleeding.

Alsbans dropped to his knees.

“Kesal.”

Kesal looked at him.

Strangely, he smiled.

“So you came.”

“Don’t speak.”

Kesal laughed weakly.

“Everyone keeps telling me not to speak today.”

Alsbans looked at the wound.

“We can close this.”

“No.”

“Kesal—”

“Alsbans.”

Something in Kesal’s voice changed.

Alsbans fell silent.

Kesal drew a deep breath.

“Listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Fenis cannot remain here.”

Alsbans looked around.

There were bodies.

There were wounded people.

Children were crying.

Kesal continued.

“Meras will return.”

Alsbans already knew.

When these soldiers failed to return, others would come.

More of them.

Perhaps hundreds.

“Get the people out of here.”

“Where?”

Kesal answered.

“Legacy.”

Alsbans looked at him.

He had heard that name before.

“Legacy?”

“You may have a chance there.”

Kesal closed his eyes.

Then opened them again.

“And one more thing.”

Alsbans held his hand.

“What?”

Kesal looked at him for a long time.

As if he were searching the young man’s face for the child who had once stolen food from them.

Perhaps he could still see him.

“You are the new leader of Fenis.”

Alsbans froze.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No.”

Alsbans immediately shook his head.

“I can’t.”

Kesal smiled faintly.

“Good.”

Alsbans stared at him.

“What’s good about that?”

“I would never make someone a leader if he were certain he could do it.”

Alsbans’s eyes filled with tears.

“Kesal…”

“Be afraid for your people.”

Alsbans frowned.

Kesal continued.

“Be afraid for their lives. Be afraid of the wrong choices you might make. Be afraid of losing them.”

His breathing grew heavier.

“But never let fear make your decisions for you.”

He tightened his grip on Alsbans’s hand.

“Take them to Legacy.”

“You are coming too.”

Kesal did not answer.

“Kesal.”

Silence.

“You are coming too.”

Kesal’s eyes slowly closed.

Alsbans did not release his hand.

For the second time that day, the hand of someone he loved became heavy inside his own.

Alsbans lowered his head.

He wanted to cry.

For Cesa.

For Kesal.

For himself.

But when he looked around, he saw that everyone was watching him.

Children.

Women.

Wounded men.

The elderly.

All of them were afraid.

And for the first time…

they were all waiting to hear what Alsbans would say.

Slowly, he stood.

For a moment, he could not speak.

Then he remembered Kesal’s final words.

Take them to Legacy.

Alsbans drew a deep breath.

“Listen to me!”

The people fell silent.

“We cannot stay here.”

Someone began to cry.

Alsbans continued.

“The soldiers of Meras will return. When the men who came here fail to return, more will come in their place.”

A man asked:

“What are we going to do?”

Alsbans looked toward the distance.

Then he answered.

“Everyone takes only what they can carry.”

“Food.”

“Water.”

“Weapons.”

“Whatever the children need.”

A woman asked:

“Where are we going?”

Alsbans remained silent for a moment.

Then, for the first time in his life, he gave an order that would change the fate of an entire people.

“Legacy.”

Whispers spread through the crowd.

Alsbans raised his voice.

“We leave slowly and together. No one travels alone. We leave no wounded person behind.”

Then he looked toward the center of the square.

Cesa was still there.

The night before, he had told Alsbans:

Don’t come back.

And only hours later, with his final breath:

You belong here.

Alsbans closed his eyes.

Then opened them again.

He was no longer crying.

The people of Fenis began to prepare.

Doors opened for the last time.

Food was packed into sacks.

Children held tightly to their mothers’ hands.

The wounded were lifted onto horses.

Quiet prayers were spoken for the dead.

And Alsbans stood in the center of the settlement while everyone prepared.

Only yesterday, he had been a young man expected to choose a partner.

Today, he was deciding where an entire people would go.

Sometimes life did not give a person years in which to grow.

Sometimes it gave them only a single day.

Alsbans looked at Fenis one last time.

Then he moved to the front of the road.

“When you’re ready…”

He looked back at the people behind him.

His people now.

“We leave.”

And so the people of Fenis abandoned their homes and began their journey toward Legacy.

Alsbans walked at the front.

Cesa was no longer beside him.

Kesal’s voice no longer followed from behind.

But he carried both of them with him.

One had taught him what brotherhood meant.

The other had taught him what it meant to carry the lives of others.

That day, Alsbans had failed to find a partner.

Instead, he had lost a brother…

lost a leader…

and inherited something he had never asked for.

The fate of a people.

Chapter 6: The Red Ink of Fate

Everyone followed behind Alsbans.

The farther they walked, the farther the end of the road seemed to move away from them.

They had been traveling for days, yet none of them truly knew where they were going.

Legacy existed on their maps.

It existed in the stories told by the elderly.

And Kesal, with his final breath, had told them to go there.

But no one among the people of Fenis had ever been to Legacy.

None of them had seen its lands.

None of them even knew whether they would be accepted when they arrived.

Perhaps the gates would be closed before them.

Perhaps, while fleeing the soldiers of Meras, they would find themselves standing before another enemy.

Perhaps Legacy was nothing more than a hopeful story people had repeated for generations because reality was too cruel to bear.

Still, they kept walking.

Because there was nothing left behind them to return to.

Sometimes people did not move forward because they knew where they were going.

Sometimes they walked simply because there was nowhere left to go back to.

And the people of Fenis had become exactly that kind of people.

When evening came, they stopped in a clearing deep within the forest.

Over the course of the journey, they had created a simple routine.

Women and children slept close to the fires.

Some of the men slept while the others kept watch.

After several hours, they changed places. Those who had been awake finally rested, while the others rose to guard the camp.

No one ever truly relaxed.

Every sound from the forest resembled the footsteps of a soldier.

Whenever a branch snapped, someone lifted his head.

Every distant cry of an animal made the children move a little closer to their mothers.

Alsbans remained among them.

He did not ask for a separate place to sleep.

He did not keep the best food for himself.

When his turn came to stand watch, he stood like everyone else.

One of the men once told him,

“You should rest. Tomorrow, you must lead us again.”

Alsbans shook his head.

“My exhaustion is no more important than yours.”

Another man said,

“But you are our leader now.”

Alsbans looked at him.

“That does not make my life more valuable than yours.”

He meant those words.

He did not want the people merely to hear them.

He wanted them to see them.

He slept on the same ground.

Drank from the same water.

Shared the same bread.

Feared the same darkness.

Their fate had become one.

And perhaps that was the first duty of a true leader:

to walk ahead of his people without ever believing he stood above them.

That night, the sky was almost completely black.

The fires had grown weak.

Most of the children were asleep.

Even the quiet conversations among the adults slowly disappeared.

But fear remained.

No one spoke about it.

They did not need to.

Everyone felt it.

What would happen tomorrow?

How much farther was Legacy?

Was Meras following them?

Would their food last?

How long could the wounded survive the journey?

In the middle of all those questions, the people had only one thing left.

Hope.

And that hope had a name.

Alsbans.

They believed in him.

And the more Alsbans understood how deeply they believed in him, the heavier that belief became.

Sometimes, he believed in himself too.

Sometimes, he truly thought he could do it.

They would reach Legacy.

He would protect his people.

He would carry the responsibility Kesal had placed upon him.

And then there were other nights.

Nights when everyone was asleep and a single question would return to him.

What if I cannot?

What if he was leading them in the wrong direction?

What if Legacy refused them?

What if Meras found them first?

What if Cesa would have been better at this than he was?

Alsbans sat beside the dying fire and looked toward the sky.

Stars could be seen between the branches above him.

One of them appeared brighter than all the others.

He stared at it for a long time.

There was something strange about it.

It did not seem merely to shine.

It seemed to watch him.

Then…

Alsbans heard a voice.

“Come.”

He turned.

No one was there.

The guards stood far away.

None of the sleeping people had moved.

Alsbans looked back toward the sky.

“Alsbans…”

This time, the voice was clearer.

“Come.”

He stood.

His heart began to beat faster.

For a moment, he considered telling the guards where he was going.

Then he changed his mind.

He did not know why.

He took his sword and quietly entered the forest.

The farther he walked between the trees, the smaller the fires behind him became.

Soon, all that remained of the Fenis camp was a distant orange glow.

Alsbans kept walking.

Leaves broke beneath his boots.

He had no idea where he was going.

And yet, strangely, he did not feel lost.

It felt as though he had walked this path before.

As though his body already knew every turn.

Eventually, he stopped before a large tree.

He looked up.

At first, the tree appeared no different from the others.

But the longer Alsbans stared at it, the more uneasy he became.

He knew this tree.

He was certain of it.

He simply could not remember from where.

Perhaps from a dream.

Perhaps from his childhood.

Perhaps he had never truly seen it at all.

Still, something deep inside him whispered:

You have seen this before.

Alsbans slowly reached toward the trunk.

Before his fingers touched the bark, a thin voice spoke from below.

“Humpellian.”

Alsbans froze.

His hand immediately moved toward his sword.

“Who’s there?”

Silence.

Then the voice came again.

“Humpellian, what do you seek in these woods?”

Alsbans looked down.

For several seconds, he could not speak.

A small turtle stood between the roots of the tree.

Alsbans looked around, expecting someone to be playing a trick on him.

“Who said that?”

The turtle lifted its head.

“I did.”

Alsbans stepped backward.

The turtle had spoken.

It had actually spoken.

Alsbans had seen wizards in Trixalisse.

He had heard voices in the darkness that imitated his father’s voice.

He had once touched a red rose and fallen into another place.

His life had never been ordinary.

But even after all of that, the sight of a small talking turtle felt like an omen.

The turtle watched him.

“Do not be afraid, Alsbans.”

Alsbans tightened his hand around the hilt of his sword.

“No harm will come to you from me.”

Alsbans frowned.

“I’m not afraid of you, turtle.”

Something almost resembling a smile appeared on the creature’s face.

“Of course not.”

Alsbans grew irritated.

“We are going to Legacy.”

The turtle said nothing.

“I’m saving my people.”

“Ah, Alsbans…”

Alsbans’s expression changed.

“Wait.”

The turtle slowly raised its head.

“What is it?”

“How do you know my name?”

The turtle did not answer.

Instead, it asked another question.

“Do you believe everyone among your people is good, Alsbans?”

Alsbans narrowed his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you believe you know your people?”

“Of course I do.”

“All of them?”

Alsbans did not answer.

The turtle began to move slowly between the roots of the tree.

“How important do you think this journey is, Alsbans?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think it is great?”

Alsbans remained silent.

The turtle turned its head toward him.

“Perhaps it is great to you.”

Then it looked toward the sky.

“But in the book where your fate is written…”

It paused.

“This journey is nothing more than a small page.”

Alsbans’s anger slowly gave way to curiosity.

“What book?”

“The book of your fate.”

Alsbans laughed.

But there was no amusement in it.

“So someone wrote my fate?”

“The gods.”

The smile disappeared from Alsbans’s face.

The turtle continued.

“The gods wrote your fate with their own hands.”

“But…”

Its voice became quieter.

“One day, a drop of red ink fell upon the book.”

Alsbans’s breathing changed.

Red.

For a moment, he saw a rose in his mind.

A single flawless red rose.

The turtle continued.

“The drop spread.”

“It erased a word.”

“Then a sentence.”

“Then a page.”

“And eventually…”

The turtle looked directly at Alsbans.

“It erased the entire fate the gods had written for you.”

Alsbans stared at it in silence.

The turtle continued.

“We gave you—”

“Stop.”

Something had changed in Alsbans’s voice.

The turtle fell silent.

Alsbans took several steps closer.

“Are you a god?”

The turtle did not answer.

“Are you one of them?”

Silence.

Alsbans’s voice rose.

“Answer me!”

The turtle simply watched him.

And that look only made Alsbans angrier.

“If you are a god…”

His voice trembled.

“If all of this was truly your doing…”

Everything he had held inside for years began to rise at once.

“Where was my mother when I was a child?”

The turtle said nothing.

“Where was my father?”

Alsbans’s eyes filled with tears.

“Why did I grow up without even knowing who they were?”

“Why was I left in Trixalisse?”

“Why did Jelin lock me inside that cave?”

“Why did Cesa die?”

“Why did Kesal die?”

Each question came louder than the one before.

“Did you write all of this?”

Alsbans looked toward the sky.

“Was this my fate?”

Then he looked back toward the turtle.

“Was leaving a child alone part of your plan?”

“Was taking everyone he loved away from him part of it too?”

He did not draw his sword.

But his hands were shaking.

“If you are gods…”

His voice was no longer loud.

That was worse.

It was broken.

“Why am I the one who has to pay for everything you wrote?”

For a long time, nothing happened.

Then the turtle spoke.

“You are always the same, Alsbans.”

Alsbans frowned.

“What does that mean?”

“You always ask first.”

The turtle paused.

“Then you become angry.”

Alsbans said nothing.

The turtle lifted its head toward the sky.

“Fate does not have to follow what was written.”

Alsbans remained silent.

“Your story was supposed to end well.”

Alsbans looked at it.

“What?”

“A good life.”

“People you loved.”

“A home.”

“An ending.”

The turtle looked back at him.

“But you…”

For a long moment, it studied his eyes.

“You are different.”

“Why?”

“Because you are the only one who can rewrite your fate from beginning to end.”

Alsbans said nothing.

The sounds of the forest seemed to disappear around them.

“You were chosen, Alsbans.”

Alsbans stared at the turtle for a long time.

Then he asked only one question.

“Why me?”

The turtle answered:

“Because you already made your choice.”

Alsbans frowned in confusion.

“What choice?”

The turtle said nothing.

“What did I choose?”

Alsbans stepped closer.

“Tell me.”

The turtle interrupted him.

“Your journey will be with the gods, Alsbans.”

Alsbans fell silent.

“Do not be afraid.”

Then the turtle spoke more firmly.

“But whatever happens, do not fear.”

“Why?”

“Because when fear takes hold of you, the gods will no longer walk beside you.”

Alsbans tried to understand.

The turtle continued.

“There is a long road ahead of you.”

“You will have enemies.”

“You will have friends.”

“And sometimes, you will not know which is which.”

Then it added, calmly:

“But this road…”

“You will cross it without receiving a single wound.”

Alsbans’s expression changed.

He looked at his own body.

Then toward the darkness behind him.

He thought of the camp.

The women.

The children.

The wounded.

The people of Fenis.

He immediately lifted his head.

“And what about my people?”

The turtle was gone.

Alsbans froze.

“Turtle?”

Silence.

He looked around the roots of the tree.

Nothing.

“Hey!”

He dropped to one knee.

“What about my people?”

No answer came.

Only the wind moved through the forest.

Alsbans slowly stood.

Had any of this truly happened?

Perhaps he was exhausted.

Perhaps the long journey and lack of sleep had finally begun to break his mind.

Then he noticed something near the roots of the tree.

Something small.

He bent down.

He touched it with one finger.

A tiny red stain.

It looked like ink.

Alsbans stared at it for a long time.

Then he closed his hand around it.

The turtle’s final words echoed inside his mind.

You will cross this road without receiving a single wound.

Alsbans looked into the darkness of the forest.

But the one question that mattered most had still gone unanswered.

What about his people?