It was midsummer. The sun was stark, yet cool air lingered in the valley’s shadows. A breeze whispered through the tall grass, shaking the leaves.

  The ranchers toiled in their fields, steady in their purpose. The shops on the high street were alive with faint chatter and the occasional clang of tools. Upstream, the baron's copper mine drummed and hummed, its din carried by the wind to every corner of the town. It was but another day in Othilia, seemingly without consequence.

  Giles had lingered in the Enki River, stealing a respite from a morning buried in paperwork. By the time he emerged and ambled along the bank, he was already late—but in no rush.

  He had dressed without drying, so his uniform was damp, but the afternoon breeze made it pleasantly cool against his skin. A fine medallion gleamed on his collar—Guardian Force’s sigil, known to all in Othilia. Pinned to his jacket pocket: a lily, delicate yet enduring.

  He wandered, the afternoon blurred into a haze of thoughts and dreams. In this way did he stumble on the abandoned camp.

  At first glance, just a shallow den scooped from loose sediment, draped in sagging foliage. What remained of a firepit lay in the centre, blackened with charred leaves and dark shards of glass. Empty bottles, their labels faded, lay half-buried in dirt.

  Giles grinned. A memory flared: wayward nights long ago. When Giles and Miles were younger—old enough to know better, yet foolish still—they had come to such a place, drank until they were drunk off their asses, and woke the next morning with increasingly vague impressions of what they did the night before. They laughed, they wept, they hurled themselves from high branches into the river below. Such were the nights of wayward youths; and right now they felt impossibly distant.

  Giles turned to leave, but something discarded in the dirt caught his eye—a pouch, half-buried, its coarse fabric stained with mud. Giles paused, curiosity luring him nearer. He bent to retrieve it. He brushed it clean.

  The pouch was durable but worn, the drawstring missing. Its contents were small—a few grains of dusty brown powder—but the scent that rose from it was deadly. The scent struck Giles, sharp and sickly. His hands shook. He knew what he had found.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Strife.

  The demon spice.

  Inhaled or ingested, it could hurl a man into a land of fairies and elves—or down into jagged dreams and delirium. Strife was no trifle: it was dangerous, deadly, and terribly addictive.

  Another memory rushed back to him. Years ago, in the alleys of Calla Lily, Giles had seen the shrivelled and blackened body of a man addicted to the demon spice. A cadaver in all but name, a shriveled husk of grey. His eyes—bloodshot, glassy, unseeing. His breath reeked of something like cinnamon and rot. He had begged for coins outside a backstreet pub, shaking palm outstretched. Giles had tossed a few coins, met only with a grunt. Giles had walked away feeling sick.

  Not in ten years had the demon spice found its way into Othilia. Giles frowned, uttered a curse. A lightning flash of fear erupted inside him, and the world seemed to groan and quake under his feet.

  He gripped the pouch tighter. Something inside him gave—not all at once, but in quiet splinters, like rotted wood beneath an old axe. The truth didn’t strike, but came crashing down upon Giles. Strife had come back to his town.

  But who were the youths who had gathered here, who had dared to taste the demon spice? Was this the recklessness of youth? Did they dare the shadow, discover ruin, and abandon a second taste? Or had the addiction already begun to gore them like a fishing hook drawn by an eager fisherman? Questions swirled, dread rising. The midday sun was suddenly not so bright.

  Yet above all, one question loomed: the source. Whence had the demon spice come? Was there a smuggler in Othilia’s backstreets dealing out handfuls to the foolhardy? Or was the evil sown in Othilia’s own soil—a farm hidden in the dark, without the light of sun or moon to spoil the harvest, where the anbus root was ground into the terrible powder Giles now held? Wheresoever it came from, Giles swore to find it, to root it out, to cage whomever was responsible. This he vowed to himself, his mind burning with resolve. The ancient river bore silent witness.

  He turned, pocketed the remnants of strife, and climbed out of the hollow. The damp soil clung to his boots, unwilling to let him go.

  Behind him the waters of the Enki whispered, eternal yet indifferent. Giles made his way back to Othilia. Order still reigned there—for now. Though burdened, Giles Durant walked with purpose. Othilia still held.

  And he would hold with it.