Chapter 1

  The village stirred with purpose.

  Women strung blue cloth between beams and branches, pinning them with dried bundles of sage and flame-blossom. Boys chased goats from the path. A girl no older than seven dragged a bundle of firewood twice her size, grunting all the way, laughing when it toppled.

  The chapel doors stood open, cleaned and re-oiled for the blessing. Jorgen’s voice echoed faintly within, a litany to Aurora in tones both practiced and warm. His robe fluttered past the doorway like a banner.

  Smoke rose from Harret’s chimney—thick, savory. Bread, likely. Or sausage. He was never stingy on festival mornings, not when people needed reminding that leadership meant generosity. A few men stood outside the inn already, checking barrels, nodding at passing neighbors.

  From one window above the green, Tina leaned out to hang a banner—soft blue linen, stitched with silver thread. The kind saved for festivals and funerals.

  She smiled at someone below. Laughed.

  Then the smile faded.

  She looked north across the green towards the forest. No one stood there.

  But for a moment, she looked as if someone had once.

  --

  Kyle perched on the crumbling wall that marked the forest’s edge, a forgotten line of stone half-eaten by moss and time. The trees behind him breathed mist and birdsong, but his eyes stayed fixed on the village below.

  The green had begun to stir—ropes of pale blue cloth fluttered on poles, and smoke drifted lazy from fireplaces village-wide. Children were already shouting, chasing each other around the stone well like festival had come early. It hadn’t. But for those with names that carried weight, every day felt like a blessing.

  He wrapped his arms around his knees, chin digging into them, and watched as the streamers danced. Aurora’s color. Sky-blessed. A reminder. As if anyone ever forgot.

  Wooden houses huddled around the green in concentric rings, their beams bleached by rain and time. Nothing sacred about them. Just hand tools and hard backs. Yet the spire of the chapel still caught the sun first. It always did.

  From here he could see Jorgen’s shape—tall, robed, already moving from one homestead to the next. Dust glimmered faintly in his wake, trailing like incense. Crops would bend to his touch. Wounds would close. Words would echo with more than meaning. The preacher didn’t need to knock anymore.

  Kyle spat into the brush.

  Jorgen had looked him in the eye once and said, “Mercy does not extend to those who deny the path.” That had been after the last scuffle. After Dalen’s gang had bloodied his nose and he'd bloodied one of theirs worse.

  They’d blamed him. They always did.

  He watched as one of the festival carts was rolled into place. Painted wheels, flowers tucked into the spokes. A mother lifted her daughter onto it. The girl raised her hands, spinning once, twice. Her laughter carried up the slope.

  The stump stash was lighter than it should be. If Lem had any brains, he’d notice. Kyle needed more before he left—needed coin, or something worth it.

  Kyle closed his eyes. This wasn’t his world. It never had been.

  --

  The slope to the village wound past thin trees and outcrops of stone, then bent inward toward the northern hovels. Kyle passed Mara’s hut first—its door closed tight, a limp twist of cloth nailed over the threshold in the old warding pattern. No smoke from the chimney.

  His mother’s hut came next. Smoke here. Bitterroot and ash.

  She was there, as she always was on festival mornings, apron streaked with flour, hair tied back in a scrap of cloth dyed the same blue as the streamers. A gesture of piety, worn for others. He didn’t mean to stop, but her voice caught him.

  “You're up early,” she said, without turning. Her hands moved over a flat stone, shaping dough. “Going to watch the procession?”

  Kyle shrugged. “No.”

  Her knuckles pressed harder. “Mara needs water carried. Her leg’s giving her grief again.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You could help.”

  “I could.”

  The silence stretched.

  She looked up at him finally—lines at the corners of her eyes deeper than he remembered, mouth tight. “It’s not weakness to be useful, Kyle.”

  “No,” he said. “Just unwise.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t argue. She just went back to her dough. The rhythm of her hands said the conversation was over.

  Kyle turned to go, the faint smell of herbs and ash chasing him down the slope.

  --

  The chapel loomed ahead, its whitewashed spire catching the sun like it always did, ignoring everything beneath. Kyle kept his boots angled toward the inn, skirting the green, but there was no avoiding the watchful eyes drawn to its edge.

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  He felt them before he saw them.

  Voices low, laughing with teeth. A step too loud. A silence too sudden.

  Dalen stepped into his path near the mill’s shadow, arms folded like he was warming himself on his own self-importance. Two others followed—Grael and Nix, shadows pretending to be friends.

  “Well,” Dalen said. “Look what the wind spat out of the north trail.”

  Kyle didn’t stop. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “You’re never in the mood.” Dalen shifted, planting his boots wide. “That’s your problem. No smile for the gods’ day? Jorgen’s been blessing the wheat. Maybe he should bless your face.”

  Kyle’s fist moved before his thoughts did. It landed hard against Dalen’s mouth, splitting something.

  The other two surged forward, and the fight was fast, stupid, dirt-filled. Someone elbowed his ribs, someone grabbed his arm, and Kyle shoved, twisted, took a boot to the thigh.

  Then a voice cut through it all.

  “Enough.”

  The word struck harder than any fist. The scuffle froze.

  Jorgen stood on the chapel’s steps, hands folded, Dust coiled faintly in the crease of his robes. He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to.

  Dalen backed off first, lip bleeding, smirking.

  Kyle straightened last, breathing through clenched teeth.

  Jorgen’s eyes met his. No anger—just weariness. “You shame your mother,” he said. “And bring shadow on what little favor remains.”

  He turned away.

  The others lingered a moment longer. Nix chuckled. Grael spat near Kyle’s boots.

  Kyle didn’t flinch. Not until they were gone. Then he moved, fast and silent, toward the inn, the weight of the chapel’s shadow still clinging to his shoulders.

  --

  The inn squatted on the south side of the green, broader than the homes around it and built with straighter beams—Harret’s pride visible in every join. He ran the place like a steward of both drink and judgment. Meetings were held under its beams. So were whispers. So were threats.

  Kyle didn’t go near the front.

  He hadn’t planned to take anything today. Just look. See if Harret had moved the strongbox. But then came the fight. The blood. Jorgen’s stare.

  He slipped around back, boots whispering over the packed earth. The storage shed sat behind a crooked fence, door hung askew but barred from the inside. Not that it mattered.

  A stone beside the trough was loose, just enough. He pried it back, slid his fingers into the dirt, and pulled free a wedge of wood he’d stashed seasons ago. Fit it into the gap. Pushed.

  The bar lifted with a satisfying clunk.

  Inside, the air smelled of yeast and sweet rot. Cider barrels lined the wall, fat and sweating in the morning warmth. Kyle found the one he liked—second from the end, marked with a slash instead of a rune. The cheaper stuff. The kind Harret never missed when the festival was near.

  He uncorked it with his belt hook and took a long drink. It was warm. Slightly fizzy. Better than water. Worse than silence.

  “You’ve gotten sloppy.”

  He turned, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Tina stood in the doorway, arms folded, face unreadable in the light slanting behind her.

  “You’re not even subtle anymore,” she said.

  Kyle didn’t answer.

  She stepped closer, arms still folded. “Do you remember last summer? You tried to lift two bottles at once and dropped one.”

  He looked away. “It wasn’t full.”

  “It shattered anyway.”

  “Your father nearly had a fit.”

  She smiled, faintly. “You laughed. You never laugh.”

  Kyle said nothing. The memory lodged behind his ribs.

  “It used to be easier,” she said. “Talking to you.”

  “I used to want things.”

  She looked at him like she might say something else—something heavier—but didn’t.

  “You could’ve come through the front.”

  He snorted. “Sure. Right after I kiss the priest’s ring and beg forgiveness.”

  Her eyes flicked to the side—just for a second. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You either,” he said. “Your father wouldn’t approve.”

  “I was checking on the barley. He thinks someone’s been shorting him.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Her jaw tightened. She stepped inside, letting the door close behind her.

  She looked at him then, really looked. Her hand brushed her stomach unconsciously. He didn’t see it.

  “Just… be careful,” she said. “Not everyone gets to walk away from a mistake.”

  Then she was gone, the door creaking shut behind her like the end of something neither of them had named.

  Kyle stared at the spot she’d stood for a while longer, then took another drink.

  This time, it tasted like dirt.

  --

  The forest pressed close behind the northern hovels, thick with brush and scent. Somewhere deeper in, the stream wound its slow way toward the mill. Kyle followed the trail that split between Mara’s hut and his mother’s, past the low stone marker with the etched circle of Aurora’s eye—worn nearly smooth by weather and superstition.

  He found Mara where she always waited when it wasn’t raining—on her stool beneath the leaning pine, one boot off, her bandaged leg stretched out before her.

  “You’re limping more,” he said.

  “You’re surlier than usual,” she replied.

  The corner of his mouth twitched.

  “Fetch me the bucket,” she said, nodding toward the path that led toward the stream. “I’ll not limp down and back just to hear myself wheeze.”

  Kyle took the bucket without a word and disappeared into the underbrush. When he returned, she hadn’t moved.

  “I passed your mother,” she said, accepting the bucket with a grunt. “She thinks you’re lost. Or avoiding chores.”

  “She’s half right.”

  Mara poured water into a chipped clay basin, dabbing at her leg with a scrap of cloth. “You know,” she said, voice low, “most boys your age are trying to impress someone. Work hard. Shine bright. Get noticed. You do the opposite.”

  “Maybe I’m not most boys.”

  “No. But you’d do well to pretend, once in a while.”

  Kyle looked away.

  A gust shifted the canopy above, dropping sun-dappled patches across the hut’s rough walls. Dust swirled faintly in the light, then vanished.

  She stopped cleaning. “They talk about you when you’re not there.”

  “I know.”

  “They don’t know what to do with someone like you. You don’t beg. You don’t curse. You don’t vanish. You just… watch.”

  “Maybe that’s all I’m good for.”

  She threw the wet cloth at him. He caught it, surprised.

  “Self-pity makes a poor shield,” she said.

  He didn’t argue. But he didn’t leave, either.

  They sat for a while in the half-silence that forest trails carried—leaf whisper, water hush, wood creak.

  Then Kyle stood, bucket in hand, and set it near the door without being asked.

  Mara didn’t thank him. She never did.

  And he didn’t need her to.

  --

  The stump sat where the woods thinned near the ridge, roots long since swallowed by moss. Kyle arrived first. He always did.

  He crouched near it, brushing aside leaves and loose soil to check the hollow beneath. Still there—damp linen-wrapped bundles and a few coin pouches tied with frayed cord. Not enough. Not for both of them. Not anymore.

  He sat, resting his back against the barkless edge. The light was fading, caught somewhere between gold and ash. Forest light.

  Lem arrived with the sound of twigs snapping under boots too small for his feet. Always a little late. Always chewing something. This time it was bark.

  “Anything good?” Lem asked, dropping to the other side of the stump.

  Kyle didn’t answer. Just tossed him a pouch. Lem caught it, felt the weight, frowned.

  “You went in. What’d you get?”

  Kyle shrugged. “Drink.”

  “That’s it?”

  A beat. Then: “Plans change.”

  Lem leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You used to come back with meat. Tools. Rope. Once, a copper earring. You’re slipping.”

  Kyle didn’t flinch. “You don’t have to come with me.”

  Lem didn’t answer for a while. The forest creaked around them.

  Finally, he said, “You ever think maybe we’re not supposed to leave?”

  Kyle looked at him then. Looked hard.

  “That why you haven’t added anything to the stash in weeks?”

  Lem bristled, then looked away.

  Kyle stood. Brushed bark from his trousers. “I’m going. When the festival ends. Maybe sooner.”

  “And then what?”

  “I stop watching.”

  He turned and started back toward the treeline, boots crunching over roots.