The treeline welcomed him like an accusation.

  Kyle pushed through it anyway, lungs burning as he forced his way uphill, boots slipping on loose pine needles. Branches clawed at his arms. The forest whispered things he didn’t want to hear—snapping limbs, distant shrieks, the sharp crack of something being torn apart.

  He crested the ridge and dropped flat, heart slamming. The village sprawled below in a haze of smoke and flickering flame. Roofs burned. Walls sagged. The inn was already collapsing inward, the fire eating through dry thatch like paper. Jorgen’s robes lay torn on the chapel steps, the body beneath them scorched beyond recognition. Whatever words he might’ve used to stop this never reached the air.

  Three dark figures moved across the green—metal-clad, deliberate, unhurried. One dragged something limp behind it. Another circled the chapel like a dog sniffing for meat.

  The third raised its lance.

  They didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t a warning or a search. It was procedure—violent, final, practiced.

  A beam of light—pure, searing white-gold—cut the air and struck a person sprinting for the tree line. No scream. No body. Just a burst of ash and a crater of scorched grass.

  Kyle clapped a hand over his mouth, breath caught in his chest.

  These weren’t agents of law.

  They were butchers.

  The air shimmered with Dust.

  The enforcer turned slowly, scanning the trees.

  Kyle froze. He didn’t breathe. The pendant against his chest pulsed once, faintly warm.

  The enforcer’s gaze slid past him. No reaction. No alarm. It turned back to the village.

  Kyle exhaled through clenched teeth, shaking.

  Something was very wrong. And somehow, he was still alive.

  --

  Kyle crawled downslope, keeping low, hands and knees damp with moss and ash. The screams had faded—less frequent now, but sharper. What remained of the village was a shape of silhouettes and ruin, shrouded in smoke.

  Movement caught his eye near the edge of the green.

  A figure sprinted across the open space—not a soldier, not armored. Slender. Fast. Limping.

  Another followed.

  Lem.

  Kyle’s breath hitched.

  He hadn’t seen Lem since just before the smoke—since that hushed moment by the treeline when everything still might’ve been undone. Since the apology that came too late. Now, there he was, bolting from cover with someone small beside him. A child?

  No. Just someone younger. Fragile.

  The enforcers turned.

  Lem didn’t stop. He shoved the smaller figure forward, barked something Kyle couldn’t hear.

  Then he turned.

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  Hands out. No weapon. Just a step between them and death.

  One of them—tall and narrow as a blade, armor mottled with soot—lifted his lance with unhurried ease. No warning. No signal. Just a hum, and then a line of light—bright enough to scar the air—cut forward.

  There was no sound from Lem. No scream. No flash of pain.

  Just a burst of heat and light—and nothing left behind but ash drifting in the wind.

  Kyle pressed his forehead to the soil, jaw clenched so tight it ached.

  Lem, who clung to the familiar. Who followed when others acted. Who feared what came next.

  Gone.

  And in the end, he ran toward it anyway.

  --

  Kyle moved like an animal—low, silent, guided more by instinct than thought. He slipped from tree to tree, staying behind smoke-veiled cover, keeping to the outer edges of what had once been his world.

  He didn’t know the names of the people dying. Faces blurred through smoke and distance, too far to call for help even if he dared. One figure crawled through mud toward the chapel, arm bent wrong, dragging behind them. Another knelt in the square, arms raised, begging. The response was light—merciless, blinding.

  The air shimmered. Dust curled in sheets across the ground like mist.

  A man ran from the butcher’s lane—broad-shouldered, gripping a hammer. His voice rose, wordless, defiant.

  One of the enforcers turned.

  A hum. Then a beam of white-gold burned a clean path through him.

  He disintegrated mid-stride. The hammer clattered to the stones, alone.

  Kyle pressed a knuckle to his mouth to keep from making a sound. He felt nothing but a sick heat rising behind his ribs. These people—he hadn’t known them. Never cared to. Just villagers. Just noise.

  Now they burned, and he watched.

  He thought of Lem. Of the way he turned at the last moment—not to run, but to shield someone else. Lem had been afraid of everything, always. But he hadn't hesitated.

  Kyle blinked hard. His eyes stung from the smoke. That’s all, he told himself. Just the smoke.

  His mother would still be at her hut, if she was alive. And Tina—

  A scream. Hoarse. Familiar.

  Tina.

  --

  He ran without thinking.

  Brush tore at his legs. His boots slipped on scorched stone. He saw the chapel—its front wall collapsed inward—and to the left, near the well, a cluster of villagers huddled against a low stone wall, herded like livestock.

  His mother was there.

  Hair loose. Dress torn at the hem. Face streaked with soot. Her eyes found him, just for a moment, across the chaos.

  And widened.

  She mouthed something—Run.

  One of the armored figures turned. The largest. Broad-shouldered. Bald, the scar down his scalp stark in the smoke-glow.

  Kyle ducked behind a crumbling trough, heart slamming against his ribs. He peered again just in time to see the enforcer raise its lance. His mother stepped forward.

  No weapon. No scream. Just defiance in her stance.

  “You don’t know who his father is,” she said, voice rough but clear. “But he’ll find out what you’ve done.”

  The enforcer didn’t pause.

  “If he cared,” the man said, voice like stone, “he’d be here.”

  The light took her.

  Kyle bit down on the back of his hand, hard enough to bleed.

  Footsteps. A cry to the right.

  Tina.

  She was struggling—two of them dragging her by the arms toward the chapel steps. She kicked, twisted, managed to slip free for a second.

  One grabbed her hair.

  A flash. Then smoke. The space where she’d been seemed… wrong.

  No ash. No scorch mark. Just an absence—like Dust had folded the space in on itself.

  Kyle stared. No breath. No movement.

  His legs moved without asking. Then stopped.

  Something burned against his chest.

  The pendant.

  --

  Kyle didn’t think. His legs were already moving, fists clenched, breath ragged.

  He rose from behind the trough and took a step—then another—burning with something he couldn’t name. The pendant at his chest flared, sudden and sharp, a spike of heat that stopped him mid-step.

  His breath caught. Muscles locked. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. More like pressure—like the weight of a storm sitting full behind his ribs.

  The world tilted.

  The light had faded. His mother was gone. Tina was gone. Lem. The village. The fields. All of it. Just smoke and silence and the wrong kind of sky.

  He swayed.

  One of the enforcers turned, head cocked, but didn’t move. Maybe they hadn’t seen him. Maybe they had and didn’t care.

  A low hum rang in his ears. Dust shimmered on the air like drifting snow. Kyle took a breath that didn’t reach his lungs. Everything felt... wrong. Distant. Like a story someone else had told him.

  He dropped to one knee. Then to both. His trembling wouldn’t stop.

  The last thing he felt was the warmth of the pendant against his chest—and the soundless weight of all he hadn’t done.