The road from Feldrin was no road at all—merely a strip of earth between burned grasses and half-frozen mud, shaped by passing hooves and the weight of sorrow. Kyran sat in the back of the supply wagon, knees pulled to his chest, cloak wrapped around thin shoulders that seemed too small for the dagger at his side. The child he had carried from the ruins slept fitfully beside him, wrapped in spare wool. Her breathing was the only sound that mattered now.
Kyran's eyes remained dry, but it was the dryness of scorched soil after fire—no rain yet, only the hollow ache of waiting.
Calen rode ahead, straight-backed in the saddle, his weathered face scanning the horizon. Behind them, three wounded villagers huddled together in the second cart—Old Henrik with his bandaged arm, Mira clutching her baby, and Tom the baker's son who hadn't spoken since they'd found him. Two soldiers flanked them, hands never far from their swords.
Lerek had stayed behind in Feldrin's ashes. Kyran hadn't looked back when they'd crested the last hill, though his neck had wanted to turn.
The first day passed in muted tones. Birds dared not sing in this wounded land. Trees stood bare and clawed against a sky that remembered smoke. The wagon wheels found every rut and stone, jarring Kyran's bones until his teeth ached.
By midday, his stomach was a hard knot of hunger, but the thought of food made his throat close. Mira tried to press bread into his hands twice. Both times he shook his head and turned away.
They saw smoke rising in the east that afternoon—distant and dark. Calen called a halt, studying it through squinted eyes before urging them forward again. No one asked what it meant. They all knew.
That night, they made camp beside a half-frozen stream where ice clung to the banks in jagged teeth. Calen built the fire with practiced efficiency while the others settled into exhausted silence. Henrik muttered a prayer to Aethon the Protector. One of the soldiers—a young man with kind eyes—sharpened his blade and hummed under his breath, a tune Kyran almost remembered from better days.
Kyran wandered from the circle of firelight, the dagger bumping against his leg with each step. He found a moss-covered stone and sat, tilting his face toward stars that seemed too far away to matter.
The cold bit through his cloak. His legs were stiff from sitting all day. Everything hurt in ways that had nothing to do with bruises.
"Kyran." Calen's voice came soft behind him. "You need to eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"That's what your mother said, that last night." Calen settled beside him on the stone, moving carefully like men do when their bones have been broken too many times. "I was listening at the door. Shouldn't have, but I did."
Something stirred in Kyran's chest—not quite anger, not quite relief. "She was scared."
"Yes. But she ate anyway. For you." Calen's voice carried the weight of accumulated sorrows. "She died protecting someone else."
"She died protecting everyone." The words came out smaller than he'd intended.
"And saved more than her life could hold." Calen stood, joints creaking. "Come back to the fire. Honor her by staying alive."
When Kyran returned, Mira handed him bread and broth without a word. This time, he ate. The food tasted of nothing, but he chewed and swallowed because his mother would have wanted him to.
Sleep came in fragments.
He stood on black stone beneath a sky split by crimson light. No sun burned there—only distant fire behind smoke. Before him, figures moved in deadly grace. Swordmasters wreathed in flowing energy.
One master burned with golden light, each step leaving trails of flame. Another moved cloaked in silver that cut the air itself. A third fought shadows, his aura so deep and still it made darkness bend around him.
The blade remembers, whispered a voice without mouth or throat.
A woman turned toward him—face burned with age, eyes like cracked stone. "Little one," she said, "why do you carry steel if you fear its purpose?"
"I don't—"
"The dead speak through willing hands. Will you listen?"
The sky tore. Light poured in—
He woke gasping, fingers clenched around the dagger's hilt. It pulsed once beneath his palm, then fell still.
Across the dying coals, Calen watched him with eyes that reflected ember-light.
"You saw them."
Kyran nodded, not trusting his voice.
"The blade chooses its own way of speaking." Calen rose, stirring the fire back to reluctant life. "Some sing. Some weep. Yours remembers."
The second day brought them through rolling hills where watchtowers stood like broken teeth. Some still held thin lines of Andoran scouts who saluted Calen with tired respect. Others lay crumbled, their stones blackened by more than weather.
Kyran dozed against the wagon's side, waking each time the wheels hit a particularly deep rut. His neck was stiff. His backside numb. The dagger seemed heavier each hour, though it hadn't changed.
Late in the afternoon, they saw riders approaching—a patrol of six men in mail and leather. Calen rode out to meet them, and Kyran watched the gestures, the pointing east, the grim nods. When Calen returned, his face was stone.
"More raids," he said simply. "We'll reach Estharn by evening."
The outpost of Estharn squatted against the hillside like a tired beast—weathered stone and thick timber where the northern road split toward wider lands. Smoke rose from its chimneys, and lanterns flickered behind narrow windows. Guards watched them approach from the walls, crossbows visible but not aimed.
The outer courtyard buzzed with controlled activity. Soldiers moved with purpose between barracks and armory. A blacksmith's hammer rang against steel, steady as a heartbeat. The air smelled of horses, leather, and the particular staleness of too many men living in too small a space.
Kyran felt very small walking through the gate. These were real soldiers—scarred, serious men who'd buried friends and kept fighting. His dagger felt like a child's toy at his side.
The captain—a grizzled man missing two fingers on his left hand—greeted Calen with weary familiarity.
"Bad news from the eastern reaches," he said without preamble. "Three more settlements hit this week. We're stretched thin as parchment."
"How many refugees?"
"Dozens. More coming daily." The captain's eyes flicked to Kyran and the others. "We'll find space."
That evening, Calen led Kyran to a small courtyard behind the barracks—packed earth surrounded by wooden posts, scratched and scarred from years of practice. Empty now save for the ghosts of old lessons.
"Today, we begin," Calen said, settling cross-legged on the ground.
"Begin what?"
"Learning to listen." Calen patted the earth beside him. "Sit. Before you can speak to your aura, you must hear what it's trying to tell you."
Kyran folded his legs, the position familiar from evening prayers with his father. The memory stung, but he pushed it down.
"Close your eyes. Breathe. Feel what's there, not what you think should be there."
So Kyran sat and breathed and tried to feel. At first, there was only the ache in his legs, the distant sound of hammers, the cold seeping through his cloak. But slowly, beneath the noise of thought and grief, he began to sense something else.
Warmth in his palms. A faint tremor in the earth that had nothing to do with footsteps. The dagger at his side, humming so quietly he might have imagined it.
Minutes passed. The world grew still around them.
"Your aura is tied to your breath," Calen murmured. "To your balance. Most boys want to shout. Warriors learn to whisper first."
Eventually, Calen stood and drew his sword. Blue light flickered along the blade—not flashy, but steady as a candle flame that refused to gutter.
"Come at me," he said simply.
"I might hurt you."
Calen smiled—not mockery, just patience. "Try."
So Kyran tried. His small hands gripped the dagger awkwardly. His feet tangled. Each strike was met not with force but with gentle redirection, like water flowing around stone.
"Again."
"Again."
By the time they stopped, sweat beaded Kyran's forehead despite the evening chill. The dagger no longer felt quite so foreign in his grip. And once—just once—he'd felt something shift in the air around Calen's blade, as if the very shadows were paying attention.
"Better," Calen said, sheathing his sword. "You're beginning to listen."
"What color will mine be?" The question slipped out before Kyran could stop it.
Calen considered him with those winter-lake eyes. "What color do you think it should be?"
Kyran thought of his mother's fierce protection, his father's quiet strength, the silver-bright moment when the dagger had first pulsed in his hand.
"I don't know yet."
"Good answer." Calen rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. "Come. Let's find you some food."
That night, Kyran lay on a straw pallet in the barracks, listening to the sounds of men at rest—quiet conversations, muffled coughs, the creak of rope and leather. Outside, wind sang through the wooden walls, but inside, braziers kept the worst cold at bay.
He did not dream of burning stone and ancient masters.
Instead, he remembered his mother's hands braiding his hair. His father teaching him to whittle. The weight of the baby he'd carried from the flames.
And in the space between memory and sleep, he felt something new stirring—not the wild grief that had consumed him, but something quieter. Like the first star appearing in twilight. Like silver light filtering through dark water.
His aura, perhaps, choosing its own voice at last.