"They say the curtain fell on our long war two years ago, but I tell you: the actors have not left the stage. They have merely traded their swords for glances that wound from a distance and their war cries for a silence that weighs more than any armor.
They called this interlude 'peace.' What peace is this, I ask? Not the peace of a garden that blooms after the storm, but the peace of a chessboard after a disastrous move, where the king and queen remain motionless, surrounded by fallen pawns, fearing the next move.
They ask us to forget. To build upon the ashes and pretend the scars are just maps of an ancient land. But hatred is a stubborn inheritance, passed down not in wills, but in the bitter milk of mothers and the somber songs of fathers. This, my dears, is the unforgivable: not the war we fought, but the lie that it ever, in fact, ended."
— Unknown Poet
Human Kingdom of Menschir, March 15th of the 806th year of the sacred calendar.
Gusts of wind whipped through, forcing their way through the foliage with the sound of tearing fabric, a lament that intertwined with the dry rustle of leaves on the forest floor. The air was thick, heavy with the smell of damp earth and decay. In the distance, the insistent croaking of frogs created a somber symphony, a backdrop to the only sounds that mattered: his own held breath and the careful steps that barely disturbed the carpet of leaves. Lahfir, having just turned eighteen, moved like a specter among the trees.
His posture was that of a predator, but his hunting clothes, worn and patched under a beaten leather jacket, told a story of necessity, not sport. His thick, brown hair fell over his forehead. His eyes, a deep and lusterless black, were like wells reflecting an ancient weariness and the weight he carried.
The confirmation came as a shiver: a pig-like grunt, too close, followed by the snap of a branch under a considerable weight. A Porkrar. The beast, a boar of abnormal proportions, with black, matted fur and yellowish tusks curving out from its jaw, sniffed the ground. Lahfir's quiver was empty, a miscalculation that had left him with only his hunting knife. His heart hammered against his ribs, but his hands were steady on the bone handle. He waited, each second an eternity, until the creature turned its massive body, exposing its vulnerable flank.
It was the invitation he needed. Lahfir burst from the undergrowth in a desperate dive. The impact was brutal. The blade sank behind the beast's foreleg with a wet, terrible sound. The Porkrar let out a sharp squeal, a mixture of pain and fury, and thrashed violently, nearly wrenching the knife from the hunter's hand. Lahfir used his own body weight to drive the blade deeper, feeling the warmth of blood gush over his hand before the creature's legs gave way and it collapsed with a tremor that shook the ground.
The silence that followed was almost as deafening as the noise of the fight. Lahfir remained bent over the creature, his chest heaving for air, the smell of blood and wild musk filling his nostrils. He watched the steam rise from the beast's still body, a ghostly mist in the forest's gloom. There was no triumph in his gaze, only exhausted relief. With a trembling hand, he wiped the knife on the Porkrar's coarse fur and muttered to the void, his voice hoarse and low:
"Looks like I'll have meat for a few days."
His voice sounded tired, almost emotionless. He crouched, bled the beast, and began to cut the most usable pieces of meat, placing them in a worn leather bag. His movements were automatic, as if this act of survival were more of an obligation than a necessity.
When he finished, Lahfir gathered some dry branches and logs to feed his fireplace and wood stove later. A colder gust of wind cut through the clearing, and the rustling of dry leaves sounded too lonely. The shiver that ran down his spine was not just from the cold. Something in his expression changed, a slight shadow of sadness crossing his face.
As he walked back home, he muttered to himself, the words lost in the night air: "If only my old man were here..."
The trail opened into a small clearing, an oasis of pale light in the middle of the dense forest. The moon, peeking through the treetops, drew ghostly patterns on the leaf-covered ground. Lahfir let the bag and the logs he was carrying fall with a dull thud, the sound muffled by the damp earth. The relief in his shoulders only accentuated the weight he felt in his chest. He sat on a moss-covered rock, the cold, damp touch seeping through his clothes, and his gaze was lost in the indifferent vastness of the starry sky.
The cold breeze brushed his face, but it brought no comfort, only a sense of emptiness.
"Father..." The word was a breath, almost inaudible, laden with a longing that suffocated him.
He closed his eyes tightly. A single tear betrayed his attempt at control, sliding warmly down his cheek. He didn't wipe it away.
"You taught me how to use these hands..." he murmured, looking at his calloused palms, which trembled slightly. "And now... now it seems they're only good for carrying what's already dead."
His voice broke. He clenched his fists, his nails digging into his skin, a physical pain to distract from the other, the one that consumed him from within.
"How do you do it, Father? How do you go on... without...?"
The question hung in the air, unanswered. He took a deep breath, his chest aching with the effort, as if the air itself were too heavy. He remained there, motionless, listening to the silent pulse of the forest, until the need to move on overcame the paralysis.
He stood up, his body stiff. He wiped his face with the back of his dirt-stained hand and lifted his belongings from the ground.
"One more day..." he whispered to the night, an exhausted mantra. "Just one more day."
With slow steps, he headed towards the small house, trying to leave his thoughts behind. But they followed him, like his own shadow that the moon cast before him, a promise of darkness he couldn't shake.
The path back was a tunnel of silence, broken only by the snapping of twigs under his feet. The night swallowed him, and the stars, distant and cold, seemed like silent witnesses to a struggle no one else saw.
When the small house came into view, Lahfir stopped for a moment, observing it. It seemed even smaller now, almost swallowed by the vegetation that had accumulated around it. The wooden walls, once well-cared-for, were worn, covered with moss and branches that grew freely, as if nature were trying to erase any trace of its existence.
He sighed and crossed the yard, passing the garden overgrown with weeds. The place, once full of life, with vegetables and flowers his father cultivated, was now a graveyard of exposed roots and withered leaves.
"Another day in this dead place..." he muttered, pushing open the cabin door, which creaked in protest.
The interior was even more desolate. The fireplace had been out for days, and the air was thick, permeated with a smell of old wood and dampness. Simple furniture, made by his father, was scattered around the room, covered in dust, as if waiting for someone who would never return to use them.
Lahfir placed the bag of meat on the table and began to prepare the wood to light the fireplace. The silence around him was absolute, almost suffocating. He was used to it, but tonight, something felt different.
Upon entering the old room that had been his father's and placing his things on the table, Lahfir's gaze shifted to a small wooden shelf in the corner of the room. The shelves were full of books, many already worn by time, but carefully organized.
They were books left by his father, covered with careful notes in the margins and on loose sheets. Many dealt with basic medicine, healing herbs, and practical knowledge that had been useful for survival in the mountains.
Carefully, he pulled out one of the books and opened it on the table, flipping through the pages until he found one of the chapters marked by Roric. His father's firm handwriting seemed to speak to him through time.
"This cold remedy worked well, but after a few days, it gave Lahfir a stomach ache. I think I should avoid using it."
Lahfir let out a heavy sigh and closed the book, keeping his hand on the cover as if trying to feel his presence.
It was then that he heard it:
Thump... thud-thump... thump...
A muffled sound of hooves, rhythmic and irregular, coming from a nearby road that was practically no longer used. Lahfir stopped fiddling with the firewood, his senses sharpened by survival instinct. He narrowed his eyes, trying to see beyond the dirty windows and the darkness of the night.
Another sound. Mmph-argh! A grunt of pain, choked and cut in half, was followed by the hurried clatter of hooves on hard earth. Lahfir grabbed his lamp and moved outside, a cautious shadow whose steps were swallowed by the night's silence.
As he approached the road, the silhouette of a cart disappeared in the distance, pulled by two horses. Two men in dark cloaks drove it with a haste that bordered on panic. There was something in the forced synchrony of their movements, a restrained brutality that made the hairs on Lahfir's neck stand on end.
When the sound of the cart became a distant echo, his eyes adjusted to the gloom and focused on a dark, motionless shape left behind in the dust.
The flickering light of the lamp revealed the form of a woman. She was thrown on the cold ground, a tangle of limbs and dark clothes. The smell of copper and wet earth—the smell of blood—was strong. He noticed an ugly wound on her head, but it was a sound that was almost lost in the wind that paralyzed him: a faint whistle, a thread of breath that proved life still clung to that body.
He hesitated, the instinct for survival at war with something older, deeper. Prudence screamed for him to go back home, but the sound of that fragile breath was stronger. Leaning down, Lahfir took her in his arms. Her weight was frighteningly small, a fragility of bones and cold skin that bespoke prolonged suffering.
With heavy steps, he entered his cabin, the wooden floor protesting with a long creak. He laid her down with a gentleness that contrasted with the urgency of the situation on his simple bed and, taking the lamp from the table, brought the flame closer to examine her better.
The light danced over her face, and what he saw made the air flee his lungs.
The light first revealed her hair, a dark red tangle matted with blood. And then, something that shouldn't exist. Sprouting from the right side of her head, a dark, curved horn like the twisted branch of a tree.
The shock made him move the light to the other side, expecting, fearing, to find its pair. But there, where the second horn should have been, there was only a hideous wound. A bloody, jagged mess in the flesh and bone, as if something had been broken and torn off with brutal violence.
"A demon..." Lahfir's whisper was hoarse, incredulous.
The stories were true. Her dark skin was a map of pain, marked by deep cuts and bruises. The body, dangerously thin under the torn clothes, told a story of torture and deprivation. But she was alive. And now, she was in his house.
Lahfir's stomach contracted violently. That horn wasn't just a horn. It was a standard. The banner under which his world had burned.
Fragmented and cruel images assaulted him: the glint of fire on metal, the smell of ashes, the loss of his biological parents reduced to a blur of childish screams. The face of Roric, the man who raised him, saved him, and whom he called 'Father,' was also swallowed by the same war, dissolving into a final memory of pain and blood.
The life that was stolen from him. The future that never existed.
All the hatred he had nurtured like a solitary ember in his chest, for years on end, finally found oxygen. It became a furnace, and the creature on the bed was the fuel. For the first time, his pain had a face.
"You..." the word came out as a low growl, tearing at his throat. His hand clenched into a fist so tight that his nails dug into his palm. "You took everything."
The blade under his jacket seemed to burn, calling to him. The idea of revenge was a sweet poison, promising the relief of an end. To take out on her every loss, every sleepless night, every scar on his soul. It was an almost irresistible impulse.
But his feet didn't move. Before him was not the army that had devastated his life. There was no armed warrior. There was only a broken body, breathing by a thread. And the sight of that suffering, so astonishingly similar to his own, was a bucket of cold water on the fury that consumed him.
As his thoughts waged a battle, the woman's fragile, whistling breath brought him back to reality. She was alive, but by a thread. Without care, the night would take her.
Lahfir closed his eyes and forced air into his lungs, trying to drown the fury. "Damn it..."
The grumble was a sound of surrender. He moved like an automaton to a shelf, grabbing the bottle of alcohol and the few clean cloths he kept. It wasn't much, but it would have to do. As he sat on the edge of the bed, the smell of blood and the sight of that solitary, dark horn almost made him retreat.
He decided to start with the worst. With the wound on her head, the hideous cavity from which the second horn had been torn. With trembling hands, he soaked a cloth in alcohol and pressed it against the lacerated skin and bone fragments. The woman didn't wake, but a spasm ran through her body, and a low, unconscious sound escaped her lips.
Lahfir's stomach churned. It was impossible not to imagine the pain, the brutal violence of that act. The intact horn seemed to mock him, a constant reminder of the nature of the creature in his hands.
As he cleaned the cuts one by one, he realized his hands wouldn't stop shaking. He didn't know if it was from revulsion at the task, from the anger that still boiled in his blood, or from something else. The voice of Roric, his father, echoed in his mind, a counterpoint to his fury. "A man is defined by what he does when it's hardest, boy. Not by what he does when it's easy."
Doubt gnawed at him with every wound he cleaned: what would he do in my place?
When he finished, perhaps hours later, the bleeding had stopped. The body on the bed seemed to have found a stillness that was not that of death, but of deep exhaustion. Unconscious, she wouldn't wake up anytime soon.
Lahfir moved away, putting a safe distance between them. He needed to see her again as a whole, as the creature she was, to process what he had done. He had saved a demon. The enemy.
He ran a hand through his hair, a heavy sigh escaping his chest. "Why the hell did you have to show up here?" he muttered to the silence.
The night seemed to thicken, colder and more oppressive. Outside, the wind howled, but inside the cabin, the silence was absolute. Lahfir leaned against the opposite wall and slid to the floor, physical and mental exhaustion finally knocking him out.
A certainty solidified amidst the confusion: he had saved her. And now, the monster he hated with all his might owed him its life. What would come next, he had no idea.
END OF CHAPTER 1