By the time I turned eight, the silence had lasted almost a year. It had become normal. Not easy. Not painless. Just... expected. Like waking up to frost on the window every morning—not a surprise anymore, but something you still flinch at when you touch.
The exile hadn't lifted, but it had settled into a heavy, uneasy rhythm. We kept to ourselves. People kept their distance. No one shouted. No one threw rocks at our door. But no one invited us to feasts, either. No shared bread, no festival songs drifting into our windows. We became shadows on the edges of their lives—tolerated, but never embraced. Ghosts who did not haunt, but lingered.
I helped where I could—fetching water, chopping kindling, watching Leofric when Ingrid needed sleep. I swept ashes, mended torn clothes with clumsy stitches, stacked logs in neat rows even when my arms ached. I learned to patch worn boots with scraps of leather, to stir porridge without letting it burn, to feel the changing of the seasons in the stiffness of the woodpile and the weight of the air.
Every day, I tried to be useful. I wanted to earn my keep, to make my place in this world feel earned. If I couldn't change their minds, I could at least make myself undeniable to the people who mattered.
And Einar noticed.
One morning, without a word, he handed me a bow.
It was simple—short, made of ashwood, light enough for me to hold but sturdy enough to feel real. It wasn't a toy. It felt like a tool. A promise.
He set a target up behind the shed: a stump, weathered and split, with a bit of old cloth nailed to the center. Then he stood beside me, arms folded, waiting.
"Try," was all he said.
I did.
And missed.
Repeatedly.
The bowstring bit my arm. The arrow wobbled, barely clearing the grass. My stance was wrong. My grip too tight. My breath shallow.
But he didn't laugh. Didn't scold. Just stepped in, adjusted my elbow, tapped my feet into position, showed me the pull. The tension. The breath. The stillness before the shot.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Day by day, I got better. The string stopped snapping against my arm. My arrows started landing on the stump. Once, I clipped the cloth. Einar grunted—approvingly, I think—and handed me a better arrow. One with real fletching.
It became our quiet ritual. After chores, after supper, after the village windows had shuttered against the dark. He would meet me by the shed, and I would practice until the stars prickled out of the dusk.
It was after one of those sessions—when the sun had dipped and my fingers ached from practice—that I whispered the word.
"System."
The familiar chime answered, and the translucent blue window blinked into being. My eyes scanned the updates, heart skipping as a new entry flickered into place.
[Skill Unlocked: Archery]
Rank: F (4%)
You've begun to grasp the basics of ranged combat. Practice refines instinct.
+Minor accuracy bonus with bows. +Slight increase to draw efficiency.
Progress through use and repetition.
Just as I was about to close the window, another soft chime echoed—low and familiar, like a memory stirring. The same kind of prompt I'd seen once before, when the system had asked if I wanted to attune a shovel of all things as a spellcasting focus.
A new line faded into view beneath the skill entry, tinted slightly in silver-blue:
[System Notice]
Continued use of Ashwood Bow detected.
This item qualifies as a Spellcasting Focus.
Designate Ashwood Bow as your primary focus?
[Yes] / [No]
While equipped as a focus, this item grants:
– Slight increase to ranged spell accuracy
– Minor stabilization of projectile spells
– Enhanced fluidity when casting while drawing or moving
I blinked, reading it twice. A bow, as a focus? It wasn't what I expected— Just the same ashwood bow Einar had handed me. Rough in places. Honest. Worn from use, not ornament.
But maybe that was the point.
Magic, at least as the system saw it, didn't seem to care about tradition or appearance. It cared about connection. Intention. This bow was a tool for performing a task. The stillness before a shot, the tension in the draw—it wasn't so different from the stillness before casting. The focus of breath, the narrowing of thought.
I remembered the way the system had offered the same choice for the shovel, back when I first shaped the land with my will. It hadn't been about the tool. It had been about control and association with the tools favored task. About channeling something through action.
And this felt no different.
I hovered a moment longer, then selected Yes.
No flare of light. No sudden rush of energy. Just a faint warmth in the grip, a quiet shift—like something settling into place that had always been meant to.
I didn't know what it would let me do yet.
But I knew I'd find out.
Einar was good. Really good.
He moved like someone who'd made a living of this. Calm. Precise. Controlled. There was something quiet and lethal in the way he drew the bow, in the stillness of his shoulders before the release. I could tell this wasn't just farm skill. This was experience.
He didn't waste movement. Every adjustment he made to my stance was efficient, direct. His eyes missed nothing—where I overextended, where I hesitated, where my breath shook at the wrong moment. He corrected me with a nudge, a look, a single word: "Again."
So one evening, as we cleaned and stored the bows after practice, I finally asked:
"Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
He paused, a faint smile tugging at the edge of his face. Then he nodded once, as if deciding something.
"When I was younger," he said, "before you came to us... the local lord called up his fyrd. There'd been raids. Skirmishes with the border clans. They needed men."
My ears perked up. I'd read about the fyrd in my old life—levied militias, summoned in times of need. Most peasants served once, maybe twice in their life. I hadn't known Einar had fought.
"Were you scared?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away. Just sat back on the chopping block, staring at the sky where dusk had begun to spill across the clouds, catching on the edges of the smoke from the chimney.
"Of course," he said eventually. "I was a farmer with a bow. Same as the others. We marched north. Fought for land that wasn't ours, alongside men who didn't know our names."
He didn't go into the battles. Not really. Just... shapes. Memories without edges. He told me how the nights were cold, how the rain made the arrows useless, how the mud swallowed your boots, how the wind stole the sound of your own breath.
He spoke of a friend who vanished in the mist during a night skirmish. Of a horse that screamed. Of arrows that missed their mark and found bone instead. Of smoke clinging to your hair, and the way blood smelled in the rain.
"But you did," I said.
He nodded. "Aye. I did. And I came home."
"And met Ingrid?"
That made him smile—small, but real. "She was the innkeeper's niece. Visiting for the season. Strong hands. Smarter than I was. Told me I drank too much and wasn't funny enough to flirt. I married her a year later."
He looked at me then, eyes a little distant. "War takes a lot. Gives back very little. But it brought me home to her. That... that was enough."
We sat in silence for a while after that. The kind of silence that holds more truth than talk. The kind where the fire cracks, and the world feels too wide, and you wonder about all the stories that never get told.
I didn't ask more.
But I remembered his eyes when he spoke. The weight behind his words. And I thought—for the first time, maybe—about the life my parents had before me, and how young they still were.
They hadn't always been just a quiet couple in the woods. They had stories. Battles. Choices.
They had scars.
They were still younger than I had been when I died, and they had seen so much.
They carried their past like old armor—scuffed, weathered, but still held close. Never shown off, but always worn. It made me realize how little I really knew about them. Not just their stories, but their silences. The choices they didn't talk about. The things they did to keep this small life going. The compromises. The quiet losses.
And they had chosen me. Again and again, without conditions. Even when the village pulled away.
So I would choose them, too.
I would carry them with me, the way they had carried me. Through arrows and storms. Through silence and exile. Through harsh winters and short summers. Through the long hours of work and the few precious hours of rest.
Through all the things we never said aloud, but showed in our hands. In the firewood split. In the stew stirred. In the bow passed from callused hand to eager fingers.
With every arrow I loosed, I felt it: I wasn't just learning a skill.
I was inheriting something.
And one day, maybe I would pass it on too.
Not because I had to.
But because I understood what it meant to give a piece of yourself to someone, wordlessly, and trust them to carry it forward.
Because some gifts are heavier than swords. And sharper. And stronger.
Because love, too, can be a weapon—one that guards, and shelters, and endures.