The forest cracked with breaking branches as Elder Thalos pushed the children forward, his staff striking the earth in an urgent rhythm. His beard clung to his chest with damp sweat, his breath ragged as though each step drained years from him. The canopy above groaned with the weight of birds scattering from the noise, and the roots underfoot seemed determined to trip them, to slow them, to betray them to the darkness that followed.
"Faster," Thalos rasped, his voice hoarse from the long night. "They are not far."
Bram, tall for his age but heavy-footed, shouldered aside a low branch, snapping it with more force than he meant to. His chest rose and fell as if he had swallowed fire.
"We've been running since night," he panted. "My legs are burning. They won't carry me much longer."
"Keep moving, Bram," Lyra shot back, dragging her younger brother Joss by the wrist. Her braids whipped behind her like a banner of defiance, though her voice trembled beneath the strength she forced into it. "You think the Cloakers will give you time to rest? You think they'll pat your head and let you sit down?"
Joss stumbled, nearly falling, his small frame too frail for the brutal pace. Amara, barely older than him, clutched a ragged doll to her chest as though its stitched smile could guard her from the shadows snapping at their heels. Her wide eyes darted toward every rustle in the thickets, every snapping twig that might betray them.
Dagan marched at the rear, his fists balled so tightly the knuckles glared white. He muttered curses beneath his breath, his face flushed red from more than running. Fury burned in him hotter than fear, though fear was there too, buried deep and dangerous.
The forest closed on them like a prison of wood, but then — at last — the brush broke open. The children stumbled forward, spilling from the suffocating thickets into a clearing where a river glittered beneath the noon sun.
The sight stole their breath. The water was clear as crystal, scattering gold as sunlight broke across its rippling skin. It gleamed as though a thousand shards of glass had been thrown down by the heavens themselves.
The children collapsed by the bank, falling to their knees in exhaustion and relief. They drank greedily, gulping until their throats hurt, some laughing between breaths as though they had discovered a miracle.
"I've never…" Lyra wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, voice hushed as though she feared the moment might vanish if she spoke too loud. "I've never tasted water like this. Not thick with ash. Not bitter. Just… water."
Amara lowered her doll and brushed her small hand across the grass. Her fingers lingered on its blades, her eyes wide. "Look at the trees. They're alive. Green. I thought green was just a story."
Her words sank into the silence. For all of them, color had been a myth, a whisper. Ash and blackened stone had been their world; to see the forest alive felt like stumbling into another realm entirely.
Dagan spat into the river and grinned, though the grin was jagged and sharp. "When we grow," he muttered, his voice already hard as iron, "we'll come back and burn every Cloaker's nest to the ground. Every last one."
The others stirred uneasily at his words, but before anyone could answer, a sob broke the air.
Kael sat apart from the rest, shoulders shaking as he buried his face in his hands. His breath came in gasps, the kind of sound that wrenched itself out of the body whether the soul willed it or not.
"I saw her," he choked, his voice breaking like glass. "My mother — when they dragged her —" His words collapsed into silence. His body folded in on itself as if the grief was too heavy to bear upright.
The river stilled around them. Even the birds hushed.
Bram's jaw clenched, his teeth grinding as though to bite back his own tears. Lyra crept closer, her hand brushing Kael's arm with hesitant gentleness.
"Our families too," she whispered. "They took them. They burned them. We'll make them pay, Kael. For all of them."
Dagan's head snapped up, his eyes glinting with fever-bright resolve. "Pay," he echoed, his voice edged like a blade pulled from the forge.
But before the fire could spread, Elder Thalos struck the earth with his staff. The sound cracked like thunder.
"No."
The word rang out with such force it silenced even the forest itself.
"Listen to me," Thalos commanded, his voice deep as roots. "Revenge is a serpent that coils tighter the more you feed it. You kill for vengeance, and you will become what you hate. Your fire must not be for vengeance. Your fire must be for freedom. For protecting others. That is the only flame that does not consume the one who bears it."
The river hushed as if it too listened. Even the wind seemed to pause, branches holding their breath in reverence to his words.
For a moment, no one dared speak.
Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, Joss broke the silence. "Maybe monsters deserve monsters."
The words were small, but they struck like stones thrown into still water. Every head turned. The boy's eyes were wide, his face pale, but his voice carried a darkness that did not belong to one so young. A thought older than him, heavier than him, chilling them more than even the Cloakers' pursuit.
Elder Thalos opened his mouth to answer — but the forest did not allow him the chance.
A horn blast split the air, low and cruel. Shouts rose from behind them. The crunch of boots tore through the undergrowth.
"The Cloakers," Bram hissed.
The children scrambled to their feet, fear snapping through their exhaustion like whips. They raced through the brush, tripping, stumbling, driven by sheer terror until they slammed against an endless wall of trees.
The barricade loomed higher than sight, bark twisted together into an impenetrable wall of wood. No gaps, no breaks, no mercy.
"We're trapped," Lyra gasped, clutching Joss to her side.
The Cloakers burst into the clearing a heartbeat later, black masks gleaming in the sunlight, their whips coiled like serpents at their sides. The smell of smoke clung to them like a second skin.
"Light them," one snarled, his hand flaring red with conjured flame.
"No!" another barked, seizing his arm. "The boy is here. The mystery-born. Alive, or the Serpent's priest will skin us all."
The children pressed back against the wall, trembling, eyes darting, hearts thundering.
Then—
The trees shuddered.
Branches shot outward like spears. Figures cloaked in green, their faces hidden behind masks shaped like golden suns, leapt from the living wall itself. Their blades flashed in the light, and the very wood of the forest obeyed their will.
The Verdant Guard had come.
Living branches whipped forward, impaling Cloakers before they could scream. Roots curled around legs, dragging men to the earth.
"Sun-worshippers!" one Cloaker spat before a root burst from the soil and tore him down into silence.
The fight was short and merciless. Cloakers crushed, strangled, snapped like twigs beneath roots that moved with a will of their own. Only one staggered free, sprinting into the forest with terror snapping at his heels.
And then — silence.
The children huddled together, staring at the warriors in green. The masks gleamed like suns, cold and bright, unreadable.
Kael swallowed, his voice trembling. "What… what do you want with us?"
One of the warriors stepped forward. His voice was muffled by the mask, but it carried steady and strong. "If the Serpent hunts you, boy, then you are more than you know. And we will find out what that is."
They herded the children forward, toward a hollow that opened in the great wall of trees. The wood parted like a mouth, swallowing them whole. As the last child crossed the threshold, the forest closed behind them, sealing the outside world away.
---
Far away, in Pytharis, the air stank of incense and blood.
The Serpent Priest knelt before the idol that loomed at the heart of his temple — a colossal stone serpent coiled around a throne of skulls. Its carved eyes glowed with an inner fire, their gaze heavy with something more than stone.
"You failed me," the voice rumbled, not from the priest but from the idol itself. "The boy breathes, though I commanded ashes."
The priest pressed his forehead to the cold floor, his voice quaking. "Lord, forgive me. The Cloakers search still. They will not stop until—"
"Silence."
The word slithered like venom, and the priest froze.
"I raised you from dust. I made you my tongue," the idol hissed. "Do not think your failures go unseen."
The glow of its eyes dimmed, leaving the chamber in suffocating shadow.
Shaking, the priest rose and stalked into the dungeon halls. The iron doors groaned open before him, releasing a stench of damp stone and despair.
Elira sat within, chains biting into her wrists, her back straight despite the bruises that marred her skin. Broken, yet unbowed.
"You want to see your son again?" the priest sneered. "We will give you the chance."
At his gesture, a figure in deep purple stepped forward. Glass vials clinked at his belt, filled with strange liquids that glimmered in the dim torchlight. His hood shadowed his face, but his presence bent the air, twisting it wrong.
"Does your craft distort memory?" the priest asked.
The alchemist's voice was a whispering hiss. "No. I do not erase. I bend. I twist."
The priest crouched before Elira, his fingers brushing her bruised cheek. "We will treat your wounds. Make you useful again."
Elira spat in his face. Her voice, though cracked, rang clear. "There is only one true Sun."
The slap echoed through the dungeon like a whip crack.
The alchemist drew closer, carrying a mirror rimmed in veins of violet light. Elira's eyes widened, her breath quickening.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "What do you want with me?"
The Serpent Priest wiped her spit from his cheek, smiling with cold triumph. "You live only because you are useful."
The mirror's violet glow spilled across her, shadows crawling over her face.
She screamed.
"Purple tricks the eye," the alchemist murmured, his voice smooth as oil. "But it does more. It twists the mind… and the mind twists the flesh."
Elira's reflection blurred, her face melting, reforming, shifting like wax beneath a flame. Her breath hitched as her own eyes changed before her.
"No…" Her voice cracked. "That's not me…"
The alchemist's fingers pressed deeper, invisible but sharp, tugging at thoughts like threads.
"It will be you," he whispered. "Because you will believe it."
Her scream echoed through the stone, through the smoke, before snapping off — as though the mirror itself had swallowed it whole.
In the silence that followed, the violet light flared, shadows writhing across her reflection, until the dungeon knew no sound but the hiss of magic bending her soul.
---