The warmth of Milltown's bonfire had long frozen into shards within Ellis's memory under that silver moon. The shrieking howls faded with the years, yet left a thorned seed rooted deep in her bones.
Seven winters. Enough to grind the laughing girl by the fire into a ghost drifting through the continent's shadows.
Her parents' deaths… shattered like a painting torn by claws, never to be whole. The cruelest joke? The survivor, Ellis, became the very thing she despised.
What happened that night? A clammy nightmare.
She remembered only waking at dawn, stung by light. Naked in cold mud beyond the town, caked in filth and dried black blood. The taste of iron thick in her mouth, coarse beast hair caught in her raw throat.
That taste. That feeling. They clung like shadows. Countless nights she'd bolt upright, stomach heaving, retching until she bent double.
Aiden lay nearby. The little wooden horse, snapped in two, clenched in his fist. His face was paper-white, eyes shut tight, body stiff as wood. Long since scared unconscious.
Thank the skies he hadn't seen her. Not like that.
Later, hunters from the Argent Hunters' Guild told her they'd found her curled like a dying animal, whimpering nonsense. Deep claw marks scored her flesh, bruises layered on bruises. Blood and tangled fur matted her mouth.
The Guild dealt with things not human. They were cold. Efficient. They'd cleared Milltown's ruins, dug graves for what bodies they found—few survived. Aiden and Ellis became orphans. Taken in, temporarily.
The Guild always took orphans. Potential recruits. But Ellis's path shifted when a witch arrived on the wind.
Lumi. Most called her Lumi the Wandering Witch. On this continent, witches usually huddled together. Lumi walked alone.
She looked maybe thirty. Her true age? Unknown. Elusive as the wind, she appeared when trouble knocked, solving problems beyond ordinary reach.
Her short brown hair was neat, framing a face with sharp, striking lines. A well-tailored brown duster, stiff fabric, swung cleanly as she moved. A belt cinched her lean waist. Dark grey trousers fell straight into polished black boots.
She looked less like a crystal-gazer, more like a blade-walker.
Lumi's eyebrows lifted the moment she saw Ellis. Curiosity sparked in her eyes, but beneath it lay a knot of deeper confusion. It felt like she saw straight through to the chaos in Ellis's soul, the restless fury churning in her blood.
"Girl," Lumi's voice scraped like wind over stone, "That's a rare kind of trouble you carry." She paused. Her next words drove ice into Ellis's heart. "Come with me. Until you learn to hold that beast inside… peace won't find you." Her gaze sharpened. "Or worse… it'll kill someone else."
So Ellis became Lumi's apprentice. Some called her "the witch's whelp" behind her back. Harsh, but true. She owned it.
Seven years. Lumi taught her everything needed on these roads: fighting, magic, herbs, lore… But the core was training brutal as winter. Suppressing the wildness wasn't enough. Until they found its root, her only path was mastering the dark power surging in her veins. It clawed to break free, especially under the swollen moon.
Years of relentless tracking pieced clues together. The pack that hit Milltown? No rabble. Precise. Coordinated. Purposeful. What were they hunting? Who?
The old silver pendant her mother pressed into her palm… etched with long-lost guardian runes. Powerful. No villager's trinket.
What secrets had her parents kept?
But these questions now burned under a hotter flame: Vengeance. The largest wolf that night. The leader.
The Cross-Scarred One. The source of every nightmare. His true name lost. His clan a mystery. But that scar? Unique. It was Ellis's only marker. A blood-soaked beacon pointing to the end of her hate.
Ellis's jaw clenched, teeth grinding faintly. Seven years of wind and grind hadn't just left scars.
Hardship had honed her frame, lean and strong. Her raven-dark hair, tied in a low ponytail, caught the dawn light, a cold blue sheen flickering within. Faint shadows bruised beneath eyes that might have seemed wide-set and young, but their sharp olive-green cut like a tensed wolf ready to spring.
The Cross-Scarred One… The blood-soaked name almost tore free, lost instead to the bitter mountain wind. The next lead pointed north. To the Blackstone Peaks.
This time, she wasn't that naked girl trembling in the mud. This time, hunter and hunted would trade places.
"Hey, pup." Lumi's voice cut the silence beside her. The crisp witch's tone held a thread of warmth, like a thin blanket against the cold trek. "Miles deep in thought. Your spirit's halfway down the mountain."
"Just… remembering." Ellis's voice was low, frayed by the wind, leaving only stubborn residue.
"Those memories still snapping at your heels?" Lumi's tone held the weariness of weathered roads. She tugged her collar tighter. "Seven winters under that weight is long enough. Don't pull the string too tight. It snaps."
"I'll rest," Ellis's voice was cold as the stone underfoot, "when the debt's paid. When it's done." Each word struck the frigid air, hard as flint.
"Hate's a bottomless well," Lumi sighed softly, her gaze sweeping the bleak ridges ahead. "It swallows more and more. Your spirit. Your years. Your days… all poured in. What's left for you?"
"Then that's what it is." Ellis said it quietly. Not defiance. Not surrender. A cold fact, carved like an epitaph. If the well had no bottom, she'd fall. Shattered or damned, it was her chosen path.
They climbed higher. The trail snaked along steep cliffs. Finally, they edged past a wind-scoured rock face, gouged like a giant's carcass. Below, the small valley where the settlement stood opened before them.
Or rather, where it had stood.
No clusters of wood or stone houses. No clamor of voices. No lowing cattle returning home. Only barren, deathly stillness.
Silence.
A thick, choking silence blanketed the valley, heavier than the icy mountain mist by tenfold. No cooking smoke curled. No lamps glowed. Not even a single bird crossed this dead ground.
Just the scattered wreckage of dwellings. Ruin. Debris. Fallen beams stabbed the grey sky. Shattered windows gaped like empty eye sockets. Wind whipped dust and dead grass into swirling eddies, hissing hollowly.
But… the people? No living soul. Not even a body. As if the entire settlement, people and beasts alike, had been swallowed whole by some unseen maw. Vanished clean. Leaving only this scar of wreckage and a silence that cut to the bone.
"This place… it's wrong." Ellis's voice was a rasp. The beast-instinct within her stirred, a low, uneasy growl in the unnatural quiet.