The war camp lay sprawled like a sleeping beast across the windswept plateau. Dozens of watchfires burned low, their light smoldering against the dark, licking the undersides of the heavy clouds that rolled in from the east. The air was thick with the mingled scents of horse sweat, damp wool, and the faint char of burned bread from some cookfire left unattended. Beyond the perimeter, the land stretched away into shadow—flat, treeless, and swallowing all sound.
Kaelen walked alone along the central path, boots crunching softly over the gravel. The sentries straightened when they saw him, fists pressed to breastplates in silent salute. Their armor caught the firelight in brief, molten flashes before darkness reclaimed it.
It had rained earlier in the day, and the cold had crept deep into the earth; each breath left a faint mist curling from his lips. He was in no hurry, though the weight of the day's war council still hung over his shoulders like a sodden cloak.
The night felt… different. It's not threatening exactly, but taut, as if the very air had drawn in a slow, steady breath.
The main path narrowed where the larger command tents gave way to the clustered shelters of the soldiers. Canvas flaps rippled in the chill wind, ropes creaked faintly, and the distant murmur of voices came from the mess area where the late-shift guards were eating. A single lantern swayed from a rope between two poles, its glow a trembling island in the darkness.
Kaelen paused, scanning the shadows out of habit. Years of hunting raiders in the north had taught him the subtle signs of being watched—the prickle at the back of the neck, the way silence falls not naturally but deliberately.
A flicker of movement. The corner of his eye caught it—there, in the narrow space between two supply tents. Too smooth for wind, too deliberate for chance.
His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword without thinking.
From the shadows stepped a figure. They were swathed head to toe in dark, layered fabric—a traveler's mantle of storm-grey, edges frayed but not from neglect. Their boots were silent on the damp earth. But it was the mask that held Kaelen's attention: smooth, featureless except for two narrow slits where eyes gleamed faintly in the lantern light. The surface was polished bone-white, the faintest tracery of gold in the grain, as if veins of some ancient metal had been forged into it.
The figure moved without sound, stopping a few paces away. There was no visible weapons, yet the air around them seemed… sharp. Like the space before a blade strikes.
Kaelen didn't draw his sword, but his fingers remained curled around the hilt. "If you've come to rob me," he said evenly, "you've chosen a poor target."
The masked head tilted slightly, as if weighing him. Then a voice—low, steady, neither male nor female—slipped into the night.
"I've come to warn you."
They spoke without hurry, each word like a stone placed carefully on a path.
"The heart you seek is guarded by more than demons."
Kaelen's jaw tightened. He said nothing, letting the silence press for more.
"It is bound by oaths older than your crown," the figure continued. "By hands that do not bleed, by eyes that do not close. The path to it is not lit by fire, but by shadow. And those shadows will know your name before you take the first step."
The wind stirred the tents, making the canvas whisper. Somewhere, a horse snorted and stamped in its pen. Kaelen took a slow breath.
"You speak as if you know where I'm going," he said.
"I speak as if you do not yet understand what you are walking toward," the masked figure replied.
He took a step forward, boots scraping faintly over the wet ground. "Who sent you?"
The figure did not move back, but the mask caught the lantern light for the briefest moment, showing the glint of eyes that seemed older than the voice suggested.
"No one sent me," they said. "And everyone."
Kaelen's hand tightened on the hilt. "You're avoiding the question."
The mask inclined again, this time almost imperceptibly. "Your enemies will not all be demons. Remember that."
Before he could speak again, the lantern between them guttered suddenly, as if a hand had closed around its flame.
When the light steadied again, the space between the tents was empty.
Kaelen moved forward quickly, scanning the shadows, listening for the faintest footstep, but there was nothing—no scrape of boots, no shifting canvas, no rustle of fabric. It was as if the figure had been swallowed whole by the night.
Only the faint scent of something unfamiliar lingered in the air—a dry, metallic tang, like stone dust after an old wall has been broken.
He stood there for a long moment, the words repeating in his mind like a slow drumbeat.
The heart you seek is guarded by more than demons.
When Kaelen returned to the central path, the soldiers greeted him with brief nods, unaware of what had just happened only a dozen paces away. He kept walking, though his eyes scanned the camp more than before.
The watchfires seemed smaller now, the shadows longer. The plateau's wind carried no warmth.
At his command tent, he paused at the threshold, glancing once over his shoulder at the dark beyond the ring of light.
Somewhere out there, the masked figure was still moving. Watching. And for the first time in days, the threat of the demons felt… secondary.
To be continued…