I didn't want to break the vision. I took a deep breath, drawing it fully into my lungs. Let it deepen the pull.
I had reached fourteen.
In our tradition, that was the age of passage—the threshold into adulthood. I remember the day well—not because of ceremony or celebration, but because of the way he looked at me. Something in his eyes had changed. Not affection—that was always there—but a kind of final acceptance. Like he knew he could no longer protect me from what was already unfolding.
We both wore white, as always. His robe, mine a cloak. But by then, we were beginning to look more alike than not. I didn't know his true age, not really. His face held no lines, and his hair had always been silver. Ageless. Yet there were times, especially when he stood beneath moonlight, that I saw something ancient in him—carved deep behind his quiet eyes.
My father finally told me why he had taken me from the fire. Why the silence, the seclusion… they weren't discipline. They were a shield.
He told me why he had sheltered me, why he hid me so carefully from the outside world. It wasn't punishment. It was protection.
He said I couldn't read my own fate—that was the one limit of my gift. But even without it, my gift was powerful.
Being the Druid Priest, he had seen my path long before I ever could—maybe even from the moment I was born. And from what he saw, it wasn't an easy road. There were shadows in it. Loss, pain, death. A weight I wasn't meant to carry so young.
He had seen my fate from the beginning. And he chose to interfere. He took me from the fire to alter it.
All of it was his way of trying to keep that fate from finding me too soon.
He wanted to protect me. Maybe even save me.
"I couldn't let your fate unfold," he said. "Not the way it was written."
But fate isn't something easily bent.
Still, he tried.
He taught me to write, to track symbols and cycles. That's how I came to preserve his teachings—not just with memory, but with ink. I recorded what he passed down: his methods, his observations, the sacred texts he had long committed to heart. The forest held no parchment, but he found ways. Bark, pressed cloth, even fine slate etched with sharp bone.
He had taken disciples before, he told me. Young men, chosen carefully, who later returned to the world below to teach and carry the line of knowledge. But with me, it was different. I was not only his disciple—I was his daughter.
And because of that, I remained.
From there, I knew—his love for me was abundant. It stirred something inside my heart. My silence had become not just endurance, but resilience. A show of hope. Of life. And my hope grew.
I wanted to protect him, too—the man who had given me a chance to live.
The forest had become an extension of me by then. I knew its moods, its breath, its smallest changes. So when the air shifted one late afternoon—subtle at first, like a tightening—I felt it in my spine. A silence too still. A pause that didn't belong.
By nightfall, they arrived.
An entourage. Twenty or more men. They came quietly, but not unseen. Their armor was muffled, but the aura around them moved like wind through bone. They camped just beyond the temple's reach—far enough not to cross the invisible boundary my father had drawn, but near enough for the earth to tremble under their presence.
They didn't light fires. But I could hear the way they breathed—heavy with discipline and caution.
Their leader met with my father briefly. I didn't see them speak, but I knew. I felt the echo of their conversation vibrate in the stone beneath my feet. No hostility. Just purpose.
I knew who they were. Knights.
Not the kind of knights that tales spoke of—romantic heroes on quests. These were men bound by oaths and silence. Guardians of something older than kingdom or king. Soldiers of vision, of law, of old blood.
I didn't fear them. But their presence shook the peace like a bell inside my chest.
That night, I stood at the edge of the moss wall where forest met clearing. Cloaked, barefoot, unseen. I watched their silhouettes through the trees—metal catching moonlight, heads bowed in hushed murmurs.
I returned to the stone house. My father was waiting. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. His silence said enough.
He looked at me like he always did—half knowing, half mourning. But also, hope.
Hope glinted in his eyes.
The wind stirred the trees that night. The spring whispered. Behind the walls, the fire glowed—quiet, defiant.