Chapter 15: The Tide of Shadows
They came without warning—without cry, without drum, without the sound of rage or hunger.
Only silence. Only the thundering rush of countless feet over snow.
The forest erupted. Dark figures spilled from the treeline, gaunt as corpses, tall as pines. Their eyes burned with a red glow, and their armor seemed grown into their flesh, runes writhing faintly as though alive. Each pulse of that light echoed the horn that had summoned them, and each step drove dread deeper into our bones.
The company formed ranks. Shields locked. Spears braced. Horses reared and screamed, nearly breaking free from their reins. At the center, the children crouched in silence, their pale faces turned upward, watching. Not crying. Not trembling. Watching.
Then the watchers struck.
Steel clashed. Men roared. Blood steamed on snow. My spear met one in the chest, but the point sank into something half-solid, half-smoke. It shrieked without a mouth, and its weight hammered my shield like the fall of a tree. Joran was there in an instant, his sword splitting its mask. Black vapor burst outward, and the creature collapsed into ash.
"Not men!" Joran bellowed, staggering back. His words were true—these were no raiders, no soldiers. They were made things, wrong things, shaped from shadow and bone.
Carrow fought like a storm. His blackened sword tore through their ranks, each strike sending them reeling as if the steel itself was poison to them. For every man who faltered, his presence kept three more standing. Yet even Carrow could not turn the tide. For every watcher that fell, two more emerged from the dark, endless, merciless.
The ground beneath us shook. At first I thought it was the charge, but the tremor came from deeper still. From below.
And then—I heard it.
A hum. Soft, low, winding beneath the battle cries. At first I thought it was the wind sighing through the trees, but no—the sound rose from the children.
Their lips moved, their voices threading together in a tune without words. It was a song too old for such young throats, too heavy for innocence. The melody wound around us, curling through the trees, binding itself to the rhythm of the runes.
The men faltered. Some shouted at them to stop, others crossed themselves in fear. The watchers slowed their attack, no longer pressing, their burning eyes fixed on the children. And in that moment, I realized: the watchers were not hunting them. They were answering them.
Carrow saw it too. His voice cut like steel across the chaos.
"Silence them!"
A soldier seized a boy by the shoulder. The humming stopped at once, every child falling still. But the watchers did not retreat. They bowed their heads instead, as though before an altar. The horn did not sound again. The forest itself seemed to wait.
The girl in my arms stirred, her breath hot against my ear. Her words froze me colder than the snow.
"It isn't waking," she whispered. "It's listening."
I stared at her, unable to speak. My heart pounded with a truth too terrible to grasp.
The watchers did not come for us.
They came for the children.
Joran saw it too. His face went white, his blade trembling. "Gods save us… they're not captives. They're heralds."
The earth split with a groan like thunder. Snow and soil cracked open, light bleeding upward in veins of red. The runes carved in the trees flared brighter, pulsing with the rhythm of the children's silence, as if waiting for the next note.
Carrow's command rose above the quake. "Hold the line!" But his eyes betrayed him. He knew.
What had seemed like rescue was something far worse.
The children we had freed were not victims. They were keys.
The watchers closed in again—not to strike, but to surround. To shield. To wait for what would rise.
And in that terrible stillness, the girl's eyes found mine.
"It already knows your name," she said. "And when it calls, you will answer."
The horn did not sound again.
It did not need to.
Because now, I heard it clearly—not with my ears, but inside my chest.
The call was no longer in the trees.
It was in me.
— To Be Continued —
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