The Queen's voice lingers in the dust of the arena.
It does not echo; instead it fills the arena with quiet authority.
Raise your blade, my knight
The command lands with a weight that steals my breath. Instinctively I glance toward my hand, looking toward the compass expecting its weight to drag me to meaning. But when my eyes find my palm, it is bare. Its golden rim still bites at memory, but the compass itself has vanished, leaving only a pale scar where the wound once bled—as if years had passed in an instant.
The absence twists in my chest. My fingers curl tight, as if closing them could conjure it back, but they grasp only air. I cannot tell if I've been robbed of something I needed or released from a burden I never understood. Either way, I did not choose – and that frightens me most of all.
The ache of loss lingers in me until something else presses in. A weight at my hip, faint but insistent, as though it had been there all along, waiting for me to notice.
Armor encases me, though I never saw it fasten into place. The breastplate is slim, contoured to the line of my ribs, steel polished to a sheen that feels too proud for me to wear, veins of gold filigree curling at the seams. The pauldrons jut like clipped wings, sharp-edged yet light, more emblem than shield. Plates run down my arms and thighs in careful segments, jointed to move with the thrust of a blade rather than the weight of war. Greaves hug my shins, their ends tapering into pointed sabatons that click faintly when I shift. From my shoulder hangs a violet cape, short at the back but heavy enough to pull at me with each breath.
It feels too precise, as if someone knew my shape better than I know it myself. Both beautiful and foreign. Armor yes – but also a costume.
My hand drifts downward, drawn to the weight at my side, until it finds the shape of a hilt that should not be there.
I draw the sword slow, almost unwilling, half expecting it to dissolve like the compass. The blade whispers free of its sheath: slim, piercing, delicate as a needle. The guard curves elegantly around my hand, fitting perfectly. I know this weapon, but only through pain – the sting of a late parry, the bruise of a shallow strike, the laughter of girls more skilled than I ever was. I was never more than adequate; clumsy, always corrected, never graceful. Yet the steel vibrates faintly in my hand, as if it knows me better than I know myself.
I hold it uncertainly. This armor, this weapon – none of it is mine, yet it has been draped over me as if I were always meant to wear it. The Queen watches in silence, her gaze pressing heavier than the plates across my chest.
The Queen stands rooted, as though carved from the mountain itself. Her breastplate is veined with gold that glows faintly like fault lines under stone, each line converging toward the center of her chest where a small diamond-shaped inlay catches the light. Across her forearms and throat are fine etched markings, delicate as compass-needles, glowing faintly when she speaks. Her crown is more than just iron, it is branches entwined with veins of quartz and coal, jagged and sharp, like it was torn straight from the earth's seam. Her skin carries the hue of weathered stone, pale but streaked with faint mineral gleam, and when her eyes meet mine, they hold the patient gravity of soil – vast, heavy, and unyielding.
She watches me in silence. Expectation weighs heavier than her armor. When at last she speaks, and her voice carries the cadence of stone shifting under strain, low and resonant, more vow than a command
"What must be done is mine to carry. His laughter calls what should never wake, his presence draws the hunger of darkness. If he walks unbound, all will fall to it. And yet my hand will not strike. Love binds it. Fear leaves it trembling. So I lead him to where the stone might hold what I cannot. Better chains than a mother's blade."
Her words do not fall like a story being told, but like a wound spoken aloud, each syllable cut from grief too deep to hide. The sound reverberates through the arena, and the ground itself bends to her will. Stone darkens, softens, and bleeds into earth. Columns stretch and warp, their spines cracking into branches. Grass spreads from cracks that had never been there. The place unravels into a courtyard walled in ivy and rain-streaked stone.
Behind us stands a black-iron gate. Its bars arch not for arrivals but for departures – the kind a castle reserves for those who walk into danger and do not return. Beyond it stretches the forest. Pines stand in ranks too close together, their shadows pooled like tar. Past them looms the mountain, scarred and massive, its crown wrapped in mist. It does not loom; it dominates.
The Queen turns her gaze not to the mountain but downward, to a child at her side.
He clings to her hand, unsteady on his feet, curls damp against his brow. His lips shape broken syllables, half words that collapse before they form. His eyes are wide, guileless, but the air bends faintly around him, attentive in a way that chills me.
The Queen smooths her hand through his hair, and for a moment the weight of her crown seems to falter. She looks like a mother worn by love and fear, holding too tightly because loosening her grip would cost her everything.
"Come," she murmurs. Her voice folds the courtyard into silence.
Her steps are measured, her robes brushing the earth in soft rhythm. The child stumbles but is steadied by her hand. I follow, seeing the space behind us is already fading, ivy and stone pulling back into shadow.
The forest receives us without ceremony. Pines tower overhead, their branches tangled into a canopy that allows only a strained light to seep through. The air grows colder, resin sharp on my tongue, moss wet beneath my boots. The hush of this place presses close, carrying the weight of eyes unseen.
The Queen does not falter. Each step she takes feels inevitable, as if the forest itself has been waiting for her to arrive and settle into its shape. The path seems to remember her tread, bending quiet beneath her. I try to match her pace, but my own stride feels clumsy, uncertain. Roots rise and with every step the unease in my chest coils tighter, whispering that I walk a road meant for someone else.
The boy laughs once, a clear sound that should have been harmless. But it spreads through the forest like a stone tossed into water. Birds shriek and scatter. The shadows stretch, thickening, as though trying to reach him. His laugh does not echo; it lingers.
I tighten my grip on the sword. My pulse stutters. The boy glances back at me with wide eyes, innocent, curious – but the air folds around him differently. The shadows know him. The darkness listens. And it hungers.
The Queen's voice cuts through the stillness, low but steady, each word striking deep.
"You see now why I feared him."
The words hang, neither answered nor denied. I want to ask her why she carries him at all, why fear binds her hand but does not guide her blade. But I cannot. Perhaps I am afraid of her answer. Perhaps I am afraid she will remain silent.
The forest closes in further, roots twisting up through the path, branches clawing low. My armor creaks with each movement, foreign against my body, reminding me with every step that this is not a path I chose. I wonder if the Queen sees a knight walking at her side, while I feel only as a trespasser in borrowed skin.
The boy tugs her hand. She holds him tighter, gaze fixed ahead. His eyes catch mine again, wide and unblinking. The Queen does not slow. The mountain looms larger, its slopes dark with scars that resemble words I cannot read.
"Raise your blade when the time comes," she says. "The forest will not ignore him. It cannot."
Her voice leaves no space for reply. My scar throbs faintly, the ghost of the compass lingering in my palm. The sword feels both alien and inevitable in my grip. Branches tilt toward him, shadows lean closer, as though the forest cannot help but follow his breath. And I begin to understand: the danger is not in what he intends but in what he is. Chaos does not wait for his will. It comes because he breathes.
The proof arrives with his laugh. A small, bubbling sound — clumsy with youth, bright as any child's — and yet it unravels the silence. The forest answers.
The pines shiver without wind. The ground trembles faintly beneath my boots. A smell rises — wet fur, old blood, rot that has had time to settle into bone. My hand closes around the hilt at my side before I even see it.
Then it steps into view.
A stag. Or what remains of one. Its antlers are vast and tattered, crowned with strips of moss and clotted hair. Its ribs jut through torn flesh like the bars of a broken cage. Skin sloughs loose across its flanks, slick and dark, but still the creature moves with dreadful purpose. Its eyes are milk-white, yet fixed straight ahead, as though it has always been walking toward us.
Each step sinks into the moss with a wet crack, leaving the ground blackened where its hooves strike. Its breath gurgles like water through reeds, hot enough to sting the air.
The boy tilts his head, curious, almost delighted.
The Queen only tightens her grip on his hand. Her gaze hardens. "The first has found us."
The stag lowers its antlers, and the air between us quivers like something about to break.