Matthias Harlow
Between 09:00 and 11:00
Still in a Forest in the Middle Of Nowhere
I had feared they might have moved on by the time I reached them. But the smoke only thickened as I drew closer, curling black against the mid-morning sun, and with it my fear was put to rest. They had not gone.
I had not run to them, as I had run to the bear the night before. Perhaps I hoped they would be gone, that I would be spared the choice. Or perhaps I feared that to run toward them would awaken that same savage instinct, the hunter's thirst, that had driven me into the beast's flesh.
My walk through the forest was unsettling in its familiarity. Every turn of the path felt known to me, though I had never walked it before. The earth beneath my bare feet pressed against me like an old friend. I knew where berries grew sweetest, where the deer gathered to drink, where the fox curled to rest in its den.
And yet… these were not memories. No pictures rose in my mind, no alien voice spoke within me. The knowledge was simply there, as though stitched into my very being.
It was then I understood-faintly, dimly-that my feeding had done more than sate the hunger. Somehow, impossibly, I had taken more from the bear than its life. I had absorbed its knowing its sense of the forest, its rhythm, its map of this place that was now etched within me.
I was not a stranger here. But an old guardian prowling his territory.
As I drew nearer, what had only been smoke resolved into the unmistakable sounds of an encampment. My senses drank it in greedily. Even from yards away I could taste the world they had built for themselves: burnt wood curling bitter on the air, the iron bite of metal, and the sour salt-stink of men who had marched too far and bathed too little.
A band of displaced people, perhaps? My mind conjured the image of an informal settlement, thrown up far from civilization.
The smoke grew heavier as I approached, stinging faintly in my nose, threaded with the fat of meat spitting over flame. Beneath it clung the musk of horse sweat—five distinct animals, each edged with leather and hay. They shifted, stamped, blew softly through their nostrils: impatient, but not afraid. Five mounts, the thought came, tethered but untroubled. I knew it with a certainty that startled me, as though some older instinct whispered it was true.
I slowed my already glacial pace until I moved more like a shade than a man. From the way the sound carried, I could almost picture it: a clearing, fire at its heart, tents standing like sentinels at the edges.
Through the hush of the forest, I heard them. Four men—their signatures unmistakable. They spoke in an unfamiliar tongue, yet the cadence tugged at something deep in me, a strange familiarity I could not place. Their heartbeats pounded steady and strong, rhythms more like drums than fragile flesh. They were at ease, their laughter low and coarse, the camaraderie of men who feared nothing in these woods.
And that laughter -that sound of unguarded life- made something inside me tighten. Every step closer, my body thrummed harder with the urge to end it, to silence them, to drink deep. Their heartbeats called to me, louder than drums, pulling me toward them
They're comfortable out here. Used to this life. Was it experience? Or certainty they could defend themselves? Armed, perhaps? Yet I caught no whiff I could name as gunpowder—no acrid saltpeter, no stench of rotten eggs. Curious, I inhaled deeper. A metallic tang. Oil and steel. And beneath that, the faint polish of something stranger—olive oil, animal lard, rubbed into gilded plates. Too close to their skin to be props. Armor. Real armor.
And still, part of me knew it not from logic but from something else—my breath sifting through scents the way another man's eyes might search for signs on a trail. The way the bear had known which berries were sweetest, where the stream ran coldest. The knowing was simply there.
Four bipedals. Too many. Too dangerous. Walk away. The thought wasn't mine, not fully. Harsh. Animal. A survival warning I hadn't asked for.
I clenched my jaw, forcing the contradiction back into silence. Curiosity gnawed at me, but so did unease.
Maybe a reenactment?
But that made little sense. These were the only souls for miles. No festival. No gathering. No stage. A cult? Cosplayers? A troupe of friends playing knights in the wilderness?
As I crept closer, I felt another presence lurking beneath the others, frailer, weaker, harder to separate from the drumbeats of men and beasts at my previous distance. One heartbeat stood apart, faster, uneven, threaded through with shallow, anxious breaths. A rhythm that did not belong. Oddly fast. Thready. Fragile. A child, perhaps. Fear or excitement quickened their pulse; I could not tell which. Not from where I crouched, teeth clenched against the pull of it.
"I need to get a better vantage," I muttered, my new voice, melodious, foreign, was barely more than a gasp in my throat. "Actually see what's going on. Smell and sound be damned… I still need my eyes."
The words felt absurd even as I said them, but they steadied me. I had been a man all my life until what? A day ago? Less? Sight had been my most trusted guide, the thing that grounded the world. Now my nose told me of horse sweat and oil-polished steel, my ears counted heartbeats like a tally of prey… but my eyes still demanded proof.
"I can't just… trust this," I whispered again, jaw tight.
I turned toward one of the tall pines. Its trunk loomed, bark rough and furrowed, yet the thought of climbing it sparked no hesitation. My hands moved before doubt could catch them, fingers curling into grooves, feet pressing against the wood. I pulled myself upward.
It should have been struggle. It should have stolen my breath. Instead, it was effortless. My body moved like it had always known how, like the tree bent to me, eager to lift me skyward. In seconds I was crouched in the high branches, swaying with the wind.
From here, the clearing opened before me, and I saw what my other senses had already whispered true. Five men. Five horses. And one smaller figure near the fire, hunched and fragile, a chain glinting faintly in the light.
"I knew it." I breathed, though the words rang hollow. I had known before I climbed, known with a certainty no man should have. And yet, my stubborn eyes had demanded proof, like a child pulling back the curtain to make sure the monster was really there.
The men sat at ease, armor flashing dully with firelight, their laughter rolling across the clearing like thunder with no storm. Knights. Real knights, not costumes, not play-actors. My stomach twisted.
The men were not what I had first expected. Not ragged wanderers or woodsmen scraping by on meager spoils, but knights. True knights. Their armor caught the morning light in gleaming fragments, plate polished to a soft sheen, the edges etched with fine detail, the weight of it on their frames too real for play acting. Sunlight flashed across their movements, glancing off gilded trim. Their surcoats carried lilies embroidered in thread that caught the dawn light.
It should have been absurd. Out of place. Yet the precision of every stitch, buckle, and joint of metal made clear this was no pretense, but a life where such finery was worn even in the wild.
Their horses showed the same care. Heavy destriers, broad and muscled, manes combed, tack clean, caparisons bearing lilies like their masters' surcoats. The animals stood calm, trained for both war and display. Around the fire, the men talked and laughed easily, their voices softened with drink. Helmets rested at their feet, plumes stirring in the breeze. Their swords hung at their belts or lay within reach. Wine filled silver cups, a feast in the wilderness.
One carried himself like a courtier more than a soldier, his armor polished to a mirror finish, chased with vines and lilies. A chalice marked his surcoat. His hair was dark, neatly combed, his beard trimmed close. Even seated, his movements were careful, deliberate, as though measured for display.
Another was the opposite. His armor, though probably once ornate, was dulled and scarred from neglect. The crimson of his surcoat had faded, edges frayed. His black hair was unkempt, his smirk fixed and sharp. He lounged rather than sat, his posture careless, his presence closer to a brigand than a knight. The third was all brightness and polish. His armor gleamed with silver and gold, crest marked with a griffin. A long crimson plume trailed from his helm. His hair was fair, his eyes steady, his bearing upright, every inch the image of a knight who believed in the code he served.
The last was broader, heavier in build. His armor was plain but well kept, marked only by a black hound on a silver field. His plume was short, his dark hair tied back, his jaw square. He did not lean or gesture much, but sat firm and steady, less decorated than the others, but solid, dependable, and watchful.
They made for a strange sight, stranger still for what lay among them: a girl, no older than fifteen. Shackled, her wrists bound, clothed in linen rags that had once been finery. She sat hunched near the fire, bruised and battered, a pale shadow against all that gilded glory. Her arms were too thin, her cheeks hollowed, the sharp hollows and tautness of someone starved. Dark blooms of bruises mottled her skin, some fresh, others fading to yellow and green. At her ankles and the tops of her feet, the skin was rubbed raw, reddened and blistered, as though the chains had chafed her with every merciless mile. The way she shifted—tentative, shivering, each movement measured, spoke of a body unaccustomed to kindness, of limbs exhausted beyond endurance. Even the feverish glaze in her eyes bore the weight of miles walked in suffering, a spirit staggering on the frayed edge of collapse.
And yet—something in her lingered beyond the bruises and filth. The proud line of her jaw, the delicate cast of her face, the faint curve of her lips, and the way her dark hair fell in disheveled waves across her face, half-shadowing her eyes that glinted with fire. Despite her fear, the hatred in her gaze was unmistakable, sharp and unyielding, burning through exhaustion and chains alike. I knew that face from somewhere, that amour the knights wore, the heraldry they were surrounded by, it stirred a recognition in me, "But from where?"
Their voices cut me from my thoughts. The sound of it was sharp, rolling, the language something I could not place. European, certainly—Polish, perhaps—but the accent was strange, sliding between French and Italian in a way that kept me guessing. Earlier they had laughed easily, but now their tone had shifted. One of them spoke, the fair-haired knight who carried himself with authority, and his words were met with disagreement. The darker one answered first, his voice raised, sharper than the rest, and soon the argument grew, back and forth, words thrown like blades across the fire. Then the fair-haired one spoke again, quieter but firm, and the others fell silent.
For a time, no one moved. The fire cracked, spitting embers into the night. Then the one with the polished armor and courtly bearing reached forward, tore a strip of meat from the boar turning over the flames, and tossed it at the girl's feet. She did not take it. Instead, she muttered something—low, venomous, the shape of the words clear enough that their meaning carried even without translation.
The knight's hand struck her across the face in a single quick motion, the crack sharp in the silence. Her head snapped to the side, hair falling across her cheek, but she lifted it again almost at once. For a heartbeat her eyes blazed, then she spat blood straight at him, the dark splash running down his polished cheek.
Sylvia Anna Henrietta
1263
Caed Dhu, Angren
Life had never been fair to me. I knew that with a clarity that made my chest even now, tighten. From the very start, the world had singled me out, marked me, as if fate itself had decided I would carry its weight. My parents' whispers, the subtle glances of those who thought me cursed, simply because of when I was born.
The curse of the Black Sun, they called it. A shadow stamped into her existence before she had even drawn breath.
The mage Eltibald had prophesied it: that during a solar eclipse, sixty girls would be born marked by the Black Sun, destined to become cruel creatures who would herald the return of the goddess Lilit and bring the end of the world. The world looked at me and saw the prophecy writ small in my infant eyes, convinced I carried the seeds of ruin.
No one had explained it properly,perhaps they did not understand themselves, how could a child bring ruin, how could someone be born evil? but the implications were clear. People stepped lightly around me, as though my presence could stain them. Children shunned me, maids refused to touch my clothes, even my parents' hands hesitated when they lifted my from the cradle.
Every stumble, every illness, every misfortune was proof that I was dangerous, unnatural, a vessel of a doom I had never asked for.
And even what little love my parents had for me… was stolen. Piece by piece, it bled away, redirected to her. To my little sister. She could do no wrong in their eyes.
A stumble was budding grace, a tantrum was "spirited," every smile was proof of her perfection. When she cried, they rushed. When I cried, they frowned. When she erred, they forgave her; when I did, they called it proof of the curse. Even their affections seemed measured against me, weighed and found wanting.
I should have hated her for it. I should have resented her, despised her, strangled her in the crib just to prove them right. That is what they expected of me, after all ruin made flesh, cruel and merciless. But… how could I? How could I do anything but love her?
From the first, she was the only light in the shadows that suffocated me. I suffered night terrors—screams that tore my throat raw, visions of blood and fire, whispers of things too dark for a child to bear.
No one came. No nurse, no parent. No one but her. Tiny hands clutching mine, her voice soft, her warmth beside me in the dark.
She chased the nightmares away when nothing else could. She saved me, again and again. She was my sister, my only ally, the one soul who I believed truly loved me, where even our parents would not.
It became my duty, then. My charge. If the world was cruel to me, then I would stand between it and her. I would protect her, always.
And yet cruelty had a faceand a name. Quentin de Coulbert. The very image of a knight-to-be—charming, golden-tongued, comely enough to make girls sigh when he passed. And behind all of it, the cruelest of my tormentors.
He mocked, he whispered, he made my existence a game. He thought it clever to remind me, daily, of what I was supposed to become. That my very existence was ruin, that the way my parents treated me was proof enough of the curse.
It had stung when I was younger, cut deep when the barbs were fresh. But years of it hardened me. By the time I reached womanhood, his words slid off like dull blades. I had grown used to the cruelty of my peers.
But then, then he dared to cast his eyes upon her. Upon my sister. How dare he? How dare he smile at her as though she belonged to him? As though he deserved her?
I could not allow it. So I turned my thoughts toward his elder brother. Where Quentin was vain and loud, his brother Cedric, was slower, cautious, a mind I could bend if I pressed the right way. And I did. I whispered to him of dreams I claimed to see. Nightmares that I said were glimpses of what was to come. He believed me—oh, how easily he believed.
I told him of Quentin standing over him with a blade, of betrayal carried out in the dark, of a brother's smile curdling into murder. I painted Quentin's affection as false, as a mask hiding treachery. I watched the fear bloom in his eyes.
I fed it, day by day. Twisting affections, sowing mistrust. I wanted Quentin to know the same gnawing dread he had made me live with, to feel the cold rot of suspicion poison everything he thought secure.
I wanted him humbled, scorned, stripped of his easy charm. To stumble where once he strode proud. To finally taste a fraction of the pain he had carved into me.
But how was I to know it would end in blood? How was I to know that the game I played to save her from him would spiral into death?
Cedric, poor fool, let the whispers I fed him consume him whole. I watched the paranoia take root, watched him jump at shadows, watched his eyes linger on Quentin as though every gesture hid a blade. And then—one night—he could bear it no longer.
He stole his father's sword, a relic that had hung above the hearth for generations, and with it he crept into Quentin's chambers Quentin never had the chance to defend himself.
His own brother cut him down in his bed, steel where there should have been only suspicion, blood where there should have been nothing but anger.
Their father came soon after, raging, grief turning his face white. He demanded I be punished, said the cursed child had poisoned his son and brought ruin to his house. And maybe he was right. Maybe I had.
But I was a princess. Whatever my parents felt for me, they could not let me be dragged into the streets or tried in some court. Not out of love—never that—but out of duty, out of fear for their own reputations. So they stood for me, defended me because they had no choice.
I was spared punishment. But not suspicion. Not the whispers. From then on, people looked at me differently. Not just cursed, not just unlucky. Dangerous. A thing to be feared, avoided, pushed further to the margins.
Perhaps that should have been the end to my pranks.
Maybe then things would have quieted. But even Anna began to look at me differently after Quentin's death. She kept her distance, spoke to me less. We argued more, sometimes shouted, sometimes came to blows like common brats in the yard. For a time, I thought I had lost her too.
But we always found our way back. No matter the fights, there was still something between us—something that made us close again.
One day she came to me with a spark in her eyes, a plan for a prank, bold and reckless. I was so eager to prove it was still the two of us against the world that I went along, delighted that this time it was her idea.
Our target was the Nilfgaardian envoy with the polished bald patch gleaming like a mirror. We filled fish bladders with suet, hid ourselves, and when the moment came Anna herself suggested the final twist: light them, make it unforgettable.
And when the flaming bladders struck true, bursting against that bare scalp, we laughed until tears streamed down our cheeks. It was her idea, her plan—her laughter rang loudest of all.
But when the council gathered, there was no laughter. Only outrage. The envoy bellowed, the dukes and advisors whispered of disgrace. And when it came time to name blame, every eye turned to me.
Every finger pointed. They saw no prank, no childish rebellion, only insult. And when the envoy raged, demanding satisfaction, it was my name that passed their lips. Anna stayed quiet this time.
Silent, though they called me cruel, wild, unfit. Silent, though they recited every sin ever laid at my feet—running from the palace, whispers of malice, every rumor twisted into proof.
She let them pile it all on me. She let them strip me bare, her lips pressed tight, eyes averted.
It was her idea, her spark, her fire. But she said nothing.
And so they cast me out. Banished me from the only home I had ever known, their judgment sealed with her silence.
That was the day I stopped believing she loved me.
They formed a team of knights to carry out my punishment, Louis de la Croix, Vladimir Crespi, Milton de Peyrac-Peyran, and Ramon du Lac. I swore I would never forget those names.
I remember the first hours well, for they were the last I ever spent in Beauclair's shadow. At the gates, I was still astride a horse, still wearing boots that had not yet split at the seams, still clinging to the shred of dignity that came with the word "princess."
But once Beauclair's towers were no more than pale smudges on the horizon, they dragged me down off my horse and told me I would walk the rest of the journey like the criminal they claimed I was.
So I walked. Through dust, through mud, through rain that soaked me to the bone. And when I faltered, when my legs could no longer carry me, they beat me forward with the flats of their blades or the butt of their lances.
Weeks blurred together in misery, my body bruised, my feet blistered and bleeding. At night they bound me like a thief, left me lying in the dirt while they feasted by the fire.
When I first attempted to escape, Vladamir Crespi beat me so mercilessly with a horsewhip that I lost consciousness, my body folding under the strikes like a puppet with broken strings.
Around me, the others merely watched—silent witnesses to my suffering, letting the blows rain down without a hand lifted, without a word spoken. I woke later, aching and hollow, my resolve tempered into something sharper, darker.
They called it justice. I called it torment. Some spat when I passed too close to their mounts, others laughed, and more than once, Crespi eyes and hands emboldened by their apathy at my torments, began to linger where they should not.
Only one thing spared me then—Milton de Peyrac-Peyran. The noble knight, the "flower of chivalry," who did not raise his hand to help me, only his voice when their cruelty edged toward violation.
He kept the worst of them from forcing themselves upon me, but never once did he strike them for the lash, never once did he unbind me or let me ride again. He let them break me in all ways but one, and from that I learned the weight of false mercy.
When at last the swamps of Angren swallowed us, when the air stank of peat and rot, I was no longer a princess. I was little more than a husk wrapped in rags, stumbling on raw feet, a thing carried forward only by spite and the memory of every hand that struck me.
That was how I arrived at the camp we set in Caed Dhu—not as Sylvia Anna Henrietta of Toussaint, but as a cast-off, a vessel filled with rage. I slept hungry that night, as I did most since our journey began.
I awoke the next morning to laughter, loud and unrestrained, like the forest belonged to them. The morning sun threw gold across their armor, the smell of boar fat thick in the air.
Curled by the dying embers, bound at wrist and ankle, half-starved and shaking, I listened.
One of them the grizzled brute with a voice like gravel-Ramon du Lac-was in the middle of some old soldier's tale. Something about a hag in Mahakam, a witch who'd cursed his captain to cough up worms.
They laughed, loud and easy, the kind of laughter men have when they think themselves safe and righteous. I stared at the boar on the fire fat dripping onto hot coals and thought how easily men laugh while others starve.
Then Milton spoke. Stirred perhaps by the sight of me staring at their quarry "She'll die if we keep her like this," he said, his tone even, but sharp enough to slice through their mirth. "We're meant to deliver her to Caed Dhu alive, not drag a corpse through the mud."
The cruel one- Vladimir Crispi- he was always the loudest ,snorted. "Alive? Hah. You heard the Dukes decree same as I did. 'Exile,' they called it. But we all know what that means. A polite death. Why bother feeding her? She's cursed, eclipse-born. The sooner the earth takes her, the better for all."
"She's a child," Milton said. I could hear the tension in his voice. "And our vows—"
"Vows?" Crispi laughed again, low and mean. "Our vows weren't meant for things like her. You think the Realm would weep if she vanished in the marshes? You think her parents would? They wanted her gone, Ser Milton. We're just sparing them the sight of it."
There was a pause then,the kind that hums before a storm. Milton's voice came back quieter, colder. "Be careful how you speak. Her parents may have feared her, but they did not order her death. And when the Duchess asks if our task was done, tell me, what will you say? That your hunger for cruelty outweighed your honor?"
No one answered. The fire popped. One of them shifted, muttering something under his breath. Then, with a grunt, Louis de La Croix stood.
the one with the polished armor and the easy grin
"Fine," he spat. "If our noble knight insists.," reaching out, he tore a piece of meat from the spit, and tossed it into the dirt before me. "There. Eat, witch," he said. "Wouldn't want our noble friend here losing sleep over your empty belly."
I stared at the meat. My stomach cramped, but I didn't move. "Keep it," I muttered. "I'd rather starve than choke on what you touch."
He blinked, then laughed - a short, surprised sound that died just as quickly. The back of his hand flashed across my face.
Pain bloomed, sharp and hot. I turned my head, tasted blood. But when I looked up again, I made sure he saw the hatred in my eyes.
And then I spat.
It was more blood than spit, my mouth too dry to give more.
It was a thin line, barely a stain on his cheek.
It was small, weak, meaningless.
It was all I had left.
It was nothing.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It was his death.