The wind moaned through the frost-bitten fields outside Naboth, a lament as ancient as the stones of the earth. It was the kind of wind that carried the sighs of forgotten kings and the whispers of leaves long turned to dust beneath the eternal march of seasons. The sleet fell in relentless sheets, veiling the amber hills that had once bloomed with the gold of ripening vines, now cloaked in a shroud of white desolation. In this barren expanse, where the soil clung to life with the stubborn grace of the valiant, two farmers—grizzled men of the soil, their hands callused as the bark of ancient oaks—stumbled upon a form half-buried in the frozen mire.
It was the prince, Jack, his thin frame entwined with the snow as if the earth itself sought to reclaim him for its silent vaults. His silken tunic, once embroidered with the emerald vines of Naboth's heraldry, was torn and sodden, clinging to his pale skin like the remnants of a drowned dream. The farmers, Asmon and Sam by name, hardy men who had tilled these fields since the days when Luther's father yet drew breath, exchanged a glance heavy with the weight of omens. Sam knelt, his thick fingers brushing the first, his breath a plume of mist in the chill air.
"By the gods," he murmured, his voice a rumble like distant thunder over the hills, "it's the prince! The young lord Jack, quick fetch him!"
Sam, grasped Jack's arm, hauling him from the sleet's embrace. The prince's body yielded as lightly as a fallen leaf, yet it radiated a faint warmth that defied the bite of the frost—a subtle heat, like the embers of a hearth long cold, pulsing beneath his flesh.
As they dragged him toward the castle gates, the clouds parted briefly, allowing a wan sliver of moonlight to trace runes along Jack's neck and chest. They moved like veins of green fire, slithering beneath his skin in patterns that evoked the twisted roots of ancient trees or the serpentine rivers of legend, alive with an undulating vitality that set the farmers' hearts to uneasy thrumming.
The castle bells tolled a somber peal as the priests emerged, their robes of deep indigo whispering against the stone like the rustle of autumn leaves. Latta approached with measured grace. His eyes, sharp as the quills of forgotten scribes, widened at the sight of the prince.
"Prince Jack!" He yelled, his voice carrying the timbre of solemn prophecy. His frail hands traced his skin, the runes glowing faintly across his leathery fingers. Each one tells its own lies as their stories began to reveal themselves from across the young prince's arms.
"No...these runes," Latta paused, the reality of the Wendigo's influence becoming clear. "H-his soul has been bartered to shadows...". The elder waved the farmers away, becoming encircled by priests. "Bring him to the palace infirmary, and summon Lord Jarec at once!" he shouted, staring intently on the prince's body as his hands wrung around his frail wrists. "God help us..." his whisper a silent prayer to a deaf god.
The torches flickered across the abbey's flowing curtains that embraced the Prince's bed. His robes had been discarded, replaced soft linens that covered his legs. Jack's chest was covered in glowing runes, his veins turning black as they slowly rooted themselfs throughout his body. His heart slammed across his chest like a war drum, sweat beads forming about his form like morning dew on grass.
The palace clergy stood outside, their knotted hands twisting their beards. "Do you see how he draws breath not as men do," one whispered, "Indeed," another replied, "it is as if his lungs are filled by another's wind!" the clamoring men's voices filling the chamber with an unrelenting dread.
"Cold," Latta's words shattering the murmurs, "his body, it is as ice." his frail arm brushes the shivering boy's skin. "This is no mere ailment, brothers. This is relentless, unnaturally cold." He paused, his once worried gaze giving way to stark realization, "I have felt this icy grip upon me..."
Latta breathed deeply, as if the utterance itself sat upon his shoulders like heavy stones. "Many years ago, when our king was but a prince; his father received an un-hailed visit from King Harrod of the North."
The clergy began to gasp, whispering to each other as if the mere mention of Harrod's name was blasphemy. Latta's hand raised, silencing the crowd.
"Our king allowed him audience; his attempt to stay neutral during Harrod's campaign of bloodshed at the time. Harrod came boasting of his power, attempting to form an alliance with our kingdom. All the while, hiding behind the cloaks of his cloaked guards, a young girl, hardly beyond ten harvests stared at Harrod."
Latta sighed, his hands gently resting on Jack's shoulders, "Her eyes, I remember them.". The old man's eye began to swell, his brow attempting to combat his tears, "Her eyes spoke words that her lips hid." he paused, tracing the runes across jack's arm, "Hate. Her stare pierced me, brothers. Dread filled my soul with every second in her cold gaze. It was as if the darkness we aim to repel stood there in front of me. A dark, gaunt figure, towering above me; its presence an omen yet unfulfilled."
Latta's gaze met the clergy, their faces pale as the encroaching snow, "I feel the same darkness tonight." A hanging silence fell upon the room.
Word spread swift as the flight of ravens, and by the turning of the hourglass, King Jarec and his eldest son, Luther, arrived at the castle's infirmary, where Latta bent over the prince with cloths of fine cotton. The king, his silver hair a crown of frost upon his brow, stood rigid as the ancient monoliths that guarded Naboth's borders. His eyes, once keen as the razor's edge in tales of old, now held the hollow gleam of a father beholding his child's unraveling.
"What fever grips him?" Jarec demanded, his voice an echo of thunder in the halls of Minas Tirith, resonant yet laced with the tremor of mortal frailty.
Latta, his fingers trembling as they probed the pulsing runes, shook his head. "No fever of the body, my king, but of the spirit. The marks... they live, as if the very blood within him courses with blood turned foul."
From the shadowed alcoves, the priests murmured incantations in the high tongue of the elders, their words weaving a fragile ward against the unseen blight. "It is the touch of the great devourer," one whispered, "the Wendigo's claim upon the noble line."
Luther, stalwart in his plate of burnished steel, said nothing at first. He simply watched; his gaze fixed upon the pulse of light beneath his brother's skin—a rhythmic throb that seemed to sync with the beating of his own heart, as if some ancient rhythm from the world's forging bound them still.
Memories flickered unbidden: Jack, laughing in the sun-dappled orchards, his blade flashing in mock duels beneath the boughs heavy with fruit. Now, that laughter was silenced, replaced by the subtle hiss of otherworldly breath.
Hours passed like the slow turning of seasons in the elder lays, each one heavier than the last. The infection spread not with the clamor of war drums, but invisibly through the quiet acts of kindness that bound the folk of Naboth. Servants who wiped the dew of fever from Jack's brow returned to their quarters coughing wisps of green smoke, ethereal tendrils that coiled like serpents from their lips, staining the air with the acrid tang of scorched herbs.
Milkmaids, those gentle daughters of the fields who had gathered at his bedside to murmur prayers woven from the old songs of harvest and hearth, wept tears that seared their cheeks, leaving welts like the brands of forgotten runes—blisters that wept a viscous emerald ichor, drawing flies that buzzed with unnatural fervor.
The castle, once redolent of fresh-baked loaves and the sweet ferment of vineyard grapes, now carried the mingled scents of iron—sharp as the bite of untended blades—and lilies, their petals wilting prematurely in vases that lined the corridors, as if the blooms themselves sensed the encroaching shadow.
Luther, ever the vigilant sentinel, ordered the afflicted hidden away in the catacombs beneath the keep. Those labyrinthine vaults carved by hands long returned to dust, where the bones of ancient kings slumbered in alcoves lit by eternal tapers. "Let no eye behold their torment," he commanded, his voice steady as the roots of an oak tree, though his heart twisted like vines in a gale.
King Jarec, his wisdom tempered by the forge of unyielding resolve, declared the city sealed: no wanderer's footfall upon the cobblestones; no merchant's cart rumbling through the gates. The walls of Naboth, tall as the spires of ancient citadels, stood as unyielding barriers against the outer world. Yet from their battlements, the townsfolk gazed upon the fields with eyes widened in awe and fear, witnessing an aurora of green that trembled over the land like the veil of some spectral maiden dancing in the halls of the departed. It pulsed in rhythm with the runes upon Jack's flesh, a harbinger of hungers older than the mountains of Zhuul.
At dusk, when the sun sank behind the western vales like a weary warrior sheathing his sword, the priests of Naboth gathered within the cloister. There, beneath the high vaults, they committed their banners to the flame.
The pyre roared and cracked; sparks rose like souls into the reddening air. Shadows leapt upon the flagstones, and the priests sang low in the tongue of the First Dawn—a fragile music, trembling against the long hush of approaching night.
When all had gone to silence, the castle slept beneath the stars, and only the sighing of the wind wandered through its halls.
Luther dreamed.
He walked once more in the garden of his youth—a place of eternal summer, where the orange trees never withered, and the scent of their fruit hung sweet as honey in the sunlit air. His mother's voice called softly, like the rustling of petals stirred by a gentle breeze.
"Luther, my son. Come, wander with me among the vineyard."
He followed, his feet silent upon the moss-grown path, the world about him lit in the warm gold of remembrance. Yet when he came to the crest of the hill where the arbor had once stood—a crown of living green—he found not his mother's tender form, but another.
A woman of raven hair, her tresses flowing like dark rivers over shoulders pale as carved moonstone. Her eyes shone with a dreadful beauty—emerald fires that seemed to look beyond time itself.
"The prince's pride will doom Naboth," she whispered, her voice the breath of midnight seas. "Only you may still the curse that gnaws at your brother's heart... and your own."
He reached for her—his hand trembling as though before a flame—but she faded into mist. Only the scent of frost and iron remained.
Luther awoke.
The sheets were tangled about his limbs like the roots of a fallen oak. Beneath his fingernails clung the dark grit of earth, as though he had clawed through the soil of his own dream. The chamber was cold—sharp with the taste of lightning before the storm. Across the window glass, frost bloomed inward, delicate veins of ice winding like ghostly vines.
He rose. His armor lay discarded in the corner, and his breath clouded the air as he rubbed the sleep from his brow.
Then—soft as moonlight—a hand touched his chest.
"What troubles you, my lord?" came a voice behind him, smooth as silk drawn over steel. The barmaid—she who had warmed his bed these forbidden nights—pressed herself gently to him, her golden hair brushing his shoulder.
Luther caught her hand, firm yet kind.
"It was but a dream," he murmured. "Rest now, my love. Dawn is still far."
But she only smiled, tracing a finger down his arm. "You fear for your brother," she said. "Yet the healers will find their art. The priests will pray. All shall be well."
He turned to the window. Beyond the frost, a dim light burned from Jack's chamber. It struck him like a blade of guilt.
"Why do you torment yourself so, fair prince?" she whispered.
"I should have gone with him," he said. "I could have—"
"You could not," she answered swiftly, rising from the bed. The pale glow of the window kissed her skin as she came to him. "His path was his own, and yours lies yet before you."
Her eyes lifted to his, green as forest pools, but deeper—older. "Does your lady dream of you as I do, I wonder?" she said softly. "Does she call your name with such longing?"
Luther froze, the words a thorn beneath silk. For a moment, it was as though the very air between them trembled with unspoken sin.
Yet she drew him close. Her lips brushed his, her warmth seeping into the chill that clung to his heart. Her fair fingers traced his groin, a beckoning to take her once more.
"Come back to bed," she whispered, her tone soft as falling snow. "Forget your sorrow awhile."
And though his spirit stirred in protest, his body obeyed.
He bent to her, and for a time the cold retreated from the chamber.
Yet their breath had scarcely steadied when a shriek tore through the silence—piercing, human, and close.
Luther froze.
Again the cry came, shrill as a hawk's and filled with mortal terror.
The woman clutched him, her eyes wide. "Ignore it," she pleaded, "Stay with me—"
But the warrior in him had risen. He tore free, snatching his cloak as he flung open the door. The hinges groaned like old pines in the storm. A strange heaviness clung to the corridor, the very air humming with unseen dread.
"My lord!"
A voice from below—hoarse, frantic.
A priestess stumbled up the stair, her robes torn and her face streaked with blood. "My lord Luther! The prince—your brother—he has awakened!"
Luther caught her shoulders. "Awakened? Speak plain, woman!"
She stammered through her fear. "He rose screaming—the runes burned upon his flesh! He slew his keepers, and fled through the gate!"
Luther's face blanched as though struck. "No..."
He pushed her aside and ran, his bare feet pounding down the stone steps, cloak flaring behind him like a shadow set aflame.
"Jack!" he cried, his voice echoing through the dark. "Jack!"
The torches guttered in his wake. And somewhere below, beyond the cold walls of Naboth, the night answered with a sound that was not wholly human.