Sera's POV
The first scream came from outside.
Sera was grinding herbs when she heard it, her hands buried in dried yarrow and burning nettle. Elder Thorne didn't even look up from the book spread across the wooden table. He was old enough that most sounds meant nothing to him anymore. But this sound meant something. It meant pain. Real pain.
She set down the mortar and pestle.
The second scream was different. It was her neighbor, Mrs. Venn who always brought eggs to the healing house on market days. The sound of her voice shattered something in Sera's chest before her mind could even catch up to what was happening.
Elder Thorne's head lifted. His cloudy gray eyes met hers and in that single moment, his whole face changed. Not scared exactly. Resigned. Like he'd been waiting for this his entire life.
"Bar the door," he said quietly.
Sera didn't move. She was nineteen years old and she'd lived her whole life in Ashenmoor. Nothing bad happened in Ashenmoor. Soldiers passed through sometimes on their way to bigger fights, but they always left. This was a farming village. Nobody important died here. Nobody important even lived here.
The screaming got louder.
"Sera."
Elder Thorne's voice cut through her frozen thoughts like a blade. He was already moving, his old joints protesting as he shuffled toward the back room where they kept the medicines. She pushed herself forward and ran to the heavy oak door. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the iron bar, sliding it through the brackets.
It had barely locked when the first blow hit the wood.
The door shuddered. Dust fell from the ceiling. Sera's breath caught in her throat like a trapped animal trying to escape.
"Open it," someone yelled from outside. The voice was hard and cold and nothing like the voices she knew. "Open it now."
Another blow. The door frame cracked slightly. Sera backed away, her mind spinning through possibilities and discarding all of them. This wasn't supposed to happen. This was Ashenmoor. This was home.
The third blow almost split the door in half.
"Sera." Her mother's voice. That familiar voice that had sung lullabies to her as a child now came through the cracks in the wood desperate and raw. "Sera run. Run now, baby. Run."
Every instinct in her body locked into place. Stay. Go. Fight. Hide. Her feet wouldn't move. They felt like they were sunk into stone.
The door exploded inward.
Soldiers poured through the gap like water through a broken dam. They wore armor stained with things she didn't want to think about and their faces were empty of anything human. The first man grabbed Elder Thorne before he could reach the back room. The old man didn't cry out. He just closed his eyes like he'd already left his body.
Her mother appeared in the doorway behind the soldiers, her face flushed and desperate.
Run, her mother mouthed. Not said. Mouthed. Because her voice was gone or because she couldn't risk it, Sera didn't know. Her mother's eyes locked with hers and in that look was everything. Every moment of comfort. Every time her mother had sat with her through fever. Every time she'd held her when the world felt too big and too heavy.
Run.
Sera ran.
She bolted past the soldiers and her mother in one movement that came from somewhere deeper than thought. She didn't look back. She couldn't. If she looked back she would stop and if she stopped she would die here like Elder Thorne was going to die here like everything was about to die.
The village street was chaos.
Flames climbed the wooden houses like they were being pulled upward by invisible strings. The bakery where she bought bread every morning was already collapsing in on itself, the roof crashing down in a spray of sparks and ash. People ran in every direction. She saw children being herded together by soldiers. She saw Mr. Aldrin trying to fight with a farming tool and getting thrown to the ground so hard his body went limp.
She kept running.
Her feet knew the way to the forest even though her mind was breaking into pieces. The western edge of the village. The tree line. Just keep moving. Her lungs burned and her legs felt disconnected from her body but her feet kept moving because her mother had told her to run and she couldn't disobey that not now not when it was the last thing her mother might ever say to her.
The moment the trees swallowed her up, she didn't stop. She crashed through undergrowth and pushed past branches that tore at her skin. She didn't feel the pain. Pain required her to be present in her body and she'd already left it somewhere back in the village.
She finally collapsed behind a massive cluster of rocks maybe a mile into the forest. Her entire body shook like her bones were coming apart from the inside. She pressed her hands over her mouth to muffle the sounds coming out of her because she couldn't let anyone hear her couldn't let them track her here couldn't couldn't couldn't.
From her hiding spot, she could see the village burning.
Ashenmoor was a small place. Maybe three hundred people scattered across fields and stone cottages. She knew every single person. She'd helped at least half of them at some point, binding wounds and brewing fever teas and trying desperately to save old people when their bodies decided to stop working. She knew their names and their children's names and what they dreamed about at night.
Now it was all burning.
The smoke rolled upward in thick black columns that blocked out the afternoon sun. The heat came in waves even from this distance. She watched the grain stores where her father had run to trying to save something that didn't matter and she watched as flames consumed everything.
Then she heard him.
His voice cut across the chaos like a bell ringing in an empty room. Her father calling her name. Calling and calling like she might be somewhere in the village instead of hidden in the forest. She pressed her fist against her mouth to keep from answering. If she answered they would hear her too. If she answered they would find her.
His voice got weaker. Then it stopped.
The last voice she heard was her mother's. Not calling to her. Just calling. A sound of such pure animal terror and pain that Sera felt something inside her break beyond any possibility of repair. The sound cut off suddenly and that sudden silence was somehow worse than the screaming had been.
Then there was only the crackling of fire and the sounds of soldiers moving through the village doing things she couldn't see and didn't want to see.
Sera sat behind those rocks as the sun descended and the flames got brighter and everything she'd ever known turned to ash around her. She didn't cry. Crying would require her to feel and she couldn't feel because if she felt she would break completely and she couldn't afford to break.
She stayed there long after dark. Long after the soldiers left. Long after the fires burned down to embers and then to nothing. She stayed until the shock wore off just enough that she could move.
When she finally crawled out from behind the rocks hours later, the village was gone. In its place was just blackened earth and smoke and the smell of things burning that no human should ever have to smell.
And standing at the edge of the forest right in front of her, shadows playing across his scarred face in the dim moonlight, was a soldier. A big one. The kind who looked like he'd been born killing things. His hand was already reaching for the sword at his waist and his eyes were locked directly on her.
"Well look what we have here," he said, his smile spreading wide and cruel across his face. "The general is going to be very pleased we found a survivor."