The hearth fire had burned low, casting long fingers of amber light across the worn floorboards. Outside, night pressed against the shutters like a living thing, and somewhere in the darkness, the wind carried whispers that made the flames dance uneasily in their stone cradle.
Mara sat close to the dying embers, her needle catching the light as she worked. The shawl in her lap was beyond saving—threads worn thin as spider silk, more hole than fabric—yet her hands moved with stubborn purpose. Each stitch was a small act of defiance against the unraveling world beyond their door.
Kyran watched her from his place on the rough wooden stool, chin resting on folded arms. The firelight played across his face, throwing shadows beneath eyes that seemed older than his nine winters. He had barely touched the bread she'd set beside him, though his stomach ached with hunger. Food felt wrong somehow, when the air itself tasted of endings.
"You're thinking too loudly," Mara said softly, not looking up from her needlework.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Mother always said that."
"I am your mother." But her voice caught on the words, as if they were stones in her throat.
"Are you?" The question came out gentler than he'd intended, tinged with wonder rather than accusation. "Sometimes I look at you, and I see... gratitude. Like you're surprised to find me here."
Mara's needle stilled. For a long moment, the only sound was the soft pop of resin in the firewood. When she finally spoke, her words were barely a whisper.
"Every mother fears losing her child. But I've always feared... losing you to something I could never understand."
Kyran leaned forward, drawn by the ache in her voice. "The sword?"
"The hunger in your eyes when you look at it." She set down her mending, fingers trembling slightly. "It's the same look Tomas had. As if you're both reaching for something just out of sight."
From his corner, Rurik's whetstone continued its rhythmic whisper against steel. He'd been silent all evening, but now his weathered hands paused in their work. "The boy has to choose his own path, Mara. We can't choose it for him."
"Can't we?" Her voice cracked like ice in spring. "He's nine years old, Rurik. Nine. And already they want to take him away."
"The soldiers leave at dawn," Rurik said quietly. "There's still time."
Kyran stood abruptly, the stool scraping against the floor. "I'm not going."
Both parents looked at him—really looked—and something cold settled in the space between them. The boy who stood in the firelight was not the same child who had stumbled through sword practice just that morning. There was a stillness about him now, a weight in his posture that spoke of decisions already made.
"Kyran—" Mara began.
"If I leave," he said, his voice calm and certain, "who stands in my place? Who holds the line when the darkness comes?"
"The darkness isn't yours to fight," she whispered.
He met her gaze, and for a moment she saw something that made her breath catch. Not defiance, not stubbornness—but a terrible, gentle understanding.
"Isn't it?"
Before she could answer, the night split open with sound.
A howl rose from the hills—low and resonant and utterly wrong. It echoed off the cottage walls, seeming to come from everywhere at once, and in its wake came a silence so complete it felt like the world holding its breath.
Rurik was on his feet in an instant, blade singing from its sheath. His eyes found the window, then the door, calculating distances and defenses with the instinct of a man who had seen battle.
"That wasn't—" Mara started.
"No," he said grimly. "It wasn't."
The howl came again, closer now, joined by others. A chorus of voices that had never known human throats. And beneath it all, a new sound: the distant crack and hiss of flames beginning to feed.
Kyran moved to the window, pressing his face against the cold glass. Orange light flickered between the trees, painting the night in shades of ember and shadow. The scent of smoke crept under the door, acrid and sharp.
"The village," he breathed.
Rurik was already reaching for his heavy cloak, buckling on the worn leather baldric that held his longer blade. "Stay here. Bar the door. If anything gets through—"
"No." Kyran's voice cut through the air like a blade through silk. "I'm coming with you."
"You're a child."
"I'm whatever I need to be."
For a heartbeat, father and son stared at each other across the small room. Then Rurik saw it—the same thing Mara had glimpsed moments before. The boy was already gone. What stood in his place was something older, something that had been waiting patiently beneath the surface.
Rurik nodded once, sharp and decisive. "Stay close. Do exactly as I say. And if I tell you to run—"
"I won't."
"Kyran."
"I won't run, Father. Not anymore."
They stepped into the night together.
The village was dying.
Smoke rose in black columns against the star-drunk sky, and the air reeked of burning thatch and something fouler—the copper-sweet stench of spilled blood. Screams echoed between the houses, punctuated by inhuman shrieks that made the darkness itself seem to recoil.
Shapes moved in the orange-lit haze. Wolves, but wrong—too large, too intelligent, their eyes burning with crimson fire. They moved with purpose through the chaos, coordinated and deadly. And with them came smaller figures, green-skinned and chattering, brandishing weapons of bone and rusted iron.
Kyran had heard stories of such creatures in whispered fireside tales, but seeing them now—real and terrible and hungry—drove the breath from his lungs.
"Darkshreds," Rurik muttered, blade gleaming in the firelight. "And goblins. This is a coordinated assault."
They moved through the burning streets like ghosts, keeping to shadows, stepping over bodies that Kyran tried not to recognize. Near the baker's shop, they found Calen and Elsin, the two soldiers who had arrived that morning. Both were bloodied but standing, their swords carving bright arcs through the swarm of enemies.
Calen's blade sang with blue flame as it cleaved through goblin ranks. Elsin's armor glowed with golden runes, barriers of light deflecting claws and crude weapons. They fought with the precision of trained killers, but even Kyran could see they were being overwhelmed.
"There," Rurik pointed toward the square. "The main force is there. If we can break their formation—"
His words were cut off by a child's scream.
Near the well, a small figure huddled against the stone. Lerek—the boy who had tormented Kyran just days before—pressed himself into a ball while a massive goblin loomed over him, club raised for a killing blow.
Kyran moved without thinking.
He sprinted across the open ground, heart hammering, deaf to his father's shout of warning. The goblin heard him coming and turned, yellow eyes gleaming with malice. Its club whistled through the air where Kyran's head had been a moment before.
Training took over—Rurik's lessons, hours of footwork and balance and timing. Kyran ducked, rolled, came up with the eating knife from his belt. The blade, barely longer than his hand, found the gap between the creature's ribs with surgical precision.
The goblin shrieked and staggered, black blood steaming in the cold air. Kyran grabbed Lerek's arm and hauled him upright.
"Run," he commanded. "Get to the chapel."
Lerek stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes—the same boy who had called him freak and monster now seeing something in Kyran's face that made him nod and stumble away into the smoke.
The goblin wasn't dead. It rose with a snarl, club dripping gore, and lunged.
Steel flashed. The creature's head hit the cobblestones before its body knew it was dead.
Calen stood behind the corpse, his sword still humming with blue fire. "Brave," he said, breathing hard. "But stupid. You'll die if you keep fighting alone."
He tossed Kyran a proper dagger, its blade inscribed with runes that seemed to glow in the firelight. "Protect someone. Stay alive. In that order."
Then he was gone, back into the chaos.
Kyran stood in the middle of the burning square, small and alone, while the world ended around him. The dagger felt strange in his hand—heavier than it should be, warm to the touch, as if it carried memories of other battles, other desperate last stands.
He looked for his father and found him.
Rurik stood at the square's center, a island of calm in the storm of violence. Five goblins circled him like wolves, testing his defenses, looking for an opening. His blade moved in precise arcs, deflecting strikes, keeping them at bay, but Kyran could see the exhaustion in his shoulders, the slight tremor in his sword arm.
One of the creatures got through. Its spear-point opened a red line across Rurik's thigh. He staggered but didn't fall, spinning to catch another attacker across the chest.
Then the smoke parted like a curtain, and Death itself stepped forward.
The Goblin Shaman was twice the size of its smaller kin, draped in tattered robes that writhed with shadow. Where its eyes should have been, empty sockets burned with ember-light. The staff in its gnarled hands twisted like a living thing, crowned with a skull that whispered secrets in a tongue that predated human speech.
It raised the staff, and fire bloomed around it—not clean flame, but something corrupt and hungry, laced with screams and the taste of ash.
"Father!" Kyran's voice tore from his throat.
Rurik turned at the sound, saw the fire building, saw his son standing helpless in the smoke-choked square. For a heartbeat, their eyes met across the chaos, and Kyran saw something pass across his father's face. Not fear, but a terrible understanding.
Rurik smiled—sad and proud and infinitely gentle.
Then he ran.
Not away from the fire, but toward it. Toward Kyran.
The flames struck just as he reached his son, washing over them both in a wave of searing heat. But Rurik was there, his body a shield, his cloak burning, his flesh blackening, yet still he stood.
His sword, glowing white-hot from the supernatural fire, punched through the Shaman's chest with a sound like the world breaking.
They fell together—the man and the monster, locked in their final embrace.
Kyran crawled to where his father lay. Rurik's eyes were still open, still aware, though his breath came in shallow gasps. The smell of burned flesh filled the air, but when Rurik looked at his son, he saw not the boy who knelt beside him, but something else. Something that made him smile.
"Live," he whispered, his hand finding Kyran's cheek with infinite tenderness. "Live... and forgive an old fool for not understanding sooner."
His fingers, warm despite everything, traced the line of Kyran's jaw once before falling away.
The boy who had knelt was gone.
What rose in his place was something else entirely—something forged in fire and loss, tempered by love and sacrifice. The grief remained, would always remain, but beneath it now lay something harder. Something that would not bend, would not break, would not be moved.
Around him, the battle still raged. Screams still echoed through the burning streets. But Kyran heard none of it.
He stood slowly, the rune-carved dagger steady in his grip, and looked out at the chaos with eyes that held depths they had not possessed moments before.
The village burned. His father was dead. His world had ended.
But he was still here. Still breathing. Still able to choose what came next.
And in that choice—in that single moment of decision balanced on the knife's edge between vengeance and justice—lay the difference between the boy he had been and the man he would become.
The blade in his hand hummed softly, as if recognizing something familiar. Something patient. Something that had been waiting a very long time to be born.
In the chapel across the square, hidden beneath layers of rust and age, an ancient sword began to sing.