13 August 1553, Milliscient Calendar.
A sharp arrow whooshed through the hazy, smoke encroached air, lodging into a patch of charred grass.
Flames clawed at the wheat fields like starving beasts, devouring golden stalks in a roar of orange fury. The boy staggered across the oak bridge, each creak of the splintered planks under his bare feet making his heart drop further. Smoke coiled into his lungs—thick, acrid, tasting of charred earth and betrayal—forcing a cough that tore from his throat like shattered glass. He was thirteen, small enough to slip through cracks in the world, but not this one. Not today.
The fire's howl swallowed everything: the shrieks of Bavona's souls twisting into the night, the wet thud of bodies hitting blood-soaked dirt. A war horn wailed from the village heart, its brass dirge slicing through the inferno like a blade through flesh. Sparks spiraled upward, drunk on the wind, painting the churning sky in strokes of hellish red. Shadows leaped across gutted homes—roofs caved like broken ribs, shops spilling their innards of splintered wood and shattered clay.
The boy's crimson eyes burned, wide as fresh wounds, drinking in the ruin of what had been home just hours before. Streets he'd chased fireflies down now ran red, walls scarred with crimson arcs where swords had kissed stone. He glanced back—stupid, stupid—and his heart slammed against his ribs like a caged animal. Veridian raiders poured through the haze, iron plates gleaming dully under soot-blackened banners. Their laughs were jagged things, hooks in the dark, yanking screams from pleading villagers. Their faces twisted in the firelight: not men, but masks of glee over teeth bared like wolves.
Swords rose and fell, relentless, dripping gore that steamed on the cooling earth. A baker's boy—was that Opon?—crumpled mid-flight, his cry gurgling into silence. An elder's plea ended in a gurgle, boot crunching bone. Innocence didn't beg; it just broke. To call this hell was an insult—it was worse. A forge of human agony, hammering souls into slag.
From the village square, a wail pierced the din—raw, animal, the sound of a world unmade. A woman knelt amid the embers, her face a ruin of tears and ash, cradling two small forms. They were now charred husks, no bigger than the boy himself, their limbs twisted like discarded rags. "My poor babies," she sobbed, voice fracturing on the words, "I'm so sorry..." Her arms trembled, pulling them close as if warmth could stitch them back. The boy froze, bile rising hot in his throat.
A shadow fell. Iron glinted. The raider's blade whispered through her spine, a butcher's mercy. She folded forward, breath rattling out in a final, wet sigh, joining her children in the dirt. The killer didn't pause— he simply wiped his steel on his thigh and melted back into the smoke, hunting fresh sport.
Nausea hit the boy like a fist, his coughs turning into brass-rasped hacks that doubled him over the bridge's rail. Smoke clawed deeper, painting his vision black at the edges. Just the outskirts. Home's close. Mom. Dad. His house squatted there, beyond the fields—a stubborn thatch roof house on the hill, with a neatly adorned oak door engraved with the village guard knight emblems.
He needed legs that worked, lungs that didn't betray. Fumbling at his thigh, his fingers came away slick with his own blood, the gash from a stray arrow throbbing like a second heartbeat.
He clawed at his leather belt, his knuckles whitening around the worn slingshot—his only weapon, whittled from orchard branch and twine. His legs buckled then, knees kissing charred oak. The world tilted, flames rushing up to greet him. A gust howled past, smoldering and merciless, whipping his wavy black hair across eyes too heavy to hold open.
One last cough, a defiant rasp against the blaze. His grip slipped; the slingshot tumbled free, vanishing into the pyre below with a faint plink lost to the crackle. His knuckles unclenched, empty now. The bridge, the screams, the sky's bloody weep—they blurred, dissolving into a hush deeper than death.
And in that void, golden light cracked through. Not the fire's lie, but something softer—memory's dawn. Pulling him back, back to a time before the ashes claimed Bavona. Before the boy became the flame.