The hearth fire was dead again,like usually
Charlotte sighed at the grey ash, her breath making a cloud that hung in the freezing morning air of the cottage. "I know I kept it going last night," she muttered, poking the embers with unnecessary violence. The iron poker clanged against the stone. "It's like the cold itself is snuffing it out."
Hector, six years old now and bundled in three layers of wool that made his shoulders itch, said nothing. He acted dumb, as if he had nothing to do with it. He was busy lacing his boots with fingers that still felt clumsy despite two years of practice.
The truth was simpler: he extinguished it. Every night after his mother banked the coals, he'd wait until the house slept, then smother the last glowing remnants with the ash shovel. He couldn't help it. I mean, you wouldn't blame him either. The memory of his last death—of flames and melting plastic and that sweet chemical smell—hadn't faded. It had just... migrated. Now it lived in the orange flicker of coals, in the way they breathed when the wind hit the chimney just right.
So he killed them. Every single night.
"Hector," Charlotte called, not unkindly but firmly. She was already walking to the hearth to rebuild the fire, her hands moving with the automatic rhythm of someone who'd spent every day of her life doing exactly this. "Son, could you please tell me why the hell you extinguish the fire every night? You know every morning I'm having my feet and shoulders cold. For whatever stupid reason it is, for God's sake, stop it."
Hector just whistled, pretending to know nothing. "Hm? What was it, Mom? Your feet are cold?"
That made Charlotte sigh. "Stupid child."
---
A few days ago, Edgawter had hosted its first midwinter celebration since the soldiers had become permanent residents. Some of them had even married the girls of the village; families had formed through arrangements. Caravans of goods and food were coming—they brought rations and drinks and some other shit to share. The villagers brought homemade wine that could strip paint, and everyone pretended this was normal. That the Empire didn't send soldiers to settle in villages on the edge of extinction.
"Right, Mom, I almost forgot—Abraham's coming by," Hector said while quitting the house. It wasn't an answer, but it was true.
Charlotte's face softened. Of all Hector's friends, Abraham was his favorite. "That boy talks enough for ten. You sure you don't want to bring Milo instead? He at least knows when to be quiet."
"Owwww, about that—so Milo's actually sick, Mom," Hector lied smoothly.
Milo wasn't sick. Milo was just deeply, profoundly boring. At eight years old, Milo had already accepted his fate as a future net mender and fish salter with his father.
The lie worked. Charlotte knew he wasn't telling the truth, but she sighed, accepting it the way she accepted most things now—with a weariness that had settled into her bones like rheumatism. "Well, stay close to the village and never get far away, okay?"
Hector smiled. Such a caring mom indeed, he thought. Was she talking about predator animals or elves, though? Hector had never seen one up close, and his father had described something that, to Hector, resembled a moose—but the people here called it gallou. The name was descriptive enough: enormous hooves that left prints the size of dinner plates, capable of navigating the deep snows of the taiga biome where human horses would struggle. Sometimes, unlike the Rognarrs, these lizards would adapt to anything. Good thing humans got their hands on them before the wrong side.
Hector would ask Kardinal once why the Empire didn't breed their own of this gallou. His father had just laughed—that hollow sound he'd perfected—and elbowed Hector. "Because we're not allowed to have nice things. Nice things require stable logistics. We have rations and prayers, while those giges feed on the people's blood dry and live their best lives!"
---
Abraham arrived with the sun, which was behind a wool cloud cover so thick it barely counted as daylight. He had a stick in one hand and was whacking it against every fence post he passed—a steady thwack thwack thwack that announced his presence three minutes before his arrival.
"Hector!" he bellowed from the yard. "I figured out how to kill an elf!"
Hector emerged, Mutt trailing behind him. The Rognarr was, as promised, twice Hector's size now—a gangly adolescent with scales that had shifted from peachy-pink to a muddy orange-brown. Its head came up to Hector's shoulder, and it moved with the awkward galumph of an animal that hadn't quite figured out where its feet ended. It still had the confused eyes, though. That hadn't changed.
"Morning, Mr. and Ms. Freeman!" Abraham shouted through the window.
Charlotte replied with a tight smile, waving at him. "Morning..."
Hector walked past Charlotte, but was interrupted by Kardinal. "Listen, son—you are all grown up and now you are a semi-man. Take this handgun with you, just in case a wild animal comes across your path, okay? Good boy. Here, take your axe with you, and take Mutt with yourself too. Surely he's bigger and more intimidating now, and you can put the chopped wood on his back to carry it home easier."
Hector took the gun that looked like a pistol with six rounds in it and hid it under his coat. "Don't worry, Dad. You know me—I'm Hector Freeman. I have limitless potential."
Kardinal patted his head. "That's my boy," and planted a spiky beardy kiss on Hector's cheek. With that, they set off.
They set off toward the treeline, Abraham already mid-explanation. "So you get a rope, right? And you tie it between two trees, low down. Elves are tall. Real tall. They'll trip, and when they're down—" He made a violent stabbing motion with his stick. "That's when you get 'em. They can't use their magic if they're on their ass."
Hector let him talk. That was the trick with Abraham: you didn't engage. You just let the words flow over you like water over a stone.
The name Ibrahim still lingered in his memories sometimes—his old friend, high school classmate from Sulaymaniyah. But Ibrahim, or Blla as Cevver called him by that title—بلە یان بلە حیز they'd called him, short for Ibrahim—the memory felt like touching a scar: familiar but wrong in this context. Unlike Abraham, Blla was actually a very unserious and nonchalant dude.
The other children were already at the usual spot: a clearing just within sight of the village palisade where the snow hadn't quite buried the summer blueberry bushes. Milo was there, looking not sick at all, showing Avina—a girl of eight—some wooden carving. Adrian and Gollz, twins who shared a single brain cell and used it primarily for mischief, were building a snow fort that looked structurally unsound.
Avina threw a snowball directly into Hector's face, and the others too began to throw snowballs at them. Hector just wiped off the snow from his face. "Listen, I don't have time for this. I have to go and collect fire woo—" Before he could finish his sentence, several snowballs hit him right in the face. Fuckass kids. Anyone fucks!
Gollz laughed. "You are always so serious and boring! You are no fun! Such dumbass, trying to imitate the adults! Booo!"
Hector saw no point in this. He wiped the snow off his face and looked at Abraham, who was laughing at him. Damn, what a traitor. Hector grabbed Abraham and continued walking. "Come on, let's go. It's already late."
You know? He was still Cevver underneath—still a twenty-one-year-old engineering student who'd died stupidly—and he couldn't muster the energy to pretend this mattered.
The snow was beautiful, though. That part was real. In Sulaymaniyah, snow had been a rare, filthy thing that turned to slush within hours. Here it was a clean, constant presence that squeaked underfoot and reflected light in a way that made the whole forest glow. He'd wish he had his phone and headphones to listen to some calm music with such scenery.
Children played the games children play in snow. Snowball fights that degenerated into... fights. A contest to see who could stand on one foot the longest—Avina won; she had a low center of gravity and no fear of falling. Adrian and Gollz tried to convince everyone to help with their fort, but it collapsed under its own weight before they could finish pitching it, burying Gollz up to his neck. They had to dig him out while he laughed so hard he couldn't breathe. Ufff, childhood...
Through it all, Mutt watched from the edge of the clearing, his breath steaming in great white plumes. The Rognarr had learned to stay out of the way of human games after an incident last time where he'd "accidentally" sat on Milo's favorite wooden figures, reducing it to kindling. Now he just observed, his yellow eyes tracking every movement with the same confused intensity he'd had as a baby.
It was nearly midday when Hector realized they'd drifted further than usual. The village palisade was still visible, but the trees between here and there had grown thicker. The snow here was less trampled, pristine except for the tracks of winter hares and something larger—probably broadpaw, though Hector couldn't be sure. It was probably a bear that walked by this place.
"Hey," Abraham said, his voice dropping for once. "We should head back. My ma said not to go past the marker tree. We already walked past the tree."
Hector was about to agree when he saw it.
Not a marker tree, but a figure.
No—five of them. Moving through the trees in a way that made his heart stop.
They were elves. Real elves.
Not exactly the sexy anime beauties he'd half-expected, not the demons from Kardinal's stories. They were literally humans with pointy ears. Three of them were blonde with blue eyes, two with silver hair and amethyst eyes—lean in a way that suggested efficiency rather than grace. Their armor was layered leather and woven bark, dyed in shades of grey and green that made them blur against the snow-covered pines. Each had a bow and a sword across their back, and surely they had some magical abilities. They moved in a loose formation that wasn't quite a march and wasn't quite a stroll.
Around them walked the gallou that Kardinal talked about not moose exactly, but something that had evolved parallel to them. Damn. Great shaggy beasts with antlers that branched like coral and eyes that glowed faint amber. They moved with the same fluid ease as their masters, their massive hooves making no sound in the deep snow.
Hector's first thought was: They're not sexy. What a disappointment.
His second was: They're not demons, either.
They were just... people with pointy ears. Dangerous people in their element, but people. One was laughing at something another said, the sound carrying clear and high through the cold air, like breaking glass.
He grabbed Abraham's arm without thinking, his small fingers digging in hard enough to make the boy yelp. "Shhhhhhh. Close your mouth. Don't even speak," Hector hissed—the voice of a person who'd seen what happened when you made noise in front of predators.
Abraham's mouth snapped closed. Hector dragged him and Mutt behind the nearest cover: a fallen pine whose trunk was wider than Bojj. The snow was deep here, up to their waists, and bitterly cold where it slipped into their boots. Hector clamped his hand over Mutt's muzzle, feeling the hot wetness of the Rognarr's breath against his palm. Mutt made a confused mrrrp? sound, but didn't struggle.
"We gotta go back and tell my dad and Comotanos about what we saw," Hector whispered, his voice barely audible. "Slowly. Try to not make sound—"
Abraham's eyes were wide, fixed on something over Hector's shoulder. He'd gone pale under his winter flush. Hector followed his gaze.
One of the elves had stopped. Turned. Was looking directly at their hiding spot.
Hector slid his hands into his coat, reaching for his handgun. Goddamn it.
Not at us, Hector told himself. Not at us. The trees. The gallou. Anything but us.
But the elf's head was tilted at that angle of curiosity, and Hector could see his face clearly now—sharp-featured, pale as birch bark, with eyes that were like crystals.
The broadpaw nearest him made a low, questioning sound. The elf raised a hand, and the creature went still.
Hector's heart hammered against his ribs. He could feel Abraham shaking beside him—small, terrified tremors that were going to turn into something louder if he didn't get them out of here. He tightened his grip on Mutt's muzzle and his handgun, feeling the Rognarr's confusion shift toward alarm.
"No, Mutt—back off!" Hector mouthed, not daring to speak. He started to move, one hand still on Mutt, the other pulling Abraham. The snow resisted, clinging to their legs like wet cement. The village seemed impossibly far, a smudge of wood and smoke through the trees.
Mutt, in his infinite retarded wisdom, decided this was the moment to scratch an itch. He lifted one massive foot, shaking it slightly, and brought it down on a dead branch half-buried in the snow.
The crack was impossibly loud. A gunshot in the silence.
The elf's head snapped toward them. His mouth opened, and he called out something in a language that sounded like wind through icicles.
Hector didn't wait to see what happened next. He shoved Abraham forward, grabbed Mutt by the collar of his neck, and ran.
The crack of the branch echoed like a starter's pistol in a library.
Instantly, the air thickened. I'm not saying that as a metaphor—Hector felt it press against his eardrums the way water does when you dive too deep. The laughing elf's smile died mid-note. His four companions flowed outward without discussion, a five-point star unfolding in perfect silence. One of them raised an open palm and pushed: no incantation, no glow, just a shove against reality itself.
The fallen pine Hector crouched behind screamed. Bark split, sap flashed into steam, and the entire trunk rolled by a meter or more uphill, as if yanked by invisible chains. Snow exploded off it in a white sheet, revealing the three children and the half-grown Rognarr like mice under an overturned box.
"Runnnn!!!!" Hector croaked, but his voice was buried beneath the next sound: a low, rising hum, the kind a transformer makes before it blows. One of the silver-haired elves drew a circle in the air. The space inside the circle darkened, light bending toward it the way it does around a black hole. A bead of blue-white fire ignited at the center and began to swell.
Abraham's legs worked faster than his brain. He bolted sideways, flailing through chest-deep powder. The blonde elf flicked two fingers. A shard of ice—translucent, jagged, longer than Hector's arm—materialized between the flick and the finish, traveling slow enough that Hector watched it rotate once before it punched into a birch ten centimeters above Abraham's hood. The tree shattered. Splinters the size of knitting needles whickered past Hector's cheeks.
No blood. A warning shot. Fuck them. Elves, it seemed, enjoyed their sport.
This motherfucker Mutt was hard to manage because he wasn't moving. Mutt's throat vibrated against Hector's palm—confusion shifting to prey terror. The Rognarr's yellow eyes reflected the growing fire sphere, now the size of a pumpkin and hissing as it drank cold air. Hector knew, with the sick certainty of a man who had already burned once, what came next.
He did the only thing a six-year-old body could do: he bit Mutt's tail. Hard.
The Rognarr yelped—a reflexive jerk propelling all three of them backward into the deeper drift behind the shattered trunk. An instant later, the fireball passed overhead, close enough to singe hair. It hit a standing pine and didn't explode—it pushed. The trunk flash-boiled, exploding into a cloud of superheated sap and wooden shrapnel that rained flaming needles across the clearing. Snow hissed. Steam roiled. The elves advanced through it, untouched; heat-bent air made their outlines waver like mirages.
Hector's lungs spasmed—smoke and the memory of melting plastic. He shoved the pistol back into his coat. Gunpowder was useless against whatever sorcery this was. What he needed was noise. Industrial-grade, wall-shaking noise.
The fort's alarm system—a dwarven-built signal cannon mounted above the tower, fired by yanking a lanyard that dropped a glowing plug into a compression chamber. One shot sent a red comet high enough to be seen from Fort Crag. But the cannon was two kilometers away, and the elves were closing.
He fumbled for the hunting whistle Kardinal had tied to his coat: iron, shrill, supposed to carry half a valley. Put it to his lips. No air. Panic had stolen his diaphragm, and Abraham was hyperventilating, his eyes rolling like a spooked colt. Mutt kept shaking his head, scattering droplets that froze mid-air.
The silver-haired elf raised her hand for a second sphere. This time, the circle widened, rimmed with spinning runes that looked like frost forming on glass in fast-forward. Inside, instead of fire, a lattice of ice crystals began to grow outward—six-sided blades, each the size of a scythe, rotating slowly like a buzzsaw.
Hector found his breath. The whistle shrieked—an insect buzz against the vast hush of the taiga. The elf's spell didn't falter; if anything, the blades accelerated. Not loud enough.
Then another sound. Deeper. Rhythmic.
Drums? No. Hooves.
Gallou. More than the five they'd seen. A herd—twenty or thirty, forty?—erupting from the treeline upslope, ridden by additional elves in white cloaks, their magical bows already strung. This was a flanking force. The main force. The siege had started before the boys even left the blueberry clearing.
The blonde elf whore in front lifted three fingers. A silent countdown. At zero, the ice buzzsaw would launch—probably low enough to trim everything taller than a mushroom, including six-year-old boys.
Hector's mind—the grown-ass Cevver—kicked in. Signal. Not sound. Light.
He plunged his hand into the still-flaming underbrush the first fireball had birthed, came out with a fistful of burning pine needles. Pain lanced up his wrist—old scar tissue remembering its origin. He whipped the torch in a circle above his head, sparks spiraling into the grey sky. Once. Twice. A third time. Please let Dad or anyone be on the tower. Please let him be looking this direction.
The elf's fingers dropped: three... two...
From the village wall—too far, impossible—came a crack no louder than a branch. A red dot climbed the sky, trailing sparks. It reached apex, hung, then burst into three crimson stars that drifted downward like dying fireworks.
The elves froze. Not in fear—tactical pause. Their heads snapped toward the village, calculating distances, response times. The ice spell dissolved mid-launch, blades sublimating into glitter that the wind swept away.
Hector didn't wait. He hooked an arm through Abraham's strap, vaulted onto Mutt's back, and kicked. The Rognarr lumbered downslope toward the palisade, snow exploding under claws. Behind them, the blonde elf nocked an arrow a crystal that hummed with its own inner aurora. He drew, he tracked, he held.
When the elves and the explosion were heard and see A horn answered from one of the watchtowers,
Comotanos's voice carried on the wind: "INCOMING SOUTH-WEST! CLOSE THE F—" cut off by the thwip of ballista release. A yard-long bolt, the thickness of Hector's leg, sailed overhead—aimed not at the scout, but at the ice caster behind him. It struck her shield—visible only as a rippling disc of air—and shattered, sending her sliding back meters.
Enough.
The crystal arrow loosed. It didn't fly straight—it curved, chasing Mutt's galloping silhouette like a slow-motion homing missile. Hector felt the tingle of gathering cold at his back. Twenty meters to the palisade, the gate. Fifteen meters. Then ten. The arrow gained, whistling, frost forming along its shaft.
He yanked the pistol and pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gun was a toy pop against the orchestral destruction behind, but the lead ball clipped the crystal shaft. Not enough to break it, but enough to tilt it. This was holy, pure plot armor.
The arrow hissed past the three of them and struck a post of the palisade, exploding into a bloom of hoarfrost that sealed the gate hinges in a block of ice thicker than a man's torso.
The portcullis, half-lowered, jammed. Soldiers screamed at winches. Mutt skidded beneath the frozen teeth of the portcullis, dumping both boys into the slush of the inner yard.
The gate wouldn't close. Which meant the wall wouldn't seal. The elves from entering and pushing forward—about thirty elves walked unhurried down the slope now, backs lit by the larger force cresting the ridge like a silent white tide.
Hector lay on his back, lungs burning, hand blistered, his hair singed. Abraham sobbed next to him, but the sound was lost beneath the fortress bell clanging: invasion invasion invasion!
Over the wall, a red fireball rose and this time it was not elf made. This one was shot toward the sky within the village it was the signal flame for the Fort already burning as it climbed
To be continued...