Rain swallowed their footsteps.
John ran half-blind through the storm, boots slamming into mud that clutched at his legs. Doris clung to him, her bare feet slipping, blood from the birth still streaking her thighs, washed thin by the downpour. Brian's small body was pressed against his chest, wrapped in damp wool and the crook of his arm, his tiny cry a fragile thread in the cacophony of thunder and beast-roars.
The world was noise and flashing light: lightning raking the sky, the snap of bowstrings, the guttural bellows of Ridgeclaws tearing into flesh. Wagons burned despite the rain; oil-soaked canvas turned to smeared orange smudges in the dark.
"Pass!" John shouted over the storm. "Where's the canyon pass?"
A shape loomed out of the rain—a lantern, then the lined face of the caravan master, Gerran. His cloak was torn, one arm bound in bloody cloth, but his eyes were still sharp.
"John!" Gerran bellowed. "You're supposed to be in the wagon with Doris!"
"Wagon's gone," John snapped. "Ridgeclaws tore it apart. Where's the pass?"
Gerran jerked his chin to the east, where jagged silhouettes reared up—dark, saw-toothed ridges black against the shuddering sky. "There. Keep to the lower slope. We'll form a line—buy as many through as we can."
Doris swayed in John's grip, her lips pale. "Gerran," she rasped. "The beasts… they're too many. This isn't just hunger. Something's driving them."
Gerran's mouth flattened. "Don't say things I've already thought." He pointed at a nearby wagon, half-loaded, shielded by a ring of guards. "Get her and the boy into that one. We'll move it first."
"I'm not leaving them," John said.
"You're not," Gerran replied. "You're going to stack burning ridgeclaw corpses behind them if they get too close. That's your job. Now move."
John hesitated, torn between the instinct to keep his family pressed to him and the knowledge that one man carrying his wife and newborn through an all-out attack was a liability, not a shield.
Doris solved it for him. Her fingers dug into his sleeve. "John… please. I can't run. Not now."
Her eyes met his—eyes that had once gleamed with mischief in markets and taverns, now rimmed with pain and a hint of something he hated to recognize: resignation.
He swallowed hard. "All right."
The guards around the selected wagon parted as they approached. One of them—a young woman barely out of adolescence, face streaked with mud—helped Doris up the step, grunting at her weight. Inside, other survivors huddled: a mother holding two crying children; an older man clutching a crate of ledgers like they were his lifeline; a pair of traders staring blankly, shock-swallowed.
John passed Brian to Doris with such reluctance that his hands shook. The baby wailed, squirming as the cold air hit him.
"Shhh," Doris murmured, pulling him close. "Shhh, my love. It's all right. It's all—"
A roar cut her off as a ridgeclaw mounted the nearest wagon roof, silhouetted against the storm-lashed sky. Its claws dug into the wet wood; its eyes glowed with feral hunger.
The young guard jerked her spear up, but another figure was already moving.
John stepped back from the wagon, drew his sword in one smooth motion, and exhaled.
Just enough, he reminded himself. Not too much.
His free hand traced a quick, practiced pattern in the air. Heat coiled beneath his skin, answering the call—familiar, dangerous. A small orange flame sputtered to life above his palm, sheltered from the rain by sheer will, then leapt along the edge of his blade, clinging to steel without consuming it.
The ridgeclaw sprang.
John met it halfway.
He pivoted, blade flashing in the lightning-laced dark. Fire hissed as it cut through wet air, searing a bright arc through the ridgeclaw's throat. The creature's momentum carried it past him; it hit the mud and skidded, leaving a streak of black blood steaming in the rain.
The young guard stared; eyes wide. "I thought you were just… a sword-hand," she
managed.
John left the flame burning thinly on his blade, more a glow than a blaze. "You thought wrong," he said. "Form up around the wagon. Nothing touches it."
He turned back once more to the interior. Doris's eyes were fixed on the knife-thin flame along his sword. Not impressed, not reassured.
Just Afraid.
"We'll be all right," John said quietly, more to her than himself. "I'll be just ahead."
"John," Doris said, and her voice trembled. "Be careful with the fire."
It wasn't battle she meant. And they both knew it.
He gave a brief nod and stepped away, letting the canvas flap fall. The world shrank to storm and mud and steel once more.
The passage to the canyon felt endless.
Step by step, wagon by wagon, the caravan crawled toward the dark cut in the hills that promised some measure of shelter. Guards clustered in moving pockets, breaking away to harry Ridgeclaws and half-seen shadows that darted in and out of lantern-light.
John moved just ahead of Doris's wagon; his sword's faint flame a constant presence at the corner of his vision. He used it sparingly—enough heat to drive beasts back from the flanks, not enough to draw distant eyes from things worse than Ridgeclaws.
The storm howled louder the closer they came to the canyon, wind funnelling between rising rock walls. Lightning flashed in jagged lines above, painting everything in stark negative: black silhouettes, white light, and between them, the endless grey of rain.
At one point, a ridgeclaw pack crested the slope on their right, snarling, jaws wide. Before John could move, a spear of light streaked across the darkness and detonated above the beasts, scattering them in terror.
Dorothy.
She stood atop a nearby wagon, cloak whipped by the wind, staff raised. The air around her shimmered with that same subtle warping John had felt in the birthing wagon—a distortion, a misalignment of where-space-should-be versus where-space-was.
Ridgeclaws leapt, but their angle of attack twisted midair; they crashed feet short of her, slamming into invisible kinks in the world and tumbling head over tails down the slope.
"Pass!" Dorothy shouted, her voice sharp as cracked stone. "Get into the pass! Move, you stubborn pack-mules!"
Gerran rode past, one arm raised, bellowing the order down the line. Wagons rolled faster, wheels jarring on rock and rut, horses frothing and straining against their harnesses.
At last, the land pinched inward. The caravan slipped between towering slabs of stone, the canyon walls rising high on either side like jagged black teeth. The wind funnelled more fiercely here, but the Ridgeclaws faltered at the threshold, uncertain.
Something about the rock, John thought. Or something lain there long before any of them were born.
"Hold here!" Gerran yelled once the head of the caravan reached a wider basin in the canyon—a bowl of stone sheltered from the worst of the wind. "Form a circle! Shields, to the gaps! Mages, to the rear line!"
John did as ordered, guiding Doris's wagon into position as part of the forming ring. Guards wedged their shields between wagon wheels, spears bristling over the makeshift parapet. Torches and lanterns clustered in the center, turning the basin into an island of shifting light.
The Ridgeclaws paced the canyon mouth, snarling, but did not cross. Their shapes flickered in the rain, dark against darker rock. One threw its head back and howled, the sound echoing painfully.
Then, slowly, they withdrew.
Not defeated. Not satisfied. Simply… called away.
John felt it—a subtle shift, like pressure lifting from his ears when crossing altitude. His blade-flame sputtered and died without him willing it, as if some invisible attention had passed over them and decided they were no longer worth immediate effort.
Dorothy descended from her wagon, face ashen, strides slightly unsteady. The guards parted wordlessly to let her through. John sheathed his sword and met her near the central fire where Gerran had taken up position.
"Casualties?" John asked.
Gerran's expression was carved from granite. "We'll count when it's not so dark. Too many." He nodded toward the canyon mouth. "Whatever stirred those beasts didn't like coming all the way in. That's something."
Dorothy snorted softly. "Predators don't argue with old stones. They remember things
people forget."
John frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means," she said, "you're safe for the night. Mostly." She looked past him, toward the wagon where Doris and Brian waited. "If I'm right, the worst of the hunger was not theirs."
He followed her gaze. A knot tightened in his chest.
"Doris said the Paragons," he said carefully.
"You believe they were behind this?"
Dorothy was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled between them, casting her profile in amber light. Rain tapped a softer rhythm on the canvas overhead.
"It's possible," she said at last. "Storms make it easier. The lines between things blur. Smells and sounds twist. Something like that… attracts attention. Especially… if it's the right kind of birth."
John's jaw clenched. "He's just a child."
Her eyes met his. "He's your child," she said gently. "But he is not just anything."
Anger flared, hot and sharp. "I don't care what omens you think you see," John said. "He is my son. That's all that matters."
Dorothy didn't flinch. "Then remember that when others try to make him something else."
A silence stretched. Rain softened to a drizzle, the storm finally starting to pass overhead, leaving only low growls of distant thunder.
Gerran cleared his throat. "The beasts are gone, for now. We'll put double watch at the canyon mouth. At first light, we see who's alive, who's not, and what we've lost. Then we decide whether to push on or turn back."
"Turn back to what?" John asked.
Gerran's mouth twitched grimly. "Exactly."
They buried the dead in the morning.
The storm had blown itself out, leaving the canyon cold and washed clean. Mist clung to the edges of the rock walls. The sky above was a pale, uncertain blue, like someone had scraped away the darkness with a dull knife.
Bodies were laid in neat rows at the canyon's far side, hands folded over chests, eyes closed. Some were wrapped in cloth, others in whatever blankets could be spared. A few had only cloaks. The Ridgeclaws had not been gentle.
Doris sat at the edge of the wagon, wrapped in a heavy cloak, Brian in her lap. She watched quietly as Gerran spoke a simple, rough prayer over the fallen.
"We are all travellers," he said, voice hoarse. "Road dust on our boots, wind in our faces. Today, some of us have reached a different road. We'll meet you down the way, friends. When our own wagons creak past the last mile."
The caravan murmured the traditional response. "When our own wagons creak past the last mile."
Brian shifted in Doris's arms, eyelids fluttering. His face was calmer now, the raw-red flush of newborn effort fading. He turned his head slightly, as if drawn by the sound of voices, pupils dark and wide.
Doris stroked his cheek with a thumb. "You hear that?" she whispered. "First day in the world, and you've already seen far too much of it."
John stood beside her, one hand resting on the wagon frame, the other loosely near his sword hilt out of habit rather than intent. He watched the graves being covered by stone and soil; jaw tight.
"Do you blame him yet?" Doris asked softly, not looking at John.
He blinked, startled. "Blame… Brian? For what?"
"For being born," she said. "For bringing… attention."
John's immediate impulse was to deny it. Of course not. How could he? Brian was their son, fragile and miraculous. The storm, the beasts, the cult—those were the world's sins, not his.
But the image of the Ridgeclaws pressing in, the way the air had pulsed around the newborn, flashed behind his eyes.
He exhaled. "No," he said firmly. "I blame the monsters that came for us. And the cowards who ride storms and shadows looking for blood." He paused. "And I blame myself, for not being strong enough to stop all of it."
Doris turned to look at him, brow furrowing. "You can't fight storms, John."
He gave a wry half-smile. "I can't. But I'll pretend I can until I collapse. That's what you married."
She laughed quietly. The sound was frayed at the edges, but real. Brian flinched at the sudden noise, then seemed to relax at its warmth.
Gerran approached, dust from the fresh graves still clinging to his boots. He looked older in the daylight, deep lines carved around his mouth, grey streaking his beard more heavily than John remembered from last season.
"We lost fourteen," Gerran said, without ceremony. "Four guards, ten waggoners. Two wagons destroyed, one crippled. Ridgeclaws took some bodies we couldn't recover. No sign of cultists, if any were indeed near."
"'If,'" Doris echoed quietly.
Gerran's gaze flicked toward her. He hesitated, as if weighing how much he wanted to say in front of others. Then he shrugged. "Some of the guards swear they saw cloaks moving on the ridge when the storm first broke. Could've been scouts. Could've been shadows and fear."
Dorothy joined them, staff resting lightly against her shoulder. "Shadows don't watch," she said. "Not with that kind of patience."
Gerran pinched the bridge of his nose. "I was afraid you'd say that."
"Did you also see the pattern of the storm?" Dorothy asked, looking up at the sky. "How it split and circled this canyon? How the beasts came from three sides, not one?"
Gerran grimaced. "I've seen storms before."
"Not like that," she murmured. "Not with that pull."
John shifted uncomfortably. "So, you truly think—"
"I think," Dorothy cut in, "that someone, somewhere, was listening for a certain kind of birth. A certain… resonance. And when it came, the world shuddered."
Doris tightened her hold on Brian.
"So, what now?" John asked. "Do we turn back? Try another route? Hide him?"
Hide him. As if such a thing were possible. The child already felt like a small hearth-fire in John's arms—warm, steady, drawing attention even in stillness.
Gerran glanced from John to Doris to Dorothy. "We were headed toward the capital anyway," he said slowly. "This attack just made our timeline tighter." He hesitated. "If there's a place with enough wards, enough soldiers, enough mages to make cultists think twice, it's the Imperial city. And the Academy, especially."
Doris's jaw clenched. "You think we should walk right into the lion's den and hand him over?"
"I think," Gerran said, "that I can't protect you from whatever that was out there. Not if it comes again. I'm a caravan master, not a warlord." He looked at Brian, and for the first time, his eyes held something like awe. "The boy is… something else. And the kind of people who hunt that sort of thing… they won't stop just because we want to pretend, he's no one."
Dorothy nodded once. "The Academy can cage power. Or cultivate it. Or destroy it. Depends on who wins the arguments behind closed doors. But it is harder to snatch someone from a fortress than from a wagon."
John said nothing. He looked at Brian, at the fine dark hair already damp with morning chill, at the tiny fingers curled in the fabric of Doris's cloak. The baby yawned, eyes squeezing shut, then opened them again, unfocused.
The world had already found him. Pretending otherwise would not make it untrue.
"We take him to the Academy," John said at last. The words tasted like iron. "But we do it on our terms, as much as we can."
Doris closed her eyes briefly, then nodded. "On our terms," she repeated, as if using the words to anchor herself.
Gerran clapped John's shoulder; the gesture heavy. "We'll rest here tonight," he said. "Set broken wheels, mend harnesses. At first light tomorrow, we move. And we don't stop until we see the capital walls."
He walked away, barking orders. Dorothy lingered.
"You should eat," she said to Doris. "You'll need strength. Childbirth and Ridgeclaws in one night is more excitement than most people see in a lifetime."
"Lucky me," Doris murmured.
Dorothy's gaze softened. "You did well. He's here. He's alive."
"For now," Doris said quietly
.
Dorothy hesitated. "May I?"
Doris considered, then carefully held Brian out. Dorothy took him with surprising ease, the wrinkles in her hands not hindering their steadiness. She studied his face like one might study an old map, searching for landmarks long forgotten.
Brian's gaze wandered, unfocused. His tiny hand twitched toward Dorothy's face, fingers splaying. The air between him and her palm shimmered—just barely. A warmth, gentle as breath on glass, ghosted across Dorothy's skin.
Her eyes widened, just a fraction. "Hmph," she said softly. "You noisy little star."
"Star?" John repeated, brow furrowing.
Dorothy gave him a crooked smile. "Old words. From old stories. About souls that bend paths around them."
She shifted Brian slightly, cradling him. The baby's cry rose—a thin, uncertain sound. His face screwed up, small features wrinkling. If it was hunger, pain, or simply the shock of existing, none of them could tell.
"Shhh," Dorothy murmured. "The world is loud, isn't it? Too loud."
She nodded at John. "Come here."
He stepped closer, wary. "Why?"
"Because he's upset," Dorothy said. "And you're going to calm him."
"I don't know how to calm babies," John said. "Sword drills and shouting, that's my
specialty."
She snorted. "You'd be surprised how similar it is."
Doris almost smiled at that.
Dorothy shifted Brian into John's arms again. The baby fussed, face reddening. John held him carefully, still unsure, as if he were made of glass.
"Now," Dorothy said quietly, "call a spark. Just a small one."
Doris stiffened. "Dorothy—"
"Small," Dorothy repeated. "Controlled. Not for killing or driving off beasts. For warmth. For focus." Her eyes locked onto John's. "Let him see it. Feel it. There are worse things he can learn first than that fire doesn't only burn."
John hesitated. The idea felt wrong—using magic near the child, introducing it so early. Hadn't that already nearly killed them?
But Brian squirmed, emitting a sharp, almost pained wail. The sound cut through him. John exhaled slowly.
All right.
He lifted his free hand, palm up, away from the baby's face. He drew in a breath, reached for that familiar inner heat—and this time, he held it carefully, not as a blade's edge but as an ember cupped between his fingers.
A small flame kindled above his palm.
It was tiny, no bigger than a coin, its light soft, its heat gentle. It danced in the air, unaffected by the slight breeze threading through the canyon. It smelled faintly of woodsmoke, though nothing burned.
Brian's crying hitched. His small head turned, instinctively seeking the light. His eyes opened, dark and uncomprehending, but they fixed on the flame.
His breathing slowed.
The air around John's hand tingled. For a heartbeat, he felt something respond—not just the magic within him, but… something else. A subtle echo, as if the baby were listening not with his ears, but with some deeper sense.
The flame leaned ever so slightly toward Brian, as though drawn by his gaze.
"John," Doris whispered, tension in her voice.
"I've got it," he murmured. He kept the spark steady, not letting it flare larger. Not letting it shrink. Just enough.
Brian's crying stopped altogether. Together, father and son watched the flame—a man who had learned to wield fire as a weapon, and a newborn who, only hours before, had warped wind and heat unconsciously.
Dorothy watched them both, expression unreadable.
"See?" she said softly. "Fire can soothe, too."
Brian let out a small sigh. His eyelids drooped. Slowly, he drifted into sleep, the tiny crease between his brows smoothing out.
John closed his hand, extinguishing the flame. The residual warmth lingered on his skin. He felt the weight of Brian's small body settle more heavily into his arms as the child relaxed.
He looked at Doris. She looked back, eyes shining—not with joy, not exactly. With something more complicated.
"You see it too," she said quietly. It wasn't a question.
John hesitated, then nodded. "He… responded."
Doris's fingers trembled as she brushed Brian's head. "They'll see it as well," she said. "Anyone who knows what to look for."
"They?" John asked.
She didn't answer. Or couldn't.
Dorothy exhaled. "Then we make sure the first place that notices," she said, "is somewhere that can at least pretend to protect him."
"The Academy," John said.
"The Academy," Dorothy agreed.
The word sat between them, heavy as stone. A promise and a threat.
John looked down at Brian—at his tiny, sleeping face, at the faint flush still clinging to his cheeks, at the soft, steady rise and fall of his chest.
Stormborn. Ridgeclaw-surviving. Flame-watching.
His son.
He tightened his hold, lifting his gaze to the distant line of sky visible beyond the canyon's steep walls. Somewhere beyond those jagged silhouettes, beyond miles of road and towns and checkpoints, the capital waited. Its walls. Its towers. Its Academy.
"Then we go," John said quietly. "And whatever they see when they look at him… I'll be there to remind them he's a person, not a prophecy."
Dorothy's lips twitched into a thin smile. "You'll have your work cut out for you."
"I always do," he said.
Doris rested her head briefly against his shoulder. "We'll do it together," she said. "The three of us."
Lightning no longer splits the sky. The storm had moved on, leaving only damp stone,
overturned wagons, new graves—and a caravan full of people who would remember this night for the rest of their lives.
But in John's arms, the future slept, wrapped in wool and the aftertaste of flame. Fragile,
Dangerous and Irreplaceable.
The road ahead was long, and the world was already turning its gaze their way.
For now, though, the boy simply dreamed