The world collapsed into deafening chaos. The roar of crumbling houses, the furious crackle of flames, the maddened screams of people and the shrill, panicked neighing of horses—everything fused into a single, unbroken howl. Through that hell, one iron command hammered inside Amanda’s skull: RUN!
She couldn’t remember how she’d ended up on Windless’s back—Kaelan’s old bay gelding. Couldn’t remember clawing into his mane, fingers buried in coarse, sweat-soaked hair while the muscles beneath bunched and surged. The village of Eldenhart, ablaze in crimson, simply vanished behind her, shrinking to a single glowing ember. There were no thoughts. There was no fear. Only a body stripped down to animal instinct: Run. Don’t look back. Breathe.
The forest streaked past in a solid wall of green. Branches whipped her face and arms like lashes, carving thin, burning welts. Blood from a cut on her cheek—sticky, already darkening—crusted over, a brutal reminder that freedom always exacted its price in blood.
“Kaelan… Mother… Bolen…”
Their names flared in her mind like red-hot needles, piercing the numbness. She had left them there. In the inferno that had ignited because of her. Because of her alien beauty, her cursed ruby eyes.
“Get her! Shoot!”
A hoarse shout sliced through the ringing in her ears. She risked a glance over her shoulder. Two riders had broken away from the main nightmare and were closing fast, flogging their mounts without mercy. One rose in the stirrups, drawing the string of a short, lethal bow.
They won’t help, a fragment of someone else’s memory whispered. Neighbors. They know what I am—the “Prophetess” who brought the Khan’s wrath down on us all… They’ll turn me in. Or kill me themselves to lift the curse from their own heads.
In this world, solidarity did not exist. Only the law of survival—cold and simple as a knife’s edge.
Twang!
An arrow hissed past her temple, missing by a finger’s breadth before burying itself in a pine trunk with a dull thud. Amanda’s heart leapt into her throat. She pressed herself flat against Windless’s neck, melding with him, becoming one creature. Just run.
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“Come on, boy, come on…”
Her whisper was meant only for herself and the horse; she no longer knew which of them she was begging.
She yanked the reins, veering off the path into the thicket, praying the green maze would swallow her. But their pursuers’ horses were fresher, faster. The gap melted away with terrifying speed.
Twang! Another arrow sliced the air beside her shoulder.
Then—a clearing. The trees parted like a trap snapping open. Directly ahead gaped a drop-off: not high, but treacherously steep. Below, the river churned gray with silt and foam, gnashing driftwood to splinters. On both flanks, impenetrable tangles of fallen timber. A dead end.
Time froze. Windless’s ragged, heaving breaths. The thunder of hooves almost upon them. A triumphant snarl from one of the warriors: “She’s ours!”
There was no choice. To stop was death—or a fate she couldn’t even force herself to imagine. To turn back was to ride straight into the arms of her executioners.
“I’m sorry, Caelan…”
It wasn’t a thought. It was an exhale. A final apology, a final justification.
She screamed—short, sharp—and drove her heels into Windless’s flanks. Faithful to the end, without a flicker of doubt, he lunged forward, straight toward the edge.
For one impossible heartbeat they hung in empty air. Amanda stared down into the watery chaos and thought not of death, but of Bolen’s words that morning over breakfast: “The current’s strange… murky…”
This river. The very one.
CRASH!
An icy hammer slammed into her, punching every ounce of air from her lungs. The world flipped, drowned in roar and white foam. She was torn from the saddle; water—piercingly, viciously cold—stabbed her skin with a thousand burning needles. The current seized her like a splinter, hurling her against slick boulders, spinning her in a mad whirl. For an instant she glimpsed Windless’s head, his eyes wide with animal terror as he thrashed, but the abyss was stronger.
Everything blurred—water, sky, pain, the wreckage of a former life. The river dragged her onward. Away from home. Away from family. Away from everything she had ever known.
And as the dark, merciless water closed over her head, Amanda’s final thought was not of salvation. It was that Bolen had been right. This flood wasn’t just carrying her downstream.
It was carrying her straight into the heart of the coming storm.
And the darkness swallowed her whole.