The silence of the trading camp was shattered not by a scream, but by a sound that turned blood to ice: a wet, ragged cough rising from the thickest shadows by the river.
The figure that emerged froze even the hardest veterans of the Phoenix Guild. It wasn’t fear that gripped them; it was something older, more primal. This was no mere shadow. It looked like the river itself had risen in human shape.
Mud clung to her in heavy, tattered rags of sodden clothing. Her face was pale and scratched raw, but only one thing truly stood out: the eyes. Two huge rubies burning in the dark with an unnatural, inner fire; a glow that belonged to nothing alive in these forests.
“River spawn! Unclean!” one of the drovers rasped, stumbling backward and clutching the wooden amulet at his chest. His panic was a spark ready to ignite the rest.
“Quiet.”
A single voice, low and deliberately calm, cut through the air like a blade. The caravan captain, Lorenz, stepped forward. A man with raven-black hair touched with silver at the temples. His gaze wasn’t simply cold; it was appraising. He weighed threats the way he weighed goods on his scales: fast, precise, without sentiment. His hand rested on the hilt of his dagger—not gripping, merely feeling the chill of the steel.
“Ghosts don’t choke on river water,” Lorenz said evenly, the unspoken order “don’t move” hanging in every syllable. “Speak, girl. Before someone decides those eyes are reason enough for a crossbow bolt. Who are you? And what demon’s riding you?”
The figure shuddered, coughed again. For a heartbeat something fragile and human flickered in those hellish eyes—pain, confusion, bone-deep exhaustion.
“They… took me away…” Her voice was hoarse, torn, like ragged cloth. “The village… Eldenhart… to the west…”
“Eldenhart?” an old merchant muttered, scratching his stubble. “Heard of it. Backwater at the foot of the Grey Ridge. Half-breeds live there, beast-bloods. Grey skin, dark hair. But you…” He trailed off, glancing at the tangled, unmistakably fair hair plastered to her skull.
Lorenz never took his eyes off her. His silence was heavier than questions. It pressed down like mountain air before a storm. He didn’t see a girl—he saw an anomaly, a problem, damaged goods that might bring insane profit or death to the entire caravan.
“One last question,” he said at last, steel ringing beneath the quiet. “What happened in Eldenhart? Why are you the only thing that crawled out—and with that… mark?” He tipped his chin toward her eyes.
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Lying was impossible. Telling the whole truth was a death sentence.
“They attacked,” she breathed, and the pain in that single word was real, scorched into her. Impossible to fake. “Crimson cloaks… curved sabres. Everything burned. I ran… they hunted me… my horse threw me into the river at Black Drop.”
She left out the important parts. Her brother’s severed hand. The Song of Stones. Let them think it was just raiders.
“Crimson Cloaks… Noyan the Bloodletter’s band,” Lorenz hissed, exchanging swift, knowing glances with his two lieutenants. In a world of predators, everyone recognised the other hunters. “She might be telling the truth.”
“But the eyes! Captain, look at them! That’s pure Corruption! Witchcraft!” the drover wouldn’t let it go.
“Shock from the fall can change a person,” Lorenz cut him off, though certainty was absent from his tone. He turned back to the girl. “A name. Give it.”
Ice bloomed inside her. “Amanda” was too dangerous. “Light” was madness. Two shattered lives warred in her head. She chose without hesitation.
“Amanda,” she forced out, pouring the last of her strength and defiance into the word.
The corner of Lorenz’s mouth twitched in something that might, in another lifetime, have been a smile. “Clear as crystal. Every crack shows. Fine.”
He flicked a hand, and his decision fell like an axe on the girl’s fate.
“Throw an old cloak on her and give her a swallow of something strong to warm her. Put her in the last wagon, with the saltpetre barrels. No talking. You, Garret—” he jabbed a finger at the terrified drover—“you’re responsible for her. She twitches wrong, cut her throat. Those rubies would look nice in the Guild’s collection.”
A coarse wool cloak that stank of smoke and sweat was tossed over her shoulders. Its weight was almost comforting. Amanda wrapped herself in it without a word of thanks, hiding her trembling, bloodless fingers in its folds.
They shoved her into the back of the wagon, where crates and barrels formed a cramped, foul-smelling den. The reek of tar, oxidised iron, and sharp chemical bitterness stung her nose. Garret sat beside her. His terror had curdled into wary, venomous spite.
“Hear that, ‘Amanda’?” he hissed, low enough that Lorenz wouldn’t hear. “You sit still as a mouse. Your demon eyes don’t work on me. First weird glint, and I’ll dig them out with the tip of my knife. See if they really are rubies.”
Amanda said nothing. She pressed her back to a cold barrel, closed those same “demon eyes,” and pretended to sleep. But behind the mask of stillness, her mind—sharp, desperate—worked at fever pitch.
(Phoenix Guild. Merchants in name, carrion birds in truth. They don’t rescue. They invest. Right now I’m a curiosity, a defective artefact of unknown value. In Ironhaven I won’t find shelter—I’ll find a pawn shop or a slaver’s display case. I need leverage. Something that turns me from threat or freak… into an asset.)
Deep in her chest, beneath the stranger’s heart now beating in time with the turning wheels, a cold, hard resolve took root. Survival had only been the first level of the game. Now came the fight for a future—on this new, foreign, merciless board.
The first battle was over. She had lived.
The second—the battle for what came next—had only just begun, ticking away with every turn of the wheels into the unknown.