Ficool

Chapter 5 - Embers Beneath the Ash

It began with a scream.

Not mine. Not Jasmine's. A scream from the village center — sharp, ragged, full of terror. It pierced the quiet of dawn like an arrow through glass.

Cassian froze mid-swing, his hammer halfway to the anvil. I turned from the post I'd been striking with my weighted training stick. Our eyes met.

Then came the second scream. Closer. Then a third. Then silence.

Cassian dropped the hammer.

"Inside," he barked.

"But—" I started.

"Now, Ajax!"

I obeyed, running toward the house, heart pounding with instincts not my own — battle instincts. I ducked inside, grabbing the small cloth-wrapped satchel I kept beneath my crib: mana stones, chalk for glyph tracing, a coil of copper thread, and a sliver of steel I had sharpened myself. Child-sized preparations for grown-up danger.

Jasmine stood near the window, face pale, holding her hands out as if to shield me. Outside, faint shadows flickered between trees. Smoke. Shouting. Steel.

Raiders.

No… not raiders.

Soldiers.

Their uniforms were mismatched — some bore sigils from Velan's southern border patrols, others wore no insignia at all. Mercenaries, then. Maybe deserters. But they moved with too much precision, too much purpose.

Cassian burst in and locked the door behind him.

"They've already breached the south edge," he growled, moving quickly to a loose floorboard and pulling out a sheathed longsword. It was old, but oiled. Maintained. I had always assumed it was ceremonial.

It wasn't.

Jasmine's voice trembled. "Are they… here for us?"

Cassian's jaw tightened. "No. But they'll take whatever they want. And kill anyone who stops them."

That was answer enough.

It wasn't long before we heard footsteps crunching across our yard. Two sets. One heavy, one lighter. I peeked through the slats of the shutter.

A tall man in piecemeal armor led, dragging a hooked pike lazily through the grass. Behind him followed a woman with a crossbow and a scar across her chin.

They weren't looting.

They were searching.

"Open up!" the man shouted, slamming the butt of his pike into the door. "Orders from the Silver Fang Company! All homes must be searched!"

Cassian's grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. His eyes flicked to Jasmine. Then to me.

He was preparing to die. For both of us.

"No," I whispered, stepping forward.

Jasmine gasped, moving to stop me — but I held up one small hand. Mana coiled within my chest, glowing faintly in spiraling patterns only I could see.

"Ajax, no—" Cassian began, but I didn't listen.

I pressed my palm to the wooden floor and whispered a single glyph.

"Hold."

The spiral flared.

Invisible energy surged from me through the structure of the cottage — into the walls, the beams, and finally the door. I'd expelled my mana to form a lock on the door, one that no meager man could open. A Lockweave.

The door slammed again… and held.

The man outside grunted, confused. "It's barred. Break it."

The woman raised her crossbow.

But before she could fire, Cassian leaped through the window beside the door and hurled a dagger clean into her shoulder.

She screamed, dropping the weapon.

That's when the front door shattered inward — not from force, but from me.

I had inverted the Lockweave.

The spiral in my palm flared again. A gust of wind, raw and hot with compressed mana, surged outward. It caught the armored man full in the chest, throwing him off his feet and into the garden fence.

He didn't get back up.

Cassian turned to me, stunned. "What was that?"

I looked up at him, steady and cold. "Magic."

He didn't ask how. Not then.

Jasmine crouched and pulled me into her arms, trembling.

More shouting outside. The clash of blades. Firelight dancing beyond the trees.

We had won a moment. Nothing more.

Later, we joined the other villagers — those who had survived — as they gathered near the town well. Half the homes smoked. A few still burned. Most people were bruised, bloodied. Two lay on makeshift stretchers. One didn't move.

The mercenaries were retreating. Not because they'd been defeated, but because they'd been testing.

Looking.

Cassian stood before the village elder, speaking quietly. The old man's eyes a cold dark pit with a gaze that peirced through souls.

I recognized this stare. How could I not? I'd seen it in the battlefield thousands of times.

A stare that comes from losing what's most precious to you.

That night, Cassian didn't speak. He sat in silence at the table, cleaning the blade that had once saved his life and, now, ours.

Jasmine tucked me in, her voice soft but strained.

When the house was quiet, I climbed out of bed and stepped into the firelight where my father still sat, staring at nothing.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He blinked. "Why?"

"I haven't been honest with you" I started, " I have been building my mana since I was three months old."

Cassian turned slowly.

I continued, "I'm sorry because today you almost sacrificed yourself and I hadn't even told you I could do something about those intruders."

"Please, Ajax. Don't be. You saved us." He continued, "You saved Jasmine."

We sat in silence for a while. Just the two of us, contemplating what really happened earlier that day.

The next morning, the village elder called a meeting. He asked everybody to give their accounts of what happened yesterday.

There were questions. Suspicions. Fear.

Cassian stood. He didn't look at me. Not directly. But his voice was calm. Clear.

"My home was attacked yesterday," he said. "Two of them tried to break in. I killed them."

Murmurs rose. A few villagers glanced at one another, confused.

Old Marren stepped forward, arms crossed. "You're saying you fought off two Silver Fang mercenaries alone?"

Cassian shrugged once. "They were sloppy. Overconfident."

"That one in armor was found ten paces from your fence. Looked like a storm threw him."

Cassian didn't blink. "Maybe it did."

Laughter, sharp and uneasy, rippled through the crowd. Someone muttered, "Storm didn't come for the rest of us."

The elder raised a hand. "Enough."

His eyes locked on Cassian's. "You're not telling us everything."

"No," Cassian said. "I'm not."

A beat of silence.

Then: "But no one in this village died at our door. So maybe that's enough."

The elder studied him for a long time. Not challenging — just watching, weighing.

At last, he nodded once. "For now."

We weren't cast out. Not directly. But things… shifted.

Jasmine stopped getting visits from the neighbors. The smith didn't take Cassian's iron anymore, though he never said why.

And me?

They didn't know what I'd done. But they felt it.

Children stared. Adults looked away.

And sometimes, when I passed them, I caught the edge of a whisper — like the wind itself carried their doubt.

Those weren't pillagers. They came with a purpose.

To test?

To warn?

No.

They were looking for something. They didn't know it was me. But that won't always be the case.

That night, while the fire burned low and Jasmine slept, I sat beside Cassian at the table.

"I don't think we can stay," I said.

He didn't look up from his blade.

"I know," he answered.

More Chapters