In the village of the River-Folk, Elara was a blur of focused effort. She was barely fourteen, but her ambition to be a Hunter was a fire that burned brighter than any torch. Below the thick canopy, she had rigged a discarded fishing net into a crude punching and kicking bag, packed tightly with dry moss and river stones. Thud. Whap. Thud. Her small, calloused fists delivered blows with an alarming snap that belied her age.
She was disciplined, driven, and resourceful. Her makeshift bow was carved from resilient ash wood, strung with braided sinew, and her target—a hessian sack stuffed with straw—stood proudly next to the trunk of an ancient oak. Sometimes, she would hang a late-season apple or plum and, taking a deep breath, send an arrow soaring to split the fruit cleanly. When she wasn't honing projectile skills, she was mastering movement. She treated the sprawling, dense forest as her personal obstacle course, scrambling up sheer rock faces and using thick vines as ropes to swing across ravines, moving with the fluid grace of a cat.
She was the best of her age cohort, already challenging the times and totals set by adults.
Her closest friends understood this drive. Lyna, a girl with hands as quick and delicate as hummingbirds, practiced knotwork, determined to inherit her mother's gift for weaving perfect, invisible fishing nets and animal traps. And then there was Kael, whose heart was set on the sea. Kael wished his Power, when it came, would allow him to hear the vibrations of the water and track the deep currents, ensuring the village never went hungry.
It was with Kael that the truth of Elara's nature became painfully clear. The depths of winter had locked the great central lake into a thick sheet of ice. The two were fishing; Kael diligently carving a hole, Elara keeping watch. Bored, Kael decided to slide along the expansive, shimmering surface. He was laughing, enjoying the sharp, crisp air, when he stepped onto a patch of ice that had deceptively thin due to a warm spring feeding from below.
A sickening crack split the air, and Kael plunged into the dark, freezing water.
Panic seized Elara, but only for a second. Instinct, sharp and demanding, took over. She sprinted toward the ragged hole and, without hesitation, dropped her bow and plunged into the icy water after him. The shock stole her breath, but her focus was absolute. She grabbed Kael's thrashing collar, using the sheer, brute force she had meticulously trained into her muscles to heave them both back onto the solid ice.
Hypothermic and shaking, Kael was dragged to the fire pit they had built nearby. Once he was safe under a thick cloak, he looked at her, his eyes wide with a respect she rarely saw.
"You're a Guardian candidate, Elara," he rasped, the title sacred and absolute.
Elara recoiled. "I'm a Hunter! That was just… what you do for a friend."
The Guardians were the spiritual and protective core of the River-Folk. They were self-sacrificing, hearing the deepest secrets of the tribe and protecting them with absolute nobility. Elara, who knew the harsh edge of survival and often harbored a self-serving desire to be recognized as simply the best, did not believe she possessed that pure nobility. She would fight for the tribe, yes, but die for it? That felt too close to the Guardian's oath.
Kael smiled, partly joking, partly serious. "Maybe not a Guardian, then. Maybe a Dream Walker."
The title hung in the air, heavy with mystery. Dream Walkers were figures of legend, whispered to be the closest to the Holy Spirit, sent on missions no one truly understood. They were said to be protectors, guides, fighters, and noble entities, yet their true function remained obscured by layers of folklore and secrecy, a role too grand and strange for a simple girl like Elara.
Far away, the seasons had turned. The winter moon that watched over Leo was gone, replaced by the relentless, humming heat of a modern summer. He sat in the shack, his small body slumped on an upturned crate. He was alone, and his skin was a map of dark bruises and scrapes. He wasn't crying anymore; he was just intensely, profoundly tired.
He stared at the peeling paint of the opposite wall, but his mind was running a reel of images from the school day. The suffocating closeness of the restroom stall. The sharp, acrid smell of the used toilet paper smeared against his face as the laughing faces blurred above him. The sudden, agonizing thump of the sucker punch that stole his breath.
Later, walking home, the same mocking laughter followed him. The hard shove that sent him sprawling onto the rough pavement. He felt the sting of the asphalt and then the final, humiliating kick to his backside as they ran off. The physical pain was nothing compared to the silence of his walk home, knowing that no matter how hard he tried to be invisible, the world saw him only as a target. He still wished, with every fiber of his being, that someone, somewhere, would simply be by his side.