The house had no name, and was abandoned.
It was a ruin once, leaning on the edge of the forest with vines for curtains and moss for a roof. But to Oisla, it had become something more than stone and timber, he was mining for gold in coal. It was a refuge. A sanctuary. A place where four broken lives stitched themselves back together.
Five years had passed since the night Baibars fell and the family distorted. Five years since fire painted the sky and blood soaked the soil. Oisla was no longer the trembling boy who had clutched at his grandmother's shawl, nor the child who had cried himself to sleep by the river's edge. At eighteen, his frame had grown lean and strong, his hands calloused, his eyes sharper than he realized.
Yet inside, the shadow of that night had never left. It pulsed behind his ribs, shaping every choice he made.
Life in the abandoned house was quiet, it was away from the daily clattering. The Nordits had spread like a plague, their banners fluttering over city after city. Rumors reached them through wandering refugees—tales of burned fields, stolen daughters, rulers bent beneath the northern yoke.
But here, tucked away in the forgotten corner of the forest, Oisla and the others carved out their own rhythm.
Grandma Mara, though her hair had grown thinner and her steps slower, remained the heart of the home. She was the storyteller, the keeper of memory, the one who reminded them each night why they endured and what they endured.
Xinon, scarred and solid, had turned their crumbling shelter into a fortress of sorts. He taught Oisla and Gable how to wield blades, how to set traps, how to move silently even in the thickest undergrowth. "One day," he always said, "these skills will mean the difference between your blood on the ground or theirs."
Jim-Yok, sharp-tongued and quick-eyed, took to the arts of the unseen. He became their scout, their trickster, slipping in and out of shadows with the ease of a fox. He claimed he could smell danger before it arrived—and sometimes, to Oisla's amazement, he was right.
As for Oisla and Gable, their paths unfolded differently. Oisla leaned toward strategy, drawing maps from fragments of memory, charting where Nordit patrols might march, how supply lines might bend. He devoured every lesson Xinon offered but also asked questions neither Xinon nor Jim-Yok could always answer. Gable, meanwhile, threw himself into the bow. Hours bled away as he loosed arrow after arrow into straw dummies, until his arms ached and his aim grew true.
They did not say it aloud, but they trained as though preparing for something greater—something not yet spoken, but always lingering in their sacred hearts.
The morning sun filtered through the cracked beams of the old house, catching motes of dust that danced lazily in the air. Oisla sat at a rough wooden table, tracing lines across a scrap of parchment with a piece of charcoal. His sketches were crude, but he was certain the Nordits had established a supply base near the river crossing. If he could just confirm it—
"Again?" Jim-Yok's voice cut through the silence. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to draw birds instead of maps."
Oisla smirked faintly. "Better birds than your handwriting. Looks like a drunk goat stepped on the page."
Before Jim-Yok could retort, a loud thwack echoed outside. They glanced through the broken shutters where Gable loosed another arrow, this one splitting the shaft of his last. The boy who had once wept by the river was gone—his stance now steady, his expression calm, as though each arrow carried the weight of his grief and his hope alike.
Xinon watched nearby, arms crossed, nodding in approval. His voice carried back inside: "Good. Again. Don't think, just breathe."
Jim-Yok rolled his eyes. "And there he goes again. Mister Stoneface with his one-word wisdoms."
Oisla chuckled under his breath, already sensing where this would lead.
Sure enough, when Xinon returned inside, wiping sweat from his brow, Jim-Yok was waiting. "You know, for a man of so many scars, you really don't talk much. Ever think maybe silence isn't as wise as you think?"
Xinon grunted. "Words are wind. They don't win battles."
"Oh? So what do you call that long speech you just gave?" Jim-Yok leaned back, grinning wide.
"That wasn't a speech," Xinon muttered, reaching for the water jug.
"Could've fooled me," Jim-Yok said, his grin only widening. "Do you practice your one-liners in the mirror? Or do they just fall out of you like rocks?"
Xinon shot him a look that could have cut stone, but Jim-Yok was relentless. "I swear, one day, you're going to wake up and realize your silence has been shouting at us louder than my jokes. And then what? You'll grunt your way through life?"
By now, Oisla was laughing openly, clutching his side. Even Gable, outside with bow in hand, had paused to smirk.
Finally, Xinon slammed the jug down with a thud. "By the gods, boy, if your mouth ran any faster, it would trip over itself!"
Jim-Yok clapped his hands together triumphantly. "There it is! I knew you had more than grunts in you. A full sentence, and angry too. My work here is done."
Xinon threw up his hands, muttering something in a language none of them understood, and stormed outside. The laughter followed him, chasing him into the yard until even he could not suppress the twitch of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Later, as the fire crackled and dusk settled over the trees, the four of them sat together, bowls of thin stew in hand. Mara hummed softly while the young men ate, her eyes reflecting the flames and smile reflecting the satisfaction in the growth of the boys.
The war outside raged, pressing closer each year, yet here they found their rhythm.
"Five years," Gable said suddenly, his voice low. "Five years and we've been waiting. Training. Preparing."
Jim-Yok tossed a twig into the fire. "Waiting for what, though? The gods? A miracle?"
Oisla glanced at him, but said nothing. He knew the answer—or at least part of it. The waiting was not idle. It had purpose. But it was not yet time to speak of it, not even to Gable, not even to Mara.
Xinon shifted, the firelight catching the deep scar across his cheek. "When the day comes, we'll know."
The silence that followed was heavy, but not hopeless. It was the silence of sharpened blades still sheathed, of arrows nocked but not yet loosed.
Oisla stared into the fire, the memory of his father's last words burning brighter in his chest than the flames before him. Run. Live. He had obeyed once. But the time for running was almost over and the time for war has just rang it's first bell.
And though the night carried the distant echoes of war—drums, faint shouts carried on the wind—the abandoned house by the forest still stood. For now, it was enough.