The village was gone.
Ash drifted through the air like dying snow, falling soft and slow upon the bones of a life once whole. Smoke clung to the wreckage like a wounded beast, curling in the hollow frames of houses, bleeding from the mouths of dead hearths that would never burn again. Each breath Torian took seared his lungs with cinders—and something colder. Grief.
He stood at the edge of what used to be a world, boots sunk deep into scorched earth where once he'd run barefoot in summer. His fists clenched at his sides, trembling with a fury that had no place to go. In the heavy silence, his heartbeat thundered—a distant drum echoing through the vast emptiness of his chest.
No birdsong. No wind. Even the trees stood still, their limbs bare and blackened, as if mourning too.
Torian stepped forward.
The ground crunched beneath his boots—splintered wood, shattered pottery, the ghosts of lives turned to dust. He didn't blink. Didn't breathe deep. He moved like a shadow across the memory of his childhood.
The village square—once alive with music, laughter, and barefoot dances under the stars—was now a graveyard of stone and ash. He traced the ruins with his eyes: the baker's windows, once flung open with warm bread and louder jokes, now blackened hollows. The weaver's stall, reduced to a sagging curtain of soot. And beyond them, barely visible through the ruin, stood what was left of his home.
He stopped before the path curved toward it.
The air shifted. Beneath the burn of smoke and ruin, a familiar scent lingered—pine resin. Old leather. His father's sharpening oil. Faint, but real.
He walked on.
Each step was both a prayer and a punishment. He passed the twisted remains of a cart, its wheels split, a bundle of scorched herbs spilling from the back. He stepped over the broken rim of the village well, its rope burned, the bucket gone.
His home waited at the end of the lane—or what was left of it.
The roof had collapsed. The walls leaned outward, warped as if they had tried to scream. Half the door lay buried beneath a fallen beam. Smoke still curled up from within, slow and silent.
Torian paused at the threshold, staring into the skeleton of his childhood.
Then he stepped inside.
The air was thicker here—heavier, close, like grief soaked into stone. The hearth where his mother used to sing while baking was buried beneath soot and broken brick. The family table had vanished. The shelves were nothing but black smears on the wall. Splinters of chairs, a rusted hinge, a cracked plate half-buried in ash—these were the remnants of a life.
But near the hearth, something small caught his eye.
He knelt. Brushed the ash away with careful fingers.
A small wooden wolf.
Roughly carved. The nose chipped, the tail worn smooth by time and little hands.
He stared at it for a long while.
His father had carved it for him when he was six—seated beside the fire, hands steady, shaping life from a scrap of oak. Torian had carried it everywhere for a year until it was lost beneath the floorboards.
Now it had survived.
He pressed it to his forehead and closed his eyes.
For a moment, there was only breath. Only the weight of wood and memory.
But the past came anyway.
It had begun at dusk.
They came like a tide of iron. No horns. No shouts. Just the soft thunder of boots and the orange glow of torches cresting the hill.
Torian had seen them first—dark figures moving in lockstep, armor black, swords drawn. No hesitation. No question.
A voice cut through the air.
Cold. Commanding. "By order of Lord Malvorn, your debts are due."
Arel, his father, stepped forward.
He didn't cower. Didn't plead.
His voice was calm, steady. "We have nothing left. The last tax took it all."
The man in the blackened helm—the one who didn't speak—nodded once.
And that was all.
The soldiers moved like clockwork, seizing Arel and dragging him toward the square. Panic exploded. Shouts. Screams. Torian's body had refused to move. His legs had locked. His mind had gone silent.
He remembered his mother's scream.
The crack of wood on flesh.
The fire.
They burned the houses one by one. Not in rage. With purpose.
He had only moved when someone grabbed him—strong hands yanking him into the trees. He had kicked. Fought. Screamed. But the light vanished behind the branches, and the forest swallowed the last of his world.
Now, back in the ruins, the cold reached through his bones.
He slipped the wooden wolf into his belt pouch and stood.
There was one place left to check.
The workshop.
Tucked behind the house, half-buried beneath a collapsed beam, lay the door to Arel's workroom. It had always been kept locked—not out of secrecy, but reverence. It was where the family sword had been kept. Wrapped in cloth. Hidden beneath a false floor.
Not just any blade.
Forged in the time of the old kings. Passed down through generations—not for war, but for protection. It was simple steel. Purposeful. Unyielding.
To anyone else, it would be worth a fortune.
To them, it was sacred.
Torian crouched low, pushed the charred beam aside, and reached for the blackened door. It groaned but held. Using the hinge as leverage, he pried it open.
The workshop was a cave of ruin. Shelves splintered. Windows gone. But in the far corner, under a heap of scorched cloth and ruined tools, he found the trapdoor.
He crawled to it, cleared the wreckage, and pulled it open.
The scent hit him—leather oil, cold steel.
He reached in and lifted out the bundle.
Wrapped in smoke-darkened canvas, it was heavier than he remembered. He peeled it open slowly.
The sword was still whole.
Dark steel. Simple. The edge caught the light like water. The leather grip, worn smooth by time and toil. Near the base, an old crest was etched into the blade—subtle, elegant, like smoke caught in metal.
Torian knelt, cradling the weapon.
"This survived," he whispered.
He could see Arel now—sharpening it, whispering to it like it was alive. This sword doesn't conquer, he'd said once. It protects.
Torian fastened the scabbard across his back.
Not for vengeance. Not for pride.
For memory.
He gathered what little else remained: a tin of dried meat, a half-empty waterskin, a length of cloth for wounds. Not much. But enough.
As the sun dipped behind the mountains, Torian stepped through the broken frame of the door one last time. He paused at the edge of the ruins, taking in the hushed bones of the village—his village.
The wind shifted. Smoke curled low across the hillside.
He turned back.
"I will not forget," he said.
His fingers brushed the wooden wolf at his belt. The sword rested against his spine—his father's blade, his father's legacy.
And then he walked.
Into the forest.
Into the silence.
He didn't know where the path led.
But he would survive.
And one day, he would return.
When he did, Malvorn would burn.