The stone hut of Lira, Fen, and young Nerissa sat modestly on the inner curve of the village's main ring, its walls crafted from stacked red valleystone, sealed with packed moss and clay. A curved thatch roof stretched overhead, arching into a gentle dome that let light filter softly during the day and kept in the warmth of a shared fire at night. Its entry was draped with woven vine curtains strung with beads that chimed in the wind—a comforting sound Nerissa had grown up falling asleep to.
Inside, it was humble but alive with warmth. Hanging bundles of dried herbs lined the low rafters, their scents mingling with the ever-present hint of lakewater and cooked root. The central hearth crackled gently, its stones blackened from countless meals.
Fen sat cross-legged near the back, his hands busy mending a long underwater trap. His fingers, rough and calloused, worked with care and precision, threading reed-fiber cord through hollow-bone frames. These traps, sunken deep below the surface of the lake, were shaped to mimic shadows and flickers that unsettled fish into fleeing—always toward the nets the villagers had carefully placed.
Hearing the beads of the doorway chime, he looked up and smiled. "Ah, the storm returns."
Belligarde grinned as she stepped in, dust from her journey still clinging to her boots. "You call me a storm, yet here you are patching fish traps for a storm of fish."
"You cause more splash than any catch I've brought in," Fen chuckled, setting his work down and embracing her in that quiet, shoulder-tapping way the men of Ryn had long practiced.
She took a moment to soak in the hearth's warmth, her fingers trailing across the family's woven wall cloth—a tapestry of simple imagery: lake, hut, dragon's wing, a small child between them. Her breath caught, and for a moment she was somewhere else—somewhen else.
The flash of memory was vivid.
Two girls, not yet grown, running barefoot through the tall reeds towards the lake's edge. Lira, older by three seasons, graceful and cautious even then, held a satchel of herbs, humming softly as she picked. Belligarde, a storm already brewing, darted between the rocks with sticks in hand, pretending to duel invisible beasts.
Their father, a tall, quiet man with eyes like the deep lake, with traps slung across his back like armor. Lira helped prepare the ropes. Belligarde pleaded to be taken along.
"Let her," Lira begged, grabbing his father's leg.
He'd laughed turning to Belligarde, shaking his head. "One day, my brave storm. When your lungs grow to match your fire."
But that day came sooner than anyone expected.
She remembered the panic. The day she followed him—not to the lake, but in the wrong direction entirely. Slipping unseen from home, thinking she was clever. She'd traced the shadows of cliffs and stalked the outer trees, unaware that her childish trail curved not toward her father, but outward. Beyond.
It was there, at the valley's edge, that she'd glimpsed it.
A world beyond Alfazar's reach.
The wind was different there. The soil, grayer. The flora had jagged leaves, and strange flying insects buzzed in haunting tones. She had returned, dirty and breathless, at dusk—dragged home by a search party who found her at the edge of the forest as she tries to make her way back. Scolded under firelight. Her ears still remembered the sting of her mother's fingers.
"If you misbehave again, girl," her mother warned, "the Chief will call the dragon, and you'll be a statue before the moon turns."
Unlike the weekly Offering, which is a gesture of reverence and mutual peace, there exists a tradition not spoken of lightly, but known to all—the Summon of Punishment. It is the village's gravest rite, enacted only when a crime has torn through the woven trust of their close-knit people. Thieves, deceivers, or those who endanger the fragile balance of life under Alfazar's protection are bound—not with ropes of vengeance, but ceremonial cord—tied upright to a carved totem post at the lake's edge.
There, the villagers gather in silence, heads bowed, as the great dragon is summoned once more, not with a gong of welcome but with the low hum of a horn carved from the spines of the massive fish they catch. Alfazar does not roar on these occasions. He only descends.
And his breath stills the calcification. Skin to stone. Slowly. The totem, now fused with a lifeless figure, is later moved to the eastern edge of the farming fields where the soil is richest. A grim irony. Dozens now stood there—figures locked forever in mid-motion, mouths agape or eyes wide in pleading silence. These stone watchers serve as eternal warnings, visible to every young villager.
They remind all that harmony in Ryn is not merely tradition—it is law. And Alfazar, while protector, is also the enforcer of that law. Cold. Unflinching. Final
But even as a child, Belligarde had stared back with defiance. Not because she wanted to disobey—but because something had stirred.
And that spark only grew.
As years passed, Belligarde's forbidden trips became routine. Smuggling flora back—strange fungi that warded lake-rot, insect shells that could be turned into durable stitching, and even an aromatic root that became beloved in village stews. At first, the elders fumed. But after several villagers went missing trying to imitate her paths—and were only rescued by Belligarde's sharp tracking—they relented.
By the time she reached her teens, the people of Ryn petitioned the elders with a simple solution:
Let the storm belong to them.
Thus, she became their scout and merchant—the only one allowed to cross Alfazar's border. Bound by strict agreement: she must return with goods, not questions, and must always speak of her findings to Chief Maelhan when something out of place was seen.
Night had fallen now.
Nerissa lay tucked beneath a woven blanket, her breath even and peaceful. Lira gave her a kiss on the forehead, then lit a small lantern near the hearth. Belligarde, brushing a lock of wind-tossed hair behind her ear, stood.
"I have to speak with the Chief."
Lira turned, her eyes curious. "So soon? You never go unless—"
"Exactly." Belligarde didn't smile this time.
Lira hesitated, then nodded. "Go."
The village chief's hut stood at the northern edge of the ring, closest to the lake, where the wind carried the scent of water and old stone. A flickering glow danced from within. When Belligarde entered, she found Maelhan seated cross-legged near a low campfire. A metal pot, dark with age, sat above the flames, filled with an herbal essence that scented the air like mint and spice. He sipped slowly from a small bowl, eyes lifting.
"Ah," he said with calm recognition. "The storm has news."
Belligarde didn't sit immediately. Instead, she unlatched the satchel at her side and knelt near the fire.
"I found something," she said.
She reached in and pulled out an object wrapped in leather. As she unwrapped it, the firelight glinted off something cold and unfamiliar.
Maelhan leaned closer, the breath stalling in his throat.
The thing was shaped like a weapon—sleek, metal, yet unlike any tool the people of Ryn had crafted. Set into its sides were small crystal shards—dim, yet still faintly glowing. They pulsed slowly, like a breath held in slumber.
"What is this?" he asked, his voice quiet now.
"I don't know," Belligarde replied, her brow furrowed. "But I found it beside the remains of a temporary camp. Several leagues beyond the outermost ridge. Tents made from cloth I've never seen. Herd marks in the soil. And this."
She held it with care, its weight awkward. "This doesn't belong to us, Maelhan."
The chief looked into the fire, his fingers tightening slightly around his bowl.
"For hundreds of generations, no others came," he murmured. "Not after Alfazar accepted our founders."
"Well," Belligarde said, leaning forward, "whatever it is they've started coming now."