Chapter One – The Circle
I woke to the sound of silence.
When my eyes fluttered open, the first thing I saw was not the sky, nor trees, nor stone walls, but faces. Dozens of them. Pale, dirt-smeared, blank yet fixed on me with a reverence I did not understand. They stood in a perfect circle around me, not speaking, not moving, as though they had been waiting for this very moment.
I sat up, breath caught in my chest. My skin prickled. Something clung to me, heavy and alien — a twisting mark etched across my chest and shoulder like a brand that pulsed faintly beneath my skin. I clawed at it with my nails, but it did not break.
"Get it off," I whispered to myself. The circle only tightened.
I stumbled to my feet, dizzy, my throat dry. The nearest villager held a bucket of water, and without hesitation, I seized it and poured it over myself, scrubbing at the mark, desperate to wash it away. The water ran dark across the dirt, but the twisting pattern remained, burning brighter the more I fought.
The villagers didn't stop me with words. They didn't speak at all. Hands reached out from the circle, firm but unhurried, gripping my wrists, steadying my frantic motions. Their touch was not violent, but absolute. As though they were saying: No. You cannot.
Panic rose. My hand shot to my hair. If I could not scrub it away, I would cut it off, rip myself free of whatever bound me here. A knife glimmered on a villager's belt, and I snatched it. But the circle moved as one, dozens of hands restraining me, prying the blade from my fingers.
"Let me go!" I screamed. My voice cracked, raw, tearing through the still air. "I don't belong here!"
Still, no reply. Only their unblinking stares, their trembling devotion. One knelt at my feet as though in worship, pressing his forehead into the dirt before me. Another held the knife I had dropped and kissed its blade, offering it back like an offering.
I turned and ran, bursting through a gap in the circle, sprinting across uneven ground. My legs carried me fast, my heart faster, toward the trees beyond the fields. Freedom was there — it had to be.
But when I reached the edge of the village, they were already there. Waiting. The same villagers, impossibly, surrounding me once more in another perfect circle. Their faces glowed faintly in the dim light, and though their chests heaved with breath, none of them looked tired. None of them spoke.
My body trembled. My throat burned with the taste of iron. I wanted to fight, to scream, to tear myself apart if it meant leaving this place. Yet the weight of their silence pressed down harder than any chain.
Finally, the old one stepped forward — hunched, staff in hand, eyes full of fevered light. He sank to his knees before me.
"Queen," he rasped, bowing his head until it touched the ground. "You have returned."
And at once, the entire circle fell to their knees as one, a wave of flesh and dust bowing before me.
The mark across my body pulsed, answering their devotion like a heartbeat.
I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. But their silence held me, and their worship smothered me, until all I could do was stand there in the center of their circle — the prisoner they called their queen.
The circle dispersed, but only just enough to herd me, like livestock, back toward the heart of the village. I staggered as they guided me, dozens of eyes watching, dozens of hands reaching whenever I strayed too far.
The houses were strange things — huts of stone and wood lashed together, smoke trailing from chimneys, as though these people had lived here for centuries, waiting for me to arrive. Everywhere I turned, heads bowed, voices whispered a single word that churned my stomach:
"Queen."
The mark across my skin pulsed again. Every time they spoke it, I felt it tighten, as if the title itself were binding me.
At the center of the village stood a wide square of packed dirt. There, they formed a half-circle, leaving an opening — a space for someone else. From the shadows of a hut, he emerged.
He was taller than the rest, broad-shouldered, with hair black as night and eyes the color of steel. A long blade hung at his side, its hilt worn smooth by use. Unlike the villagers, he did not bow. He did not speak. He simply walked to me, stopped an arm's length away, and knelt on one knee.
The old man with the staff raised his hands. "Your protector, my Queen. Kael, the first of your guard."
Kael lifted his head, and our eyes locked. His gaze was sharp enough to cut, but there was no malice in it. Only… emptiness. Not the emptiness of ignorance, but of devotion. He would move only when I did. He would breathe only when I allowed it.
I stepped back, but the circle tightened again. The villagers' eyes burned with the same feverish light, waiting, expectant.
Kael rose slowly, hand on the hilt of his blade, though not in threat. He stood behind me, silent as a shadow, like he had always belonged there.
And in that moment, I understood: I was not only their queen. I was their anchor, their reason, their god. They would not simply worship me.
They would never let me go.