Fantasy Webnovel: Chapter 1 ("The Faded Sigil") — Approx. 1,000 WordsRain battered the stone walls of Greyvale, painting the night in streaks of silver and shadow. Elian pressed his hand against the cold window, tracing the lightning as it carved jagged scars across the sky. On his palm, a faded sigil—a birthmark he'd hidden for years—throbbed, burning with an unnatural heat. He winced, drawing the curtains, heart pounding in time with the storm.
Down the winding stair, the manor was hushed. His father had left for the lowlands; the servants quietly tended to their duties. Elian's world was small, carefully structured—the manor, the marsh, the old woods. Something about tonight blared a warning: all that would soon change.
A sharp knock rattled the door. Elian froze. Few visitors braved the roads after dark, fewer still arrived in a deluge. He hesitated, then moved to the entryway, cloak thrown hastily over his shoulders.
A woman stood at the threshold, water streaming from her crimson cloak. Her eyes—the color of heartwood and thunder—fixed on Elian with terrible certainty.
"Elian Sable?" Her voice was low, woven with an odd cadence. With each syllable, his birthmark flared, pain lancing through his palm.
"Yes," he managed, "but—who are you?"
She stepped inside unbidden, rain hissing as it struck the flagstones. "My name is Mira. I come on behalf of the Order. The king is dead, Elian. And the Sigil calls for its bearer."
The words crashed against him, absurd and impossible. The king dead? The Sigil spoken of in fireside tales? "My father—he would know what to do—"
Mira glided closer. "Your father was warned. Long ago. Tonight, the game changes. And you, child, are a player whether you wish it or not."
The birthmark on Elian's palm flared again. He remembered frightened whispers as a boy; a time when his father tried to scrub the mark with saltwater and prayers. The woodland healers failed. The priests refused.
Mira knelt, drawing a rune on the floor with droplets from her drawstring pouch. "The Sigil is old, older than kings. It chooses. It protects, yes—but it also hungers. Those marked must answer."
Elian watched in horror as the rune glowed, illuminating the narrow hall. He stepped back. "Is this magic?"
"Yes," said Mira, voice soft. "But not the kind you're used to. This is blood-magic. Ancient as the roots beneath Greyvale."
A scream echoed from the far end of the manor—and then the pounding of armored boots. Mira's face hardened.
"They've come. The king's secret guard. If they find you—your fate is sealed."
Elian felt every memory, every comfort of home shatter. "Why me? Why tonight?"
Mira grasped his hand, pressing her own rune-marked palm against the Sigil. "Because darkness finds its prey in storms." She drew a dagger, inscribed with the same mark. "Do you trust me?"
He looked at her—strange, soaked through, more myth than woman—and then toward the advancing footsteps. He nodded.
Mira whispered rapid syllables. The room wavered—shapes bending, colors shifting. Suddenly, Elian was pulled through tumbling mist and shadow, out the back entrance and into the wild.
The two ran, swift as desperate foxes, through slick cobblestones and tangled brambles. Behind them, torches bobbed in the darkness. Mira slashed a series of runes through the night air, conjuring thick fog that slowed their pursuers.
At the edge of the marsh, the world grew still. The manor was lost in shadow; the storm above churned in violent glory.
Elian collapsed, gasping. "What happens now?"
"We go to the shrine," Mira said. "There, you will learn what it means to bear the Sigil. There, you will decide who you truly are."
Lightning struck nearby, illuminating her face—full of sorrow and resolve.
Elian rose, feeling the weight of impossibility settle on his shoulders. The sigil burned, brighter than ever.
Tomorrow, he'd wake in a world remade.