Part I: Ingrid's Promise
The Great Magellan Plains were a sea of grass under a star-dusted sky. For seven days, the Halfling caravan had traced a path south towards Oakhaven, a small, cheerful island of painted wagons in a vast, empty ocean of grass. Their journey was marked by the quiet rituals of survival: shared meals, nightly watches, and the small kindnesses of strangers.
For Faelan and Ingrid, however, the journey was a moving wake. Grief was a silent, shared language between them.
Faelan's attempts to drown his sorrow in tavern ale had proven futile; the nightmares always found him.
Ingrid, too young for drink, simply endured. She had no tears left to cry, only a hollow ache where her home used to be.
The melancholy songs the Halflings played on their ukuleles at night were a strangely fitting soundtrack to their pain—a cheerful melody played for a sad, silent audience of two.
On their last night before reaching Oakhaven, they sat on a log by the crackling campfire, a little ways from the main circle. The silence between them had stretched for days, a chasm of unspoken grief neither knew how to cross.
Faelan's sobriety was a brittle thing, his hands restless now that they had no cup to hold. He stared into the fire, its flames dancing in his haunted eyes, before he finally spoke.
"She loved fire," he said, his voice a low, rough murmur. Ingrid didn't move, her gaze fixed on the same hypnotic flames.
"She said it was the only element honest enough to show you its true nature. It gives warmth, but it never lets you forget that it can also consume everything." He paused, a sad smile touching his lips.
"My mother was a legend, you know. A survivor of the Battle of Veridian Fields. In her day, there wasn't a fire mage in the northern territories who could hold a candle to her."
He leaned back, resting his weight on his arms and turning his face to the cosmos. "You're… what? Fifteen? I imagine you've wondered why you never saw me in all those years."
Ingrid's gaze finally shifted from the fire to his silhouetted form.
A heavy sigh escaped him. "We had a… falling apart. A long time ago. She was a legacy of fire, Ingrid. And I… I was a son of stone." He stared at his own hands, calloused from a sword, not a spellbook. "She tried to pour an ocean of magic into a thimble. I could barely awaken my first Mandala. The harder she pushed, the more I failed. The pride of a great mage cannot easily abide a talentless son."
His voice cracked, thick with a shame that was decades old. "So I ran. Out of anger, out of pride. I told myself I would forge my own legend with steel. I knew she looked for me. I saw the notices. But I was a coward. I swore I wouldn't return until I was a hero she could finally be proud of."
A sound caught in his throat—a bitter, tear-soaked laugh that was more pain than humor. He turned, and for the first time, looked directly at Ingrid, his eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "I was going to return a hero. Parade my medals, my rank. I returned just in time to find her head on a pike."
The word hung in the air, a small, terrible epitaph. Pike.
A bitter, tear-soaked laugh escaped his lips. "The universe," he choked out, "has a cruel sense of humor, doesn't it?"
He finally broke. The soldier, the stoic savior, crumpled in on himself, his shoulders shaking with silent, wracking sobs. Ingrid's own face swelled with a familiar grief. She knelt in the grass before him, her hand hovering, wanting to offer comfort but possessing none herself. How do you give water from a dry well?
After a long moment, he quieted, wiping his face with the back of his hand. He looked at her, his gaze clear and intense, as if seeing her for the first time.
"Ingrid," he whispered, his voice raw. "She may have given me her blood, but the gods gave you her fire. I saw it that night. That untamed, brilliant spark she spent a lifetime trying to find in me." He reached out, his hand gently taking her wrist. "Don't let her name turn to ash. Please. I am a monument to her failure as a mother. You… you must be the testament to her greatness as a teacher."
His grip tightened, his voice a desperate plea. "Promise me you will become her legacy. That you will take her fire and grow it into an inferno. Let the world remember Sybill not for her lonely death, but for the legend she created in you."
Ingrid looked at their clasped hands. It was another weight, heavy as a tombstone, but it was a weight she knew she must carry. It was the price of her own survival, the debt she owed to the woman who had bought her this future with her life. Her quest for vengeance now had a twin, a quest for greatness.
She met his gaze, her own eyes clear and hard as diamonds. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet, but it was the most unbreakable thing in that vast, dark plain.
"I promise."
They rejoined the Halflings a short while later, sharing a simple meal of bread and salted meat. The music played on, and for the first time in many nights, they both dared to hope for a sleep empty of nightmares.
Part II : The Bruised City
By the next afternoon, the endless sea of grass had given way to the grimy, sprawling outskirts of Oakhaven. The cheerful bells of the Halfling caravan faded behind Ingrid and Faelan, leaving them alone once more in the shadow of the great city. Their first task was a practical one: shelter.
They found a grudging sort of welcome on Bergsby Street, in an inn that smelled of stale ale and damp wool. An ancient, sour-faced man peered at them from behind the counter, his voice a dry rasp. "Ten coppers a night. Each."
Faelan's eyebrow shot up. "Ten? Last time I passed through, it was five."
The old man sneered, a practiced, contemptuous expression. "The Solstice Tournament is in three months, friend. Every room from here to the River-Way is full of hopefuls and hangers-on. These two are my last. If twenty coppers is too steep, the refugee camp outside the North Gate is free. Plenty of your countrymen there, by the looks of you." He spat the word "countrymen" as if it were a curse.
"We'll take the rooms," Faelan said, his voice flat and hard. He tossed the coins onto the counter, the clatter a sharp, final sound.
Their rooms were small, clean, and blessedly quiet, a world away from the road. Faelan, knowing his way around the city's complex geography—from the seedy Half-Wit's District to the west, where the Adventurer's Guild sat like a patient predator, to the grand estates of the nobles in the far northwest—already had a plan.
"I have business to attend to," he told Ingrid, his gaze distant. "You should rest. You earned it last night. We'll visit the Guild at dusk; I need to register, and you can learn about the Tournament."
Ingrid simply nodded. But when she entered her room, the quiet was not a comfort; it was an echo chamber for her thoughts. Sleep would not come. The old innkeeper's words slithered back into her mind: the refugee camp.
Why did the thought pull at her? Was it a morbid curiosity? A desire to see faces that mirrored her own suffering, to find a sense of community in shared pain? Or was it to pour more fuel on the fire of her resolve? She didn't know.
She left a message with the innkeeper's much younger, more pleasant assistant—"Tell Faelan to meet me at the Guild at dusk"—and stepped out into the city's roar.
Part III: The Ocean of Misery
The walk to the North Gate was a journey through a living, breathing world she had only ever dreamed of. But the wonders of the Glimmerdew Market and the imposing Stonemason's Quarter were just a prelude.
Outside the city walls, an ocean of misery lapped at Oakhaven's foundations.
Two, maybe three thousand souls, all refugees from the Magellan borders, were crammed into a squalid city of tents and makeshift lean-tos. The air was thick with the stench of sickness and despair. The Beastfolk raids had been more widespread than she had known. These were her people, and they were broken.
A small, grimy hand tugged at her trousers. "Elder sister," a little girl whispered, her eyes far too old for her face. "My brother is hungry. Please?"
The girl was a perfect, terrible reflection of her own loss. Ingrid's heart clenched. She reached into her purse for a few coppers, but before her fingers could close around a coin, there was a sharp crackle of magical energy. A gust of wind—a sloppy but effective Gale Palm—slammed into the little girl, sending her flying into the side of a rickety vending cart.
Ingrid stood frozen for a single, disbelieving second. Then, a cold, familiar rage washed over her. She turned.
A tall, bull-necked man with a long red beard was grinning, his hand still outstretched.
"There you are, you little rat," he boomed, his voice full of triumphant cheer. "Finally caught you!"
The words, the casual cruelty, shattered Ingrid's control.
Her father's last gift, a small, sharp knife, was in her hand before she knew it. Her fury gave her focus. "Quicksand!" she hissed, and the ground beneath the man's feet turned to a soupy, grasping mire. He grunted in surprise, not expecting a pale-looking waif to be a mage.
She didn't give him time to recover.
Chanting a quick Zephyr Step, she launched herself forward, using a second burst of air to add vicious momentum to her knife-thrust, aimed directly at his eye.
The man was fast. He brought up his wrist, and the knife sank into his thick leather bracer with a dull thud. "Get lost, girl!" he roared, swatting her away like a fly. He wrenched his boots from the mire with a grunt of effort and started towards the cart where the little girl had fallen.
Blinded by rage, Ingrid attacked again. This time, he didn't bother with magic. A single, backhanded strike caught her on the side of the head.
The world exploded in a flash of white, then swam into a blurry, tilting mess.
As her consciousness frayed, she saw the man reach the cart, only to find it empty.
He roared in frustration, kicking the cart to splinters. Through a darkening haze, she saw him press a handful of coins into the terrified vendor's hands.
The man reached down, lifted her as easily as a sack of grain, and began to walk. The world became a nauseating rhythm of fading to black, waking for a moment, then succumbing to the darkness again.
Part IV: A Rude Awakening
Ingrid awoke to a throbbing headache and the soft light of a single candle. She was on a bed, in a simple but clean room. Her hands were bound.
The red-bearded man from the camp approached, a bowl of soup in one hand. "Awake, are we? Good."
Instinct took over. Ingrid tried to gather her will, to pull on the threads of Mana, but found nothing.
The man chuckled, setting the soup down. He bit into an apple with a loud crunch. "Neat little things, these," he said, gesturing to her wrists with his half-eaten fruit. "Dwarven Mana-Binding Cuffs. Only work on Initiates, but after that little display of yours, I wasn't taking any chances. Casting spells like that, one after the other? You've got potential, girl." He took another bite.
"What's your name?"
Ingrid stared at him, her silence a wall of pure hatred.
He sighed, catching his own thoughtlessness. "Ah, right. The girl. And the head-bashing. My apologies."
He leaned against the wall, his tone becoming more serious.
"First things first. The name's Thorgar. I'm with the Dawnbreakers." He puffed out his chest with pride. "You're in a private room at the Adventurer's Guild. And that 'girl' you so valiantly defended? She was a shapeshifter I've been tracking for three days. A nasty piece of work. Your compassion is admirable, girl, but your timing is dreadful."
He looked at her expectantly. "Now then. Your name?"
Her glare could have bored a hole through steel.
Thorgar sighed again. "Right. The cuffs. A matter of trust." He moved forward. "No funny business, eh? I'd rather not get a face full of ice." He undid the clasps.
The moment the magical pressure vanished, Ingrid's rage erupted. "Gale Palm!"
A focused blast of wind hit Thorgar square in the chest, launching him out the open door and into the hallway wall with a resounding crash. "Why," he groaned from the floor, his voice a miserable whine, "do they all hate me?"
Ingrid didn't wait. She scrambled out of the room, down two flights of stairs, and burst into the Guild's main taproom—a huge, well-lit hall filled with adventurers. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for an exit, but then they froze.
At a table in the center, laughing over a massive stein of ale, was Faelan. Across from him, a woman with crimson-red hair and a warrior's build—scars on her arms only adding to her formidable beauty—was listening with an amused smile.
"Ingrid!" Faelan called out, his face beaming with genuine relief and a little too much ale. He raised his stein. "There you are! I was beginning to think you were late!"
Ingrid stood there, out of breath, out of her wits, staring at her grim-faced, vengeful companion, who was now smiling, drunk, and sitting across from the most famous adventurer in Oakhaven.