An hour later—after the bickering, after the laughter had settled—the house was filled with the sweet smell of baking cake and the rhythmic chip-chip-chip of an axe carving wood.
Ezmelral sat at the central table, her small feet swinging, golden eyes glued to the kitchen doorway.
"I'm so hungry!" she hollered. "When's it gonna be ready?"
"Soon, little one!" Mary called back, voice warm and musical.
Ezmelral huffed dramatically and turned toward her father. John sat hunched over his workbench, his axe—meant for splitting timber—now delicately shaving curls from a tiny piece of wood.
"What are you making, Papa? You've been at it for months."
He paused, eyes twinkling.
"Ah. That's a secret, my sprout."
"Come on! Tell me!"
"Nope."
Chip-chip-chip.
Ezmelral narrowed her eyes.
"Is this your payback for earlier?"
His silence—and the faint smirk—was answer enough.
She puffed her cheeks, folding her arms. "Fine! Don't tell me then."
Mary emerged from the kitchen carrying a golden cake steaming on a worn platter.
"Don't tease her so, dear," she chided, setting the cake down. She poked Ezmelral's puffed cheeks, popping them with one playful tap. "Don't let your father get under your skin, petal."
Ezmelral instantly betrayed her own indignation.
"Who cares about him? Cake!"
She stuck her tongue out at John.
Mary returned to the kitchen. "Hurry up—dinner's almost ready!"
"Any moment," John replied, still working at the carving.
Then—
A thwack of the knife striking wood.
Then again.
Then again.
The rhythm changed—too sharp, too fast.
Not cooking.
Not human.
John froze.
"…Seems like I'm done." He tucked the carving away and rose, forcing a smile.
"You can stop now, Mary. I'm already moving."
But the chopping didn't stop.
It didn't even pause.
John's grin faded.
"…Mary?"
A prickle crawled up his spine.
Old instincts—the kind carved in battlefields—whispered danger.
"Honey? Still mad about the logs? I said I'd chop more in the morning."
No reply.
He stepped into the kitchen doorway.
Mary stood rigid, back turned.
Drip.
A crimson bead fell to the floor.
John's breath hitched.
She turned.
Ezmelral watched her father stumble back, boots scraping across the dirt.
Her mother's skin—once warm ivory—was now corpse-grey.
Her eyes were empty pits of feral hunger.
"Mother…?" Ezmelral whispered.
Mary screeched—raw, jagged, inhuman—and lunged.
John reacted instantly.
He seized the heavy table and hurled it toward the doorway.
In the same motion, he scooped Ezmelral up and bolted for the exit.
The table split in half mid-air—Mary's knife carving through it like wet parchment.
"Mother!" Ezmelral cried.
Mary vaulted over the splintered wood, landing at the front door in a blur.
The knife flashed downward.
John threw his body between the blade and the girl—Essence flaring.
His palms struck the ground.
The earth convulsed.
Mud surged upward, hardening into a dome around them—a cocoon of raw instinct and desperate protection.
For one breath—safety.
Then crunch.
Steel punched through the earth-wall.
Blood sprayed inside, warm droplets splattering Ezmelral's face.
"F-Father?" she whimpered.
"Get back!" he roared, voice thick with blood.
Cracks webbed through the dome.
It collapsed—raining down in chunks.
John staggered upright, chest heaving.
His eyes met Mary's.
"Why…?"
She answered with a savage slash.
The blade tore across his chest.
Blood blossomed through the air like red mist.
He stumbled, vision blurring, body collapsing under him.
Mary stepped forward.
Yet even then—John's hand shot out, clutching her ankle.
"Not… her…"
His grip weakened.
Mary kicked him aside.
He slid limply across the floor.
Ezmelral trembled, stepping back.
Just moments ago—cake, laughter, joy.
How?
Why?
Tears blurred her vision.
Please… someone—anyone—help me understand…
A crack split the air behind Mary.
The back wall exploded inward—wood, straw, and dirt erupting in a storm of splinters. A root lunged through the debris, thick and fast as a striking serpent.
Mary twisted, leaping aside. Her knife flashed once, cleaving the root in two. She landed at the ruined doorway, half-turned toward the breach.
Through it stepped a man—tall, cloaked, eyes burning the color of fresh-spilled blood.
In his left hand, an empty sheath gleamed.
He didn't draw steel. He drew intent.
A vertical slash through the air—swift as thought.
The earth answered.
A root erupted beneath Mary—thick, coiled, merciless—lancing up through her chin with a wet crunch, bursting from the top of her skull and smashing into the ceiling. Straw and splinters rained down.
Her knife fell first, clattering across the blood-slick floor.
Her body hung after, limp on the root like a broken puppet.
Ezmelral stared, frozen.
Her mother's grey, vacant face dangled above her, blood dripping in slow, steady taps.
"M… Mother…" Ezmelral whispered. The word cracked apart in her throat.
A faint rasp pulled her gaze down.
"Ezmelral…"
Her father.
She stumbled to him, knees splashing in the pooled crimson. Her small hands clutched his tunic, fingers slick with his blood.
"Father! Are you okay?" Her voice shook. "Please—say something."
John forced a smile, lines of pain carving deeper into his face.
"Don't… cry, sprout."
His hand lifted, heavy as stone, thumb brushing a tear from her cheek.
"You're stronger than this."
"How can I not?" she choked. "You… Mother… you're both—"
He cut her off with a shaky breath, fumbling inside his pocket. His fingers closed around something small.
"It's… a bird," he rasped.
He pressed the wooden carving into her palm—a tiny bird, wings half-unfurled, faint tool marks still visible along its body.
"Your birthday gift," he whispered. "My… finest craft… yet."
His hand slid from her cheek, grazing her fingers before dropping, lifeless, to the floor.
"Father!"
Ezmelral's scream tore out of her, raw and jagged, as she bent over him, clutching his tunic, willing warmth back into a body that was already letting go.
Heavy steps sounded behind her, heading for the shattered opening.
She jerked her head up.
"Wait!"
The cloaked man didn't respond. He walked toward the breach, cloak trailing through dust and blood.
The ground shook.
Ezmelral spun to the side just in time to see the root holding her mother begin to twitch. It retracted, dragging the corpse down with it. Mary's body slid from the ceiling toward the floor, then beneath it—pulled into the dirt.
"Mother!" Ezmelral lunged, clawing at the ground. The root vanished. The earth smoothed over as if it had never been disturbed.
She dug anyway, fingernails scraping dirt. Nothing.
"Mother…" she whispered, the word soaked in helpless fury. Tears fell, darkening the dust.
From outside, screams ripped through the night.
Not just one voice. Many. Dozens.
The village was screaming.
Ezmelral's gaze snapped back to the cloaked man. His silhouette framed in the ruined wall, already stepping into the chaos beyond.
Her fists clenched around the wooden bird.
"I'll be back," she whispered to her father's still form, voice trembling but resolute. "I swear it. But first… I need answers."
She looped the bird onto the cord around her neck, its weight hot against her skin.
Then she ran.
---
Outside, the world was gone.
Ezmelral stumbled into the street and stopped dead.
Flames licked at rooftops. Some houses had already collapsed into smoking skeletons. Bodies lay strewn across the dirt—neighbors, merchants, guards—skin drained to that same ashen grey, eyes glassy and empty.
The air reeked of smoke and iron.
No. Her mind rejected it. Mother wouldn't… she couldn't…
There has to be a reason.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed forward, following the direction the man had gone.
As she ran, the village's last moments played out around her in grotesque fragments.
A root bursting through the ground, skewering a man mid-sprint.
A woman she recognized—the baker who slipped her extra bread—dragged under, her grey face expressionless.
A child's toy, crushed in a footprint of mud and ash.
Everywhere, roots rose and fell—impaling, dragging, erasing.
She turned a corner and stopped before a familiar house.
Berfimikol's.
The front door hung from a single hinge, broken inward.
She hesitated. Raiking—whoever he was—was getting further away with every heartbeat.
But this was Berfimikol.
Just a quick look, she told herself. I have to know.
She slipped inside.
The warmth was gone. The house was cold. Wrong.
"Berfimikol?" she called.
Silence.
She moved down the hall. Berfimikol's father was pinned to the wall by a root through his chest, grey and still, head slumped forward.
Ezmelral forced herself past him, toward the bedroom door—splintered, barely hanging on.
She pushed it open.
The sight inside hit her like a hammer.
Her stomach clenched. A strangled sound clawed at her throat. She slapped a hand over her mouth to keep the scream down.
Memories flashed—Berfimikol's laughter, whispered plans under starlight.
We'll leave this village one day.
You'll be a healer. I'll be your guard.
We'll see the world together.
Now—
Gone.
Ezmelral staggered backward, then fled, bursting back into the street. Her heart felt like stone in her chest, but her legs kept moving.
She wasn't running from the horror anymore.
She was chasing the only person who seemed to understand it.
---
The further she ran, the worse it got.
Flames chewed through rooftops. Ash drifted like black snow. The smithy was a collapsed ruin. The market stalls were smashed and empty.
Then—another root erupted ahead, spearing a fleeing villager. The body jerked once, then went limp as the root dragged it below.
"He's… over there," she whispered, breath ragged.
At the village's edge, where farmland dissolved into wild scrub, she saw him.
The cloaked man—Raiking—moved like he'd been born in the chaos. A tide of Praexers swarmed him—crawling along walls like grotesque insects, bounding from roofs, charging across the ground, all grey skin and empty eyes.
One leaped from a wall, claws outstretched.
Raiking swung his sheath in a smooth arc. A root exploded from the ground, impaling the creature mid-air. It shrieked once before being pulled under.
Another surged from the ground, jaws gaping.
A sideways sweep of the sheath—another root slammed through its neck.
From above, a third dropped toward him, a falling shadow.
He thrust the sheath upward—roots speared the creature from below and dragged it screaming into the dirt.
They came in waves.
He moved through them like a man playing out a pattern he already knew the ending to—dodge, strike, step, roots piercing in perfect response.
Ezmelral could barely track it.
One Praexer broke from the pack, lunging out of the ruins toward her instead.
She stumbled, falling backward, palms scraping against stone.
The creature's claws reached for her face.
She threw up her arms, eyes squeezing shut.
No impact.
No pain.
She opened one eye.
The Praexer hung above her, impaled mid-leap by a root through its spine, dead eyes inches from hers.
Just like her mother's.
She scrambled back, heart pounding, breath tearing in and out of her lungs.
Raiking turned away from the last impaled Praexer and walked toward the western gate, boots crunching over debris. The roots sank back into the earth behind him, taking the bodies with them.
"Wait!" Ezmelral shouted.
He didn't slow.
She sprinted, dodging corpses and embers, until she cut in front of him, skidding to a stop. Arms flung wide. Feet planted.
A small, blood-smeared barrier in his path.
For the first time, she really saw him.
Eyes like molten rubies, calm where everything else burned. Raven hair, cloak falling in quiet folds. Clothes unlike anything woven in their village—too refined, too other.
"Who… who are you?" she demanded.
Her voice shook.
Her gaze didn't.
The question wasn't just about his name.
It was about everything—
What he had done.
What had happened to her parents.
What this nightmare was.
And why he'd chosen to step into it.