The forest at night was no friend to the unprepared, but Jamie moved through it like he belonged there. Every step was deliberate, every breath measured. He knew which branches would betray a careless footstep, which roots could twist an ankle in the dark, and which patches of moss could hide a hollow that would swallow a foot. The canopy devoured moonlight, leaving the world fractured in shadow. For most, silence here was unbearable. For Jamie, silence was survival.
And yet tonight, it gnawed at him. Once, these woods had sung with birdsong, with laughter drifting from distant farms, with bells ringing over village fairs. Now the land breathed in whispers only, as though even the earth feared the regime's ears.
He had been born to brightness. Stone halls warmed by firelight, tapestries stitched with the proud history of his bloodline. His mother's voice reading him stories, his father's steady hand guiding his first lessons in honor and duty. His earliest memories were soaked in light, music, and certainty—of family, of legacy, of a world that had its own rhythm and rules.
All of it gone.
The banners of the regime had risen over the capital like stormclouds. His father silenced without trial. His mother's spirit broken, her eyes drained to ash-gray despair. Their estate burned, their name erased from every ledger. What remained of Jamie's legacy lay only inside him—weightless to the world, heavy enough to crush his chest each time he remembered.
He pressed on, leaning heavily on a bent branch for support as he navigated a narrow ridge. Survival had become his kingdom. A rusted knife. A crossbow patched together a dozen times. The hard skill of stretching one meal into three. That was his crown and scepter. Nobility was memory; the wilderness, his fortress.
Tonight, crouched by a stream, he filled his flask with trembling hands. The icy water numbed his fingers but kept him grounded. He listened. Always listened.
Then, engines.
A low growl vibrated through the forest. Headlights flared through the trees, slicing the night into shards of silver and black. Two armored transports crawled up the dirt road, earth trembling beneath their weight.
Jamie pressed flat to the soil, heartbeat rattling against the ground. He should move—slip deeper into the undergrowth, vanish like smoke.
But he didn't.
Boots struck dirt in rhythm. Faces glinted behind helmets. Not men, but shadows wearing skin. And yet, Jamie's gaze lingered. For an instant, he saw what the regime had stolen: farmers, merchants, sons who had once laughed beneath banners of freedom. They were broken, reshaped into instruments of oppression. His instincts screamed hatred. His conscience whispered otherwise.
That was his curse.
The nobleman within urged honor, compassion, and justice. The survivor warned that such ideals would get him killed.
He had learned that lesson before. Too many times.
A memory pressed against his mind: a starving deserter, grateful for bread, crying with relief. Later, betrayal in the dark—the man stealing Jamie's bow, pressing a knife to his throat as he slept. Survival had demanded he endure, but trust had died that night. Since then, even mercy carried edges sharper than steel.
The convoy groaned past, the road quaking beneath their passage. Jamie let out a slow breath and retreated into the shadowed trees, moving silently, limbs taut with tension. Every step was deliberate, every breath shallow, but he could not stop thinking about the lives those men had lost, the futures they had been denied.
He pressed on, deeper into the woods, his mind weighing risk and reward. His short-term goal was simple: survive long enough to reach Eastbridge. Rumors whispered of a resistance cell hidden among ruins, a spark smoldering in the ashes where the regime's first conquest had scorched the earth. If allies lived, he would find them.
Trust, however, was a razor's edge. The underground was riddled with informants—traitors who sold secrets for coins or the promise of safety. One careless word, and he would meet the blade or the bullet. Jamie had survived enough close calls to understand this intimately.
Night deepened. The forest seemed to shift around him, the shadows thickening like a living thing. His crossbow was slung across his back, flask swinging at his belt, knife at the ready. He checked his traps, adjusted his footing on slippery moss, and moved with precision. Hunger gnawed at him, but he rationed thought and energy alike. Every act, no matter how small, was calculated defiance.
He paused near a hollowed tree, listening to distant rustling. Could it be patrols? Or only the wind playing tricks? Either way, he crouched low, noting every sound, every movement, memorizing the terrain for escape. Years of survival had taught him the forest's language: the snap of a twig meant caution; the shift of earth beneath a hoof indicated prey. Tonight, it meant danger.
A flashback struck him unbidden: his mother, her hands trembling over a book of family history, eyes glimmering with hope even as the regime rose. His father, voice firm, teaching him that legacy was not a title or estate, but the courage to act rightly even when the world opposed you. He swallowed hard. Courage now meant enduring, hiding, surviving—waiting for the right moment to strike back.
Ahead, the convoy's engines faded into echoes, but Jamie did not move immediately. He allowed himself one last glance at the world he had lost—the fields, the ruins of towns he had once known, the faces of people whose lives had been erased by banners and boots. It was enough to remind him why he walked this knife's edge between survival and justice.
He rose from the undergrowth, limping slightly from fatigue and the lingering ache of his wound. The night held no illusions; danger lurked in every shadow. Yet beneath the scars, beneath the cynicism, smoldered a flame the regime had failed to kill—the will to rebuild.
They had thought to end his bloodline. To erase his name. But legacies do not die so easily.
Jamie would reclaim his.
Even if he had to become the very thing the world whispered he already was: an anti-hero, born of ashes, forged in exile, walking the knife's edge between survival and justice.
And so he walked on, into the darkness, into the uncertainty, every step a testament to endurance, every breath a refusal to surrender. The forest may have been treacherous, the night unforgiving, and the regime relentless—but he had survived worse. And survival, Jamie knew, was only the first act of reclamation.