The rain fell like needles, cold and relentless, soaking through Aeron's cloak as he trudged along the ruined trade road. Once, caravans bustled here—merchants shouting, horses snorting, wagons rumbling. Now only broken wheels and skeletal remains marked the path, swallowed by creeping ash.
War always left the same taste in the air.
Smoke. Blood. Regret.
Aeron had walked through a thousand battlefields. He never needed to hurry; time bent for him like a patient servant. But mortals—mortals always rushed toward death, eager to earn a place in songs they would never live to hear.
He stepped over a half-buried helmet, dented and split clean down the center. A sword-master's strike. Only their blades left cuts so sharp they seemed almost merciful.
A distant rumble rolled across the hills. Thunder—or siege engines. In Aevarrin, it was hard to tell the difference anymore.
Aeron continued forward.
His boots splashed into a puddle, and for a moment he saw his reflection staring back: a scarred face, worn by centuries, eyes dark as stormstone. He still looked young—no more than thirty—but there was a heaviness in him that no age could match.
He hated that face.
He hated that it never changed.
A scream cut through the storm.
Aeron's hand moved instantly to the sword on his back. Not drawn—just touched. Old habits clung tighter than his curse.
He followed the sound down a slope, into a half-collapsed village swallowed by mud. Fires smoldered in broken homes, casting sickly orange light on walls gouged by blade marks.
And in the center of it all, three armored men surrounded a kneeling woman and her child. Their cloaks bore the crimson fang of the Dominion, the war faction sweeping across the western frontier like wildfire.
"Please," the woman begged. "We've paid our taxes. We've given everything—"
"Everything but your silence," the leader hissed. "You shelter spies. Rebels. Sword-mages. Someone has been helping them pass through these lands, and we intend to find—"
His words died the moment Aeron stepped into view.
All three soldiers turned.
Aeron said nothing.
Words were wasted on men with blood still steaming on their gauntlets.
"Another villager?" one scoffed. "Good. We'll question you next."
The leader raised his blade. "Seize him."
They rushed him.
Aeron didn't move.
Not when the first soldier drove a spear into his chest—wood splintering as the point punched straight through flesh and out his back.
Not when the second swung his axe into Aeron's shoulder, bone cracking under the blow.
Not even when the third slashed his throat, carving a red smile from one side to the other.
The woman gasped. The child screamed.
But Aeron simply sighed.
He wrapped his fingers around the spear, snapped the shaft, and stepped forward. His wounds closed before the broken weapon hit the mud. Skin stitching. Bone knitting. Blood retreating like obedient servants returning to their master.
The soldiers froze.
"What—what are you?" one whispered, dropping his weapon.
Aeron didn't answer.
He grabbed the man by the collar and slammed him into the ground so hard the nearby huts rattled. The second swung in panic; Aeron wrenched the axe away and sent him sprawling with a backhand that shattered his jaw.
The leader tried to flee.
Aeron appeared beside him in two strides and tore the sword from his hand.
"Please—" the man stammered.
Aeron's voice was quiet, cold as winter steel.
"You spilled innocent blood."
"No—no, I—"
Aeron drove the man's own blade into the mud beside his head, stopping a hair from his throat.
"I don't kill unless I must," Aeron said. "Tell your commander the Dominion has crossed into lands they should not."
The soldier scrambled away, slipping in the mud as he fled for his life.
Aeron stood still, letting the last traces of his wounds fade. The woman stared at him, trembling, clutching her son.
"You… you're one of them," she whispered. "One of the sword-masters?"
Aeron shook his head.
"No."
"Then what are you?"
The question gnawed at him, as it always did.
He looked toward the storm-dark horizon, where war drums beat beneath rolling clouds.
"I'm someone who's lived too long," he finally said.
But as the woman carried her child back into the ruins, Aeron felt the old pull again—a faint tug in his bones, deep and ancient, like the echo of forgotten gods.
Something was stirring in Aevarrin.
And it was calling to him.