The last of the sun bled through the trees as Kenji's axe bit into the final log. At thirteen, his shoulders were already knotting with the kind of muscle earned through daily labor and his usual sword training with his old man. Sweat painted his bare back, catching the orange light. He wore only torn, baggy pants and battered boots, his father's old clothes, cut down and worn through.
He'll be hungry, Kenji thought, stacking the wood. Father was always hungry after a day of silence and carving.
He bound the pile with rough rope, hefted it onto his shoulders, and started up the path to their cottage. The forest darkened around him, the chorus of evening insects rising in his wake. It was the kind of quiet he was used to, the comfortable silence between two people who didn't need words.
But as the cottage came into view, a different silence greeted him.
No candlelight flickered in the windows. No smell of stew or hearth-smoke hung in the air. The door was slightly ajar, though he'd latched it firmly that morning.
"Father?"
He dropped the wood with a clatter. The sound was too loud in the stillness.
Pushing the door open, the dim interior revealed itself slowly. The table, set for two. The cold hearth. The half-carved wolf on his father's bench, its wooden eyes catching the last grey light from the window.
Then he saw the foot on the floor, just visible beyond the table's edge.
"Father?"
Kenji moved slowly, as if wading through deep water. His father, Arran, lay on his back near the empty fireplace. One hand was outstretched, fingers curled as if reaching for something. The other rested on his stomach.
On the handle of the knife buried there.
Kenji's breath vanished. His mind scrabbled for sense, this was a mistake, a trick of the dark. His father couldn't be on the floor. His father moved like quiet itself. His father had once killed a timberwolf with his bare hands and carried its pelt home without a scratch.
But the knife was real. The dark stain spreading beneath him was real.
Kenji sank to his knees, the rough floorboards biting into his skin. He reached out, his fingers hovering over his father's wrist. Cold. So cold.
A rustle from the window.
Kenji's head snapped up. For a heartbeat, he saw it, a shape of pure shadow, clinging to the window frame like spilled ink given form. It had no features, only a deeper darkness where a face might be. Then it was gone, melting into the gathering night outside.
He was alone again. Alone with the body, the knife, and the silence.
His eyes fell back to the blade. It was simple, well-made, with a leather-wrapped hilt. But near the guard, a small symbol was etched into the metal, a circle with rays like a sun, but twisted, as if the rays were breaking apart.
He didn't realize he was gripping the handle until he felt the cold metal under his palm. He pulled. It came free with a soft, terrible sound.
Warm blood coated his hand. The knife felt heavy, alive with a wrongness that vibrated up his arm.
From outside, an owl cried. The wind picked up, whispering through the trees.
Kenji looked from the knife to his father's still face. The man who taught him to track, to carve, to listen to the forest. The man who never spoke of yesterday.
"Who did this?" His voice was a rasp, unfamiliar to his own ears.
He wiped the blade on his pant leg, leaving a dark streak. The symbol seemed to pulse faintly in the dying light.
Somewhere deep in his chest, a cold stone settled. This wasn't an accident. This wasn't an animal or a stray bandit. That shadow… that symbol… this was a message.
And he was the only one left to read it.
Kenji did not run for the village. He did not scream. He sat on the floor beside his father's body, his back against the leg of the heavy wooden table, and waited.
The moon rose, casting silver bars through the window. The shadow did not return. The only sounds were the settling of the old cottage and the ragged pull of his own breath.
Memories surfaced, unbidden. Not of grand lessons, but of small, quiet things. His father's hands, scarred and sure, guiding his own on a piece of pine. "The wood has a grain, Kenji. You don't fight it. You follow it."The deep, even sound of his breathing in the next cot at night. The way he could sit for hours by the river, watching the water, saying nothing at all.
A humble woodcarver. A man who wanted only peace.
But now, in the stark moonlight, Kenji studied the lines of his father's face, the sharp jaw, the thin scar that traced from temple to cheekbone, a detail he'd never questioned. A face that could be still as stone. A face that might have held secrets.
He looked at the knife in his hand. The strange symbol. In the full moonlight, he saw finer details: tiny cracks within the sun's rays, like fractures. He ran his thumb over it. A faint, unnatural warmth emanated from the mark, contrasting with the steel's chill.
The cold stone in his chest grew heavier. His father's words echoed differently now. "The world beyond our wood is not for us, Kenji. It is full of old debts and older blood."
Old blood. Like the blood drying on Kenji's hands.
He must have slept, because the next he knew, grey dawn light was seeping into the room. His body ached from the floor. His father's form was a dark silhouette against the growing light.
And there were voices outside.
Footsteps, cautious and multiple, approached the cottage. Kenji stood, his legs stiff and trembling. He didn't hide the knife.
The door pushed open slowly. Old Man Zaid, the village head, peered in, his weathered face pale. Behind him crowded several others, Bren the blacksmith, his wife Mara, a few more. Their eyes went wide. A woman gasped.
"By the Spirits," Zaid breathed, stepping fully inside. His eyes darted from Arran's body to Kenji's blood-stained hands and the knife. "Boy… what happened?"
"A shadow," Kenji said, his voice flat. "It killed him. Then it left."
The villagers exchanged glances thick with a fear that went beyond sorrow.
"A shadow?" Bren rumbled, his broad face uneasy. "What manner of shadow carries a knife?"
"It didn't. This was in him." Kenji held up the blade. The morning light caught the symbol.
A collective inhale. Mara made a warding sign with her fingers.
Zaid stepped closer, his old eyes narrowing at the etched sun. "Let me see that." Kenji handed it over, hilt-first. The old man's hands, knotted with age, shook slightly as he examined it. "I knew it," he muttered, almost to himself. "I knew he carried more than just wood shavings."
"What is it?" Kenji asked, the question sharp.
Zaid handed the knife back as if it burned. "Trouble. Old trouble. The kind that doesn't stay buried." He looked at Arran's body with a mix of pity and dread. "We must burn the cottage. With him in it. It's the only way to be sure."
"No." Kenji's voice cut through the murmurs. "I'll bury him. Under the oak where he liked to sit."
"Boy, you don't understand," Mara said, her voice strained. "That mark… it's a beacon. It speaks of tribes and wars that should have died out generations ago. If whatever did this comes back"
"Then let it come back!" Kenji's shout startled them into silence. The cold stone in his chest was now a fire. "He was my father. I will bury him. Then I will find the thing that did this."
The villagers looked at him, this shirtless, blood-smeared boy with a killer's knife in his hand, and they saw a ghost of the quiet man on the floor. They saw the same unyielding stillness.
Zaid sighed, defeat in his stooped shoulders. "So be it. We'll… we'll give you a shovel. But we cannot stay. We cannot help you dig." He turned to leave, the others already backing toward the door.
At the threshold, Zaid paused. He didn't look back, but his words were clear. "If you survive the burying, boy… if you're still set on this fool's path… go find the woman in the deep Mosswood. She knows the old signs. She might tell you what that symbol truly means, and who might bear it."
Then they were gone, leaving Kenji alone once more with the body and the knife.
He looked down at the twisted sun etched in steel. A beacon, they'd said.
Good,he thought, his fingers tightening around the hilt. Let it beacon me to them.
He turned to face the long day of digging.The first step of his bob had begun.