In Eshka, the sun was not merely a celestial body; it was the rhythmic heartbeat of the world. It governed the very pulse of existence, moving from the soft, honeyed amber of dawn to the heavy, searing white of noon that forced the entire village into the sanctuary of the shadows. It baked the earth into a vast mosaic of cracked, iron-red clay that clung to the soles of Lysara's feet like a gritty, persistent memory. To an outsider, it was a harsh and punishing land, but to Lysara, it was a home where she knew the secret curve of every footpath and the silent placement of every ancient stone.
Her life had been a long, slow sequence of labors that rewarded the soul rather than the pocket. She remembered the vast wheat fields that stretched toward the horizon like a golden, undulating ocean under the desert wind. The grain was coarse and unforgiving; it pricked and scratched at her sun-darkened skin during the heat of the harvest, but it was a welcome sensation—a tactile promise that when the winter winds eventually howled, no one in her house would go hungry. The work was never rushed by the frantic pace of the city; it was methodical and thorough, a labor of love where hands knew their place and their duty without the need for a single spoken word.
At the close of each day, when the sun dipped low and stained the vast sky in bruised purples and burnt oranges, the air would fill with the comforting scent of sun-dried grass and the smoky aroma of flatbread charring over open communal fires. Lysara often spent those twilight hours by the riverbank, where the water flowed silty and brown, yet felt like liquid silk against the parched heat of her skin. There, she shared laughter with her friends—the kind of deep, honest laughter that rose from the belly and felt as though it were worth its own echo. In those days, the future was not a frightening question mark; it was simply an endless series of promised sunrises, each one belonging to her by birthright.
Lysara had been a daughter of Eshka in every sense of the word. She had hauled heavy ceramic jars of water from the deep, cool wells until her shoulders were calloused, corded with muscle, and bronzed by the heat. She had danced with wild abandon under the rare, violent cloudbursts when the sky finally split open to drench the thirsty, gasping earth. In those fleeting moments, the world had felt infinite and kind, and life had been beautifully simple: a cycle of earth, water, and the quiet, unspoken love of a family that felt as permanent as the sun itself.
The ancient, steady slowness of Eshka was shattered first by a haze of dust, and then by the cold glint of steel. The shimmer of Kardeth's legions appeared on the horizon, a metallic mirage that bore no resemblance to the soft warmth of the sun. This light was cold, hard, and utterly inevitable. Massive clouds of dust kicked up by marching boots choked the sky, and suddenly, the air no longer carried the sweet scent of ripening grain, but the acrid, metallic tang of fear. The world that had felt infinite suddenly shrank to the size of a battlefield.
The village elders gathered in the long shadows of the council house to deliberate on the grim mathematics of survival. Eshka was rich in grain and heritage, but they possessed no walls to hide behind and no weapons to parry the fire of the legions. They needed a peace offering—something to buy their continued existence, something more precious than gold to ensure the fields were spared from the torch and the people from the weight of iron chains. They looked for a bridge between their peaceful soil and the Baron's insatiable hunger.
Lysara followed her father, the man whose calloused hands had taught her everything she knew about the dignity of the earth. He had always been her bedrock, a man as sturdy as the mountains, but now his shoulders were hunched and his spirit seemed broken under an invisible weight. When Baron Vaelin's emissaries arrived in the village to demand their tribute, the negotiations were not held in the light of the square, but behind heavy, closed doors. The air in the village grew stagnant, as if the wind itself was afraid to breathe.
Finally, the devastating truth dawned on Lysara in the dim, flickering shadows of their kitchen. This was no longer a matter of grain sacks, livestock, or coin. The Baron wanted something more permanent, something that would bind the rebellious heart of Eshka to his throne forever—a union of blood that would guarantee the village's absolute loyalty through his possession of their finest. It was a hostage-taking dressed in the fine silks of a marriage contract.
Her father could not bring himself to look her in the eye when the deal was finalized. The man who had shielded her from every summer storm now stared blankly at the cracked earth at his feet as the Baron's men led Lysara toward the waiting black carriages. Lysara looked back one last time at the wheat fields, which continued to sway in the wind exactly as they had for centuries, indifferent to her agony. She had been traded for a handful of hollow promises and the sight of unburnt fields. Innocence had proven to be Eshka's most valuable currency, and now, it had been spent to the very last drop