At the edge of Wyrnwood sat a forest. Where shadows lived as thick as night, even on the sunniest of days. It was rumoured that all kinds of nightmares made it their home, and all who wandered in became lost for good.
Though there was promise in the forsaken arms of branches and whisper of leaves on the wind. See. Temptation was always hosted in the very thing people could never obtain.
Conquering the accursed wood was one.
However, Maris didn't buckle at the warnings. If anything, she rose in spite of them. There was something alluring about the way the trees bowed and begged her to enter.
She didn't believe in ghosts—or witches, or demons. Thought people restricted themselves by bowing to superstition. She was clever and ever determined to show them there was nothing to fear.
Slipping into shrubs of shadow and trekking deeper into the forest's depths. Trees huddled thick and foliage twisted throughout. Though the path was clear. A narrow thing made of dirt and trodden leaves—yet not a soul was in sight.
Darkness had a feeling here, much like that of a childish freight of things moving in the night. But Maris cast her fears aside, finding herself foolish and shrugging it off as she pushed on.
Warmth didn't exist under the encasing canopy of trees. Cold moved like a living thing, creeping into Maris' summer dress and wrestling her heat. Like fingers through fabric. A listless lover and a teasing touch.
Whispers breathed in the silence and she turned in search for the source.
From the blackness, a shape appeared. Perched atop a nearby branch, slick glossy feathers glistening in silver in the ominous lightless space and beady eyes that watched her too closely.
Then its large, hooked beak split open and a voice spilled forth. "What do you carry that you cannot put down, little walker?" it asked, voice slick as oil and soft as a prayer.
Maris lifted her chin. "A shadow."
The raven clicked its beak—mocking, amused. "Everyone carries a shadow."
"Aye," she said, unbothered, "but not everyone can set it down. Not even at night."
A pause. A slow blink. The bird's dark gaze sharpened like a blade drawn from its sheath.
"Clever," it allowed. "And what else?"
Maris' smile thinned. "A name."
"Names can be changed."
"Not the one I mean—not your true name."
For a moment, the forest seemed to hold its breath with it—the leaves, the branches, the very dark between the trunks. The raven's head cocked to one side as if trying to remember something.
Then it laughed, a dry snapping sound, like a twig broken clean in two.
"You may pass," it said, as if granting mercy.
Maris stepped forward.
The path remained where it was. The trees remained trees. The canopy still swallowed the sky. Nothing shifted. Nothing moved.
And yet—
Something in her did.
It was small at first. A slip, like a foot finding wet stone where it expected solid earth. She glanced over her shoulder, intending to mark the way back—just to prove she could.
The trail behind her looked the same as it had when she came in.
And still it felt… wrong.
Not wrong in shape. Wrong in truth.
As if her eyes were giving her one thing, and her knowing another—two hands pulling at the same thread.
Maris frowned and forced herself to breathe. The air tasted of moss and old rain and that strange, metallic tang storms sometimes brought. She tried to summon the certainty she'd worn like armour her whole life, tried to lay her mind over the world the way she always had—measuring, naming, dismissing.
But the forest did not settle beneath her gaze.
It refused to be solved.
Her footsteps sounded too loud. Her pulse too near. And when she looked down at her own hands—pale knuckles, trembling faintly in the cold—she had the sudden, horrible thought that she was not afraid of the dark at all.
She was afraid of being wrong about it.
Behind her, the raven made a quiet, pleased sound.
Maris didn't turn. Wouldn't give it the satisfaction.
Yet she could not shake the sensation that something had been plucked from her as cleanly as a feather—something she hadn't known she was holding until it was gone.
She called it nerves and pushed onward. It was only a wood. A collection of trees and a darkness that was explainable...
Stepping out into a dead clearing, Maris glanced up to find the morning sun missing. In its place stretched pitch-black—not a star to be seen. Her stomach flipped and she wrestled her gaze from the sight lest she fall into it.
Trees shuddered and quaked with the low, purring breath from nearby. Maris searched the shadows for the living thing that slept. Her eyes straining to make out a shape or path, feeling with outstretched arms.
When her fingers curled around something smooth and cool beneath her palm.
A rumble shifted the air as it moved. Large glowing disks opened before her, slit eyes focusing on her. The breathing turned throaty and amused, and something wet and quick slithered around her—tasting—before slipping back behind sharp teeth.
Maris stood frozen, staring up at a creature too large to name.
Doubt crept into her mind, denying supernatural beasts. Yet she stood in the shadow of one now.
Its snout opened wide, hot breath on Maris' face and words deep and ancient.
"I have eaten knights in armour and saints in prayer. I have swallowed banners and burned crowns. None of it fills. None of it lasts."
A slow blink. Gold slit pupils narrowing.
"Give me what I cannot hunt."
Maris swallows. "Like what?"
The dragon's mouth tugs—almost a smile. "A promise."
Maris fumbled, fingers trembling and curling around her hand. Then the cold band on her mother's ring sang under her touch.
"W-what about this?" She offered the ring, winking up at the large beast.
The dragon doesn't even look.
"Metal is everywhere. Fear is everywhere. Flesh is easy." Its breath warms her skin like a kiln. "A promise is the only thing a creature cannot take by force."
Maris shifted tactics. "Then I'll promise you something worth hunting."
"Speak it."
She hesitated—then reached for the safest trick in the world.
"My future."
The dragon's eyes brighten, delighted in a way that makes her stomach drop.
"Define it."
She swallowed down her trepidation. There was no room for uncertainty here.
"Not today. Not while I am young. When my life is lived—when my bones are tired and I am ready to be done—you may have what comes after."
The impossible creature hummed, a low rumbling sound. "And how shall I find what is promised?"
Maris' pulse stuttered.
"Promises without names are smoke."
"I will come back to you—h-here, in the forest." Maris linked her fingers behind her back, fingers curled around each other as she prayed he'd believe her lie.
Slit eyes narrowed as he leant closer.
"Give me the sound the world uses to pull you back. Give me the word your blood answers to."
It was just a name, Maris told herself. A way to identify her. But names can change—like the Raven said.
"Maris Briarwood," she proclaimed.
It left her mouth like a pale thread of light, drawn out too long, and coiled as it slipped down the dragon's throat as if tasting her. It didn't feel her own anymore. As if her heart longed for it back, yet there was no way she'd crawl into the beasts belly to retrieve it. It was lost to her now.
"Done." It settled again, massive and satisfied. "Go, then. And grow."
Her legs couldn't take her away fast enough as she fled. She didn't know where she was going, but the woods opened up for her. Tunnelled and directed her to a light in the distance.
Branches pawed at her to stay. Ripping fragments of her bright summer dress. Every time she fell to the ground, mud spluttering her and discolouring the pretty flowers dotting her skirt, she pulled herself up again.
With each step, she became someone new. She'd bested the Raven and tricked the Dragon. She was a fox slipping out of reach and like a shadow, she'd planned to disappear.
Pushing through the last few brambles, she finally tasted fresh air and felt the sun warm her face. The world opened up before her and she fell to her knees.
"My Lady," a voice called and she flinched.
The man before her didn't look like a monster.
"Are you alright?" He slipped off his horse and crouched before her. "What's your name?"
She paused.
Names cost her dearly.
Glancing at the woods behind her and feeling it stare back, she turned to the handsome stranger.
"Rhos," she decided. "Rhos Vale."
His smile was sweet, and hands were gentle and warm.
"I'm Rav Warden," he introduced himself, an accented tone of a world far from her own.
Rav offered his cloak without asking permission, draping it over her shoulders as if it were the most natural thing in the world to find a girl half-mad on her knees at the edge of a cursed wood.
The fabric smelled of horse and smoke and the clean bite of cold air. It was heavy enough to make her feel real again.
"Rhos Vale," he repeated, tasting the sound like a promise. "You're shaking."
"It's nothing," she lied, and was good at it—too good. As if the forest had taught her where truth could be snapped and still hold.
His gaze flicked to the torn skirt, the mud, the red scratches blooming along her calves like small, angry roses. His mouth tightened.
"You came from there?" he asked softly.
Rhos—turned her head to look at the trees.
They were only trees.
Only branches.
Only shadow and leaf and the ordinary wickedness of briars.
Yet the mouth of the wood seemed to watch her back, the dark between trunks pressed close as a held breath. She half expected a raven to speak again, to laugh.
Nothing did.
Still, she could not shake the feeling that if she gave the forest one more look—one honest look—it might remember her.
So she forced herself to smile at Rav as if she had never been afraid of anything in her life.
"I got lost," she said. "That is all."
"Then you're found," he said, and helped her to her feet. His hands were warm and careful. Human hands. Not beaks. Not claws.
They told the story afterward in taverns and kitchens, the way people always did—turning fear into entertainment, turning tragedy into lesson, turning a girl's trembling into a romance.
They said a rider found her at the forest's edge, and he was handsome, and his voice was gentle, and his cloak was warm.
They said she became his lady.
They said she laughed again.
And because people love a pretty ending more than they love the truth, the Southern tellers stopped there.
But the North kept speaking.
Rav's home was not a palace, not truly. It was a holdfast on a hill, stone tucked into the ribs of the land with gardens that tried their best. There were roses climbing the walls. Bees thick in summer. Hearth-smoke in winter.
There were servants who called her my lady until the words began to fit. Dinners with neighbouring lords and soft music and a bed that did not feel like a trap.
For a while, it almost felt like the forest had been nothing but a fever dream and a bruise of memory.
Only—there were moments.
Small moments that made her heart stutter.
When someone called from across the yard and the wind shifted strangely, and she thought she heard Maris Briarwood in it.
When a raven landed on the fence and watched her too long.
When her children learned their letters and asked, bright-eyed, "Mama, what was your name before you married Father?"
And something in her throat closed like a fist.
She laughed it off.
She always laughed it off.
Because she had survived. She'd won.
Because she'd come face-to-face with the origin of fear and walked away whole.
The first child came in spring, when the world was green and foolish with hope.
Rav held her hand through the pain, whispering that she was strong, that she was safe, that she was loved.
And Rhos believed him.
She named the child with reverence. With care. With a kind of trembling devotion.
Names mattered. They were hooks. Names were… expensive.
When she held the infant close and breathed in the milk-warm scent of new life, she found herself whispering into the soft skin, a vow she didn't remember deciding to speak:
"I will never let anything take you." It sounded like a promise.
The air in the room cooled.
Not enough for anyone to remark upon it—only enough to make the hairs along her arms rise, only enough to make the candles gutter as if a door had opened somewhere deep in the house.
Rav didn't notice. Neither did the midwives.
But Rhos turned her head toward the window. A raven sat on the sill. It blinked slowly, once, as if in agreement.
Then it flew away.
Years passed. Children followed. The holdfast filled with the soft chaos of small feet and laughter and quarrels that never lasted long.
And for a while, truly, she was happy.
A happiness made of warm bread and spilled ink and Rav's hands around her waist when he came up behind her as she watched the yard. A happiness made of muddy hems and scraped knees and the sound of her name—Rhos—spoken without dread.
A happiness that felt earned.
A happiness that felt like proof.
She even began to believe in her own lie. That she had outwitted the world.
That was when the forest remembered her.
It happened on a day so ordinary it felt cruel.
The children were playing in the yard, their faces pink with cold. Rav was away, riding boundary lines with his men. The kitchens were loud with chopping and gossip. The sky was a pale winter blue, clean and innocent.
Rhos was in the solar, mending a tear in a sleeve, when she felt it—like a needle sliding beneath skin.
A tug.
Not on her body.
On her name.
Her hand froze mid-stitch. The thread trembled.
Outside, a shadow passed over the snow.
Not a cloud.
Something lower.
Heavier.
The light in the room dimmed as if the sun had remembered fear.
Rhos stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor. Her pulse was suddenly too loud, too close—exactly as it had been under the canopy, when the forest refused to be solved.
She went to the window. There were ravens on the roof.
Not one.
Not two.
A dozen at least—black stitches against white slate, heads tilted in unison, waiting.
In the yard, the children had gone still. Little hands clenched around toys. Little faces turned up toward the sky, confused.
Rhos' throat went cold. Because she knew—she knew in that marrow-deep way the North calls truth—that a promise does not care what you meant.
A promise only cares what you said.
The air shuddered with a low, purring breath. The garden roses bowed. The hill itself seemed to exhale. And beyond the outer wall, where the land dipped toward the distant treeline, the shadows began to gather—thick as night, even on the sunniest of days.
A voice rolled up the slope like thunder pressed into language. Deep. Ancient. Amused.
Maris Briarwood, it called, and the sound of it made her bones ache—as if a hand had reached into her chest and found the thread she'd thought she'd lost.
Her knees weakened and she gripped the sill until her knuckles whitened.
No one else reacted. No one else flinched at that name, because no one else knew it belonged to her.
But the ravens did.
The ravens watched her with bright, satisfied eyes. Below, her youngest child began to cry. Rhos turned from the window and backed away, one slow step at a time, as if the dragon might see her through stone.
As if it hadn't already found her. As if she hadn't given it the sound her blood answered to.
Her mouth opened.
She tried to speak.
To warn someone.
To call for guards.
To pray—she didn't even know to whom. But all that came out was a whisper, ragged and small:
"…No."
From the yard, the dragon's voice rose again, nearer now—like a great body shifting in the world, like roots moving beneath a house.
I have come for what comes after.
And the ravens—every last one—laughed.
Something inside her shuddered and her blood ran cold. Then, like the breath in her lungs, she felt the thread unravel and tighten. A shadow ran across the land. Folding onto the stretch of earth of her yard, as large and fierce as she'd remembered him.
Maris Briarwood, it called, the voice vibrating inside her and hissing into the air. I've come for what you promised—your future.
Her husband, Rav, and her children gazes fell on her. Judging and wary. Looking at a stranger rather than their kin and Rhos realised then that lies have a way of catching up when you stop running.
Which future shall I take first? The dragon asked, contemplating her three children with hunger begging to be sated.
Terror twisted inside her ribs. She thought she sold her life, not the lives she'd birth—her future.
"Please," she breathed. "Not my family."
The dragon's nostrils flared, hot breath rolling over the yard.
Without my promise you would have died in my wood. Everything you built after that breath is mine—by your own tongue.
It lowered its great head until one molten eye filled her world.
Choose, then. One child, today. I will not leave hungry.
A sob snagged in her throat. Rav's hand found his sword.
Rhos stepped forward—fast, before steel could make things worse. "No." The word came out steadier than she felt. "Not them."
The dragon's mouth curved, amused. More bargaining, little fox?
"Yes," she said, and the lie in her ribs hardened into purpose. "A different payment. One that buys them time."
Its tongue slid out, tasting the air—tasting her, remembering the thread of her name still coiled in its throat. Speak.
Rhos lifted her chin. "Take me."
The yard went silent. Rav's breath caught. Her children stared as if she had become a stranger again.
"And," she forced on, because she knew it would not go without a tether, "I will give you one of their true names—only one—so you can find the rest when the season comes. But you must promise this: you will not take flesh from my blood until they are grown."
The dragon's eyes narrowed, weighing her words the way old creatures weigh storms.
How long is 'grown'? it purred.
"Long enough," Rhos said. Long enough to raise them into blades. Long enough to teach them where to strike. Long enough to turn fear into something with edges.
Rav stepped into her side, arms closing around her as if he could hold her to earth. "Rhos," he whispered.
She touched his hand once—soft, apologetic—and eased him back. "Teach them," she mouthed. No sound. Only meaning.
The dragon hummed, and the hill itself seemed to listen. Very well, Maris Briarwood, it said at last, savouring the true name like a delicacy. I will take you now. And I will take one name, to keep me satisfied.
Before anyone could stop him, her eldest—Hyrue—stepped forward.
"Don't—" Rav started, but Hyrue's face was pale and certain in a way that made her heart tear.
Hyrue looked the dragon dead on and spoke, clear as a bell:
"My name is Hyrue."
Light slid from his mouth like a pale thread, curling toward the dragon's lips. The creature shivered with pleasure as it swallowed the sound.
Good, it murmured. A hook.
Then its clawed hand swept down—gentler than it had any right to be—and closed around Rhos.
She didn't scream. She didn't beg.
She only held her children in her eyes, memorising them like prayer, as the ground fell away and the sky swallowed her whole.
Rhos never existed.
And Maris died.
But hope still lived—threaded through the blood she left behind, sharp as a promise made for war.