Aethel looked up the path that wound upward, toward the ridges lost in the clouds. The moon beat directly on the path, a sign that Bendis was opening its gates.
"We must go, Draco. Every moment lost here is a chance for the Romans to find our trail," the priestess said, adjusting her silver cloak.
But Draco did not move. He stood frozen beside Decebal's body, his gaze fixed on the valley from which the echoes of the battle still came.
"I am not going alone," he said, and his voice had a new, rocky weight.
"Magic does not accept burdens, young man. The path to sanctuary is only for the great."
"Then magic will have to learn to endure!" Draco snapped, turning to her. I am not going anywhere without Davos. He picked me up from the roadside when I was a hungry, frightened-eyed orphan. He named me Draco, telling me that one day I would light up the world like the fire in his forge.
From the shadow of a hill, a massive figure slowly rose. Davos, the village blacksmith, was wiping his face, stained with ash and blood, with a hand the size of a shovel. He limped slightly, his leather apron torn, but his eyes shone with aching pride. He had seen it all: how the child he had taught to forge iron had become, in an instant, a beast of nightmares; he did not know what to believe, but he knew that Draco would bring pride to the Dacian people.
"Draco… boy, leave me here. I am old and the iron in my bones has begun to rust," Davos said in a hoarse voice. Go with her. You are destined for other hammers now.
Draco took a giant step and grabbed Davos by the shoulders. His fingers, which had crushed bronze helmets a few minutes before, now touched the old man with unnatural delicacy.
"If you don't come, I will die here beside the King. You made me human, Davos. Without you, I am nothing but an animal that doesn't know where its lair is, I didn't even know how to speak until you taught me."
Aethel looked at them both. She could see the invisible threads of destiny that bound her pure wolf magic to the unnatural love and tenderness in the giant blacksmith's eyes. Davos was not a chosen one, but he was an anchor. Without him, Draco would have been lost in rage the first second the beast's blood had awakened.
"Okay," the priestess relented, feeling that time was running out. The blacksmith is coming with us. We will need someone to forge armor to match your strength, Draco. But beware: the road is long, and the Romans have already sent Shadowhunters after us. A kind of assassins that Rome trained with the sole purpose of killing even their own kind when they received orders. They were a collection of all kinds of slaves from already conquered peoples and trained in inhuman ways until their humanity disappeared and all that remained were deadly puppets who follow orders.
Davos nodded, tightening the iron hammer at his belt.
If my boy needs a shield, I will forge it for him from the very heart of the mountain.
The three set off towards the heights: the Priestess who saw the future, the Blacksmith who preserved the past, and the Orphan who, between them, became the violent present of Dacia.
The flight through the dense forests of the Carpathians was unlike anything Draco had ever experienced before. The magic that had briefly made him a god had now turned on him like a hungry parasite. Every muscle that had been swollen by the strength of the seven men was now contracting in violent spasms.
"Hold on, child," Davos muttered, panting under the boy's weight.
The blacksmith, though old, carried Draco on his back with the stubbornness of a rock. Draco made guttural sounds, his skin burned, and his bones seemed to grind under his own weight. It was the price of the "Strife": the human body was not designed to be a vessel for such force without paying in excruciating pain.
From the darkness of the forest, five long, black-robed figures emerged like ghosts. They were Shadowhunters, mercenaries left by Rome to do the dirty work that the legionnaires did not understand. They did not use gladium, but arrows dipped in poisons that could carry them and curved daggers held in special sheaths filled with venom.
Aethel stopped suddenly. She raised her hands to the sky and let out a sharp cry, calling to the creatures of the forest.
— Brothers of the forest, defend your mistress! Come on wings and claws!
Normally, the forest would have exploded with bears and wolves ready to tear apart the intruder. But now, something terrifying happened. The wolves that had appeared at the edge of the clearing stopped suddenly. They crouched on the ground, tails between their legs, whimpering in fear. No animal dared to approach the circle in which the three were.
Aethel looked at Draco, terrified.
— They are afraid of him… she whispered. I see him not as a brother, but as a predator from beyond this world.
The hunters attacked. Davos set Draco's limp body down by a fir root and raised his iron hammer, but he was too slow for the shadow-trained assassins.
Aethel stepped forward, abandoning ritual delicacy. From her linen sleeves emerged two short silver blades, sanctified in the temples of Sarmizegetusa. She moved like a moonbeam through the firs. The first hunter fell, his throat cut before he could breathe. The second and third were struck in vital points, collapsing silently.
But the last two were veterans. As Aethel blocked one, the fifth hunter threw a small, triangular dagger at Draco's throat. The priestess saw the movement. Without hesitation, she threw herself in front of the boy.
The blade did not strike the neck, but cut deep, diagonally, across her face. A cry of pure pain tore through the night. The priestess's blood, silver under the moonlight, spurted onto the ground. Blinded by pain, one eye lost under the cruel cut, Aethel plunged both blades into the chest of the assassin who was above Draco ready to kill him, then collapsed on top of him.
When Davos saw the blade coming towards Draco and Aethel blocking the blow, he ran towards the last assassin, he dodged past Davos and rushed at Draco and Aethel, Davos furiously threw his hammer at the assassin with all his might, hitting him in the back of the head and killing him instantly.
Silence fell again, but it was a sick silence. Davos ran to her, trying to stop the bleeding with his calloused hands.
Draco opened his eyes. His physical pain had begun to subside, but what he saw seemed to hurt him more than the magic. Aethel, the beautiful priestess who had seemed untouched by the world, now stood with half her face covered in blood and beginning to smell of rot and corpse.
"Why...?" Draco muttered, crawling toward her.
Aethel looked at him with her one remaining eye, a look filled with a cold, prophetic light.
"Because... you are our only chance, Draco. I can see the future with one eye better than I could with two. Now... get up. Davos can't carry you anymore. You must learn to walk on your own two feet through the hell you have awakened."