The northern boundary of the Velchant woods was defined by an oppressive, unyielding silence. Unlike the southern riverbank where the youth gathered to laugh and waste the day, the deeper timberlands felt heavy, choked by ancient pines and thick, tangled briers that actively fought against any established path.
**Garrick** shifted the heavy leather strap of his patrol vest, letting out a long, slow breath that turned into a faint mist in the damp morning air.
He was a man built like a weathered fence post—lean, slightly sinewy, with a perpetually bored slouch that he had passed down flawlessly to his only son. He was a veteran member of the village watch, tasked with the mundane, repetitive duty of patrolling the outer green-lines. To the younger recruits, the job sounded like an adventure, a chance to guard the borders of civilization. To Garrick, who had walked these exact same perimeter grids for the better part of fifteen years, it was nothing more than a tedious, mind-numbing routine.
"Nothing," Garrick muttered to himself, his voice sounding flat and hollow against the thick moss of the tree trunks. "Absolutely nothing."
He reached down, idly snapping a dry twig from a low-hanging branch and sticking it between his teeth, chewing on the bitter bark out of sheer boredom. He poked a patch of damp earth with the butt of his iron-tipped spear, checking for any unusual tracking signs, but the ground showed only the predictable, mundane movements of the forest's regular inhabitants.
A sharp, scolding chitter broke the silence above him.
Garrick paused, tilting his head back to look into the upper branches of a massive, gnarled oak. A red-furred brush-tailed squirrel was perched on a high knot, its tiny paws tucked against its chest as it glared down at the intruder, its bushy tail flicking with rhythmic irritation.
"Oh, shut up," Garrick rumbled lazily at the creature. "I'm not after your acorns. Go bother the owls."
The squirrel chittered once more, entirely unimpressed by his guard uniform, before darting up the bark and disappearing into the thick canopy. Garrick watched it go, his mind instantly taking advantage of the quiet moment to drift back toward his own household.
Specifically, toward Ren.
Garrick let out a dry, wheezing chuckle that shook his narrow shoulders, the twig bouncing between his teeth. *Gods, that kid is a headache,* he thought, shaking his head as he resumed his slow, dragging stride through the underbrush.
Just that morning before dawn, he had caught Ren trying to use his wind-bursts to dry his wet trousers inside the house, nearly blowing three porcelain plates off the dresser and sending the family cat into a blind panic under the sofa. The boy had no sense of pacing, no concept of restraint. He was all frantic, bouncing energy and lopsided grins, drifting through life with a slouch that made him look like he had no spine, right up until he decided to launch himself into a dead sprint.
"He surely got that from his mother," Garrick murmured to himself, the memory bringing a brief, entirely genuine warmth to his weathered face.
**Cora** had that exact same high-octane spirit, that relentless, booming energy that could fill a room until the walls felt like they were bursting at the seams. Whenever Ren pulled some ridiculous stunt—like trying to launch compressed air out of his heels or challenging the river fish to a duel—Garrick could see his wife's chaotic brilliance shining right through the boy's messy bangs. Ren was a handful, a total disaster of a teenager who refused to take a single instruction seriously, but Garrick couldn't bring himself to be truly angry. The kid was loyal, and despite his complete lack of focus, he had a good heart.
A sudden rustle in the ferns to his left brought Garrick out of his thoughts.
His hand drifted instinctively toward the hilt of his short-sword, his slouched posture straightening by a mere fraction of an inch. He stopped, his boots sinking silently into the rotting leaves as he watched a thick patch of wild berry bushes.
The ferns parted, and a magnificent silver-horned stag stepped into the small clearing. Its coat was a pale, shimmering grey that perfectly matched the morning mist, and its antlers webbed outward like a crown of polished bone. The magnificent beast stopped, its nostrils flaring as it caught the scent of the man, its dark, intelligent eyes locking onto Garrick.
Garrick didn't move. He didn't raise his spear. He just stood there, entirely uninterested in disturbing the creature. "Morning, king," he whispered lazily.
The stag lingered for a long beat, satisfied that the bored-looking man in the leather vest posed absolutely no threat to its territory. With a smooth, graceful leap, it cleared a fallen log and vanished into the deeper thicket, the white of its tail the last thing to fade into the shadows.
"Beautiful," Garrick yawned, scratching the back of his neck. "And entirely boring. Just the way a patrol should be."
He checked the position of the sun through the thick leaves. It was nearing midday, which meant he was on the final leg of his perimeter loop. He just needed to check the old boundary ditch near the northern gulley, and then he could trudge back to the village, sit by the tavern hearth, and complain about his boots to anyone who would listen.
He adjusted his spear, his feet dragging through a thick patch of decaying pine needles as he descended into a shallow, shaded depression where the trees grew remarkably close together. The air down here felt noticeably cooler, damp and heavy with the smell of old rot.
Garrick stepped over a low ridge of exposed limestone—and his boot caught on something that didn't belong in the natural geometry of the forest.
He stopped. His eyes drifted downward.
Wedged tightly between two roots was a charred, black piece of split pine. It wasn't from a lightning strike; the wood had been cut cleanly with an iron saw before being burned. Garrick's lazy demeanor vanished in an instant. The stick between his teeth fell into the dirt as his jaw tightened.
He dropped into a low crouch, his fingers brushing the perimeter of the damp earth.
As he pushed back a thick curtain of drooping briars, the true scope of the clearing revealed itself. It wasn't an empty gulley. It was an abandoned encampment.
The signs were fresh—dangerously fresh. There were the remains of three separate campfires, the ashes still grey and dry, protected from the morning dew by a cleverly strung canvas ridgepole that had been hastily cut down. Scrapings of cured trail-meat littered the dirt, alongside the distinctive, oily smell of cheap weapon-grease used by mercenary bands or low-life raiders from the borderlands.
Garrick's heart gave a sudden, cold thud against his ribs. This wasn't a temporary stop for a couple of traveling merchants. This was an organized assembly.
He stood up slowly, his eyes sweeping the ground as his military training took complete control of his mind. He followed the edge of the clearing toward a narrow break in the dense briars.
The earth there was completely ruined. The soft loam and green moss had been utterly obliterated, ground down into a muddy, chaotic trench by the passage of heavy iron-toed boots. There were dozens of them. Fifty, maybe more. The footsteps weren't scattered or wandering; they were tightly packed, deep, and deliberate, cutting a straight, aggressive line through the brush.
Every single set of prints was walking in one exact direction.
South. Straight toward the unprotected, golden valleys of Velchant.
Garrick looked down the dark, trampled trail, the silent forest around him suddenly feeling like a trap waiting to spring. The boredom, the lazy thoughts of his son, and the warmth of the morning vanished entirely, leaving only a cold, terrifying clarity.
"This is bad," Garrick whispered into the dead air, his fingers locking around his spear with a white-knuckled grip. "This is really bad."
Without another second of hesitation, he turned on his heel and launched himself into a dead sprint back toward the village, his boots tearing through the leaves as he raced to sound the alarm.