The goat hit the dirt with a heavy, wet thud.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The bells. The shrieking, metallic sound of war. The sound of death coming for his home once more.
Ryan collapsed to his knees, burying his hands into his hair, pressing the heels of his palms against his ears. But it didn't work. The bells didn't just ring in the air; they rang through his skull, through his flesh, vibrating in his very soul.
No. No. Not again. I can't watch this again.
But the Eye did not care what he wanted. It showed him what was, what is, and what would always be. The worst day of his life was playing out before him, a nightmare he was locked inside.
Ryan scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward his father. Titus was already moving, his massive hands closing around the hafts of his twin hunting axes—weapons so heavy a normal man couldn't lift them, yet he held them like kindling.
"Father!" Ryan screamed, throwing himself forward to grab Titus's arm.
His fingers passed through solid muscle like smoke through winter air.
"Father, listen to me!" Ryan shouted, stepping directly in front of the giant. "We have to run! There are two thousand of them! Black Dragon soldiers! We can't win, please, just run!"
Titus stared right through him, his eyes fixed dead on the village gates. He didn't hear a word. Ryan was nothing but a ghost haunting his own history.
Around them, the village erupted into organized panic. Hunters sprinted toward the wooden palisades, arrows already knocked to their bowstrings. Women screamed, dragging crying children by the arms toward the rear of the village. Dogs snarled. Torches flared to life.
Titus strode toward the main gates, where Old Vildmar stood waiting. The village elder's face was as weathered as tree bark, but his eyes were sharp and unblinking. He gripped a steel sword that he had kept polished for forty winters, waiting for a day he hoped would never come.
From beyond the heavy wooden gates, a voice boomed—amplified, metallic, and dripping with aristocratic arrogance.
"Filth of the snow! By order of Lord Tores, First General of the Black Dragon Emperor, I command you to throw open your gates! Surrender your weapons, and your lives will be spared!"
Up on the walls, Ryan watched the hunters. Their knuckles were white around their bows. They knew exactly what "spared" meant to the Black Dragon army. It meant chains. It meant torture. It meant watching their families be destroyed for sport.
Old Vildmar climbed the wooden steps to the ramparts. When he spoke, he didn't shout, but his voice carried the weight of absolute authority.
"Sons and daughters of the ice!" Vildmar pointed his sword at the sea of black armor outside. "They speak of mercy! They tell you to surrender, and then they slit your throats in the mud! They tell you no one will be harmed, and then they harm everyone!"
He raised the blade high, the steel catching the firelight.
"So I ask you! Do you die on your knees, begging dogs for scraps of life? Or do you die on your feet, with iron in your hands, so the God of War remembers your names?"
From the walls, from the dirt streets, from eighty hunters facing their own slaughter, a unified roar shook the snow from the roofs:
"WE STAND WITH VILDMAR!"
Thwack.
A single arrow snapped from the wall—loosed by a hunter too terrified to wait—and buried itself deep in the Black Dragon messenger's throat. The man tumbled from his horse, gurgling blood into the snow.
The war began.
The sky turned orange as a wave of fire arrows streaked over the walls like falling stars. They thudded into thatched roofs, wooden porches, and stores of grain. Within seconds, the freezing night was baking in heat.
"Old man, look!" Titus roared over the din of battle, grabbing Vildmar's shoulder. He pointed to the massive, iron-headed battering ram being carried toward the gates by twenty armored soldiers. "There are thousands of them! How do we fight that?"
Vildmar turned to the giant. His eyes were entirely calm. The eyes of a dead man.
"Fight it? We don't, Titus." Vildmar smiled, a sad, brief thing. "Every man, woman, and child inside these walls is going to die today." He gripped Titus's massive forearm. "But I will not die hearing my wife scream as those animals take her. I will die giving them time to run. And so will you."
Titus stared at him, his axes lowering a fraction of an inch. "You're mad."
"Yes," Vildmar agreed, turning back to the burning gates. "Now get out of here. Take your family to the Snow Emperor's borders. He hates the Dragon. Go, Titus. Run!"
Titus turned and sprinted toward his home.
Ryan followed. He had no choice. The vision dragged him along, pulling his phantom body through the roaring flames, past hunters bleeding out in the mud, past screaming neighbors he had known his entire life.
Sera was standing in the doorway of their home, clutching the hands of two weeping neighbor children. Her face was chalk-white, but she wasn't crying.
"Titus—"
"Take them," Titus interrupted, dropping his axes to grab her face. He kissed her forehead, hard and desperate. "Take the women. Take the children. Ryan will lead you. Run to the Snow Emperor's lands. Don't look back."
Sera's composure finally shattered. A sob tore from her throat. "Titus, please, come with us—"
"I will find you," he lied. His voice was steady, but his eyes were shattered glass. "I swear it. Now go!"
Ryan stood frozen in the doorway. He wanted to scream. He wanted to shake his father and tell him it was useless. You can't hold them! We all die anyway! But his jaw was locked. His ghostly body refused to obey.
Then, Sera reached out and grabbed Ryan's arm.
Ryan gasped. He could feel her.
Her hand was warm. Calloused. Real. The Eye had let him become physical just for this. Just so it would hurt more.
"Ryan! Come! We have to move!"
Ryan's legs finally worked. He ran, his mother's hand gripping his tightly, pulling him through the suffocating smoke. They sprinted past old Marta, lying dead on her porch with an arrow through her chest. They passed the blacksmith, pinned to his own anvil by a black iron spear.
They reached the rear palisade. A small, hidden gap in the wood had been pulled open. Fifty terrified survivors—the elderly, the children, the wounded—were shoving their way through into the freezing forest.
Sera paused at the gap, looking back over her shoulder.
Through the roaring flames, Ryan saw it too. The main gates exploded inward in a shower of splinters. Hundreds of armored soldiers poured through the breach.
And standing alone in the center of the square was Titus.
The giant turned his head. Across fifty yards of fire and death, his eyes met Ryan's.
Titus smiled. A big, stupid, impossibly brave smile.
Then, with a roar that echoed over the flames, he charged directly into the Black Dragon army. His first swing cleaved three men in half, armor and all. His second crushed the skulls of four more.
"Come on!" Titus bellowed, a lone god of war drowning in a sea of black steel. "I'm right here! Come and die!"
"Keep moving!" Sera cried, yanking Ryan through the gap and into the snow-covered trees.
They ran. They fled blindly into the dark woods, the orange glow of their burning lives lighting the snow behind them.
Then, Ryan heard it.
Fweeeeee.
The high, sharp whistle of falling arrows.
Ryan looked up. A cloud of black shafts was arcing over the tree canopy, raining down directly on the fleeing survivors.
"No!" Ryan screamed.
He threw himself violently in front of his mother, spreading his arms wide to catch the steel, to be her shield, to save her this time.
The arrows passed right through his chest.
He was a ghost again. Intangible. Useless.
Sera let out a small, sharp gasp.
Ryan spun around. His mother was looking down at her chest. Three black-fletched arrows were buried deep in her ribs. Dark blood rapidly bloomed across the front of her dress, steaming in the freezing air.
Her knees buckled.
Ryan caught her. Now, he could touch her. Now, the Eye let him feel the weight of her dying body.
He collapsed into the snow, cradling her head in his lap. All around them, the forest turned into a slaughterhouse. Children fell. The elderly collapsed. The snow turned entirely red as the volley of arrows wiped out the last of the village.
Sera looked up at him. Her green eyes were losing their focus, but they were entirely peaceful.
"My son..." she breathed, blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth. "Run..."
Her eyes drifted shut. The warmth left her hand.
Ryan looked up at the sky. More arrows were falling, thudding into the snow, into the trees, into the bodies of his people. But not a single one touched him. The vision wouldn't let him die. It demanded he watch.
He threw his head back and screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony.
He reached for his hunting knife. He tried to stand. He tried to run back to the village, to die with his father, to kill even one soldier before the end.
But he couldn't move.
The Eye held him there, pinned to the bloody snow by an invisible, supernatural weight. Fate. Time. Cruelty. He was locked in place, holding his dead mother in his arms, forced to endure the end of his world all over again