A brand new beginning

It was brittle morning, the air thin and full of cold. Frost clung to the wooden beams of our house, curling over the edges like the grasping fingers of something long dead. I pulled my cloak tighter around my shoulders, the cloth having worn thin over far too many winter months.

When I went outside, the village was still stirring, but not in a rush. Life here turned like an old wheel, creaking forward from necessity rather than purpose. The distant chimneys exhaled puffs of smoke into gloomy skies that smelled of damp wood and stale bread.

The door behind me opened with a weary creak. My mother walked slowly but purposefully. I braced myself for her to blow past me, as she did, all the time, gliding through the world like someone who'd long since jettisoned any need for softness.

But she hesitated.

A small thing. A pause so tiny I almost didn't believe it.

I tilted my head a bit, catching her out of the corner of my eye. She wasn't gazing at me — her eyes were on the avenue, observing the crawlers of the village, the dwindling marketplace stalls, the faraway pennants of the kingdom that curved in the wind like arid embers of an unrecalled dream.

Then, without meeting my eyes, she said, "That cloak's no good."

I blinked.

"I—"

"You will freeze before the winter is over." Her voice was as sharp as it had ever been, but the edge wasn't as precise. "Get a new one."

I paused, unsure how to process the words.

She had never cared before.

I considered her for a moment, looking for an explanation, and she never offered me one. She did not look up, as if she had said enough.

But just then she brushed past me, making her way toward the village center.

The moment passed.

I exhaled slowly and trailed behind.

The market was a low hum of movement, its lifeblood slow in the chill. Stalls dotted the cobbled street, groaning under what little the village was able to put forth — root vegetables with dirt still clinging to them, fabrics worn threadbare from too many hands, meats that probably had sat out a day too long.

Voices blended together in the air, traders shouting halfheartedly about their goods, villagers haggling in fatigued, measured voices. A child darted through the throng, a pilfered apple at hand, his feet light with longstanding practice.

Then I saw him.

A figure too motionless, too composed for a place like this.

Sir Roderic.

His armor was a signal among the market's muffled colors, shining, revolted, resented. He stood beside an unvarnished wooden post, addressing a circle of young men — all of them straight-backed and eager, their faces glowing with something dangerously close to hope.

I could feel my mom's eyes on me before she said anything.

"Go."

A simple command.

A familiar one.

I did not hesitate this time.

And as I moved forward, the conversation snapped into focus.

" —service is not a privilege," Roderic was saying, and his voice was a deep, steady thing, forged like a blade. "It is a duty. The Kingdom does not request your strength; it requires it."

There were some words that hung over the gathering, like a heavy cloak, suffocating and unavoidable.

He took in the crowd, analyzing, fracturing. Then, his eyes landed on me.

For a moment, nothing.

Then a slow, knowing smirk.

"You," he said. "Step forward."

I acted mindlessly, sensing the eyes move toward me, some inquisitive, some resentful.

Roderic examined me like a man who had witnessed too many boys occupy the space in which I now stood. His smirk did not fade.

"Name?"

"Alarion."

He tilted his head slightly, thinking. "And tell me, Alarion — do you think you are worthy to wear the crest of the Royal Knights?"

The question rang like it had weight, like my answer mattered.

I looked him in the eye and said, "I wouldn't do this otherwise."

A pause. Then a low chuckle, the sort that wouldn't have gone far.

"Good."

I felt my mother's presence behind me, a thread of tension woven into the fabric of the moment.

And for the first time I wondered whether the look in her eyes was expectation —

Or regret.

The heaviness of Sir Roderic's stare remained long after the saying had passed. The people surrounding us fell quiet, expectant, like hounds waiting for a master's command. I maintained an even expression, inscrutable, though I felt the dim prickle of anxiety crawling at the back of my neck.

I had been looked at before — by men gauging whether I was worth beating, by my mother when she was deciding whether I had disappointed her — but this felt new. Roderic wasn't seeing me as a boy anymore. He was measuring something else, something I wasn't sure I had.

"Tell me, Alarion," he said, his voice slicing the market's quiet hum. "Why do you want to fight?"

A simple question. One I should have expected. And yet, for a second, I had no answer.

I could have lied. I might have talked of honor, of duty to the kingdom, of protecting the weak. But those would have tasted foreign in my mouth.

Instead I said, "Because I don't have any other choice.

Roderic's smile tightened, as if my honesty struck him funny. "No other choice?" he repeated. "You think this is a road for the desperate?"

I met his gaze evenly. "Isn't it?"

Something flashed across his expression. Approval, perhaps. Or amusement. His nose flared, looking toward the others standing in waiting, their faces looking hungry, wanting.

"There are men who want war because they want glory," he said, measured, deliberate, his voice low. "And then there are people who are pursuing it because they have nowhere else to go. "So tell me, which one do you think makes the better soldier?"

I considered the question.

"The ones who have nothing," I finally said.

"Why?"

"Because they can't afford to fail."

Roderic had a razor-slim smile. "Good answer."

He turned away from me then, speaking to the group as a whole. "The day starts with training at first light in the barracks," he announced. "If you can't get up before the sun, don't come at all. We do not require men who require sleep more than discipline."

The boys collected murmured, some even squirmed awkwardly at their spots but no one spoke up.

Then Roderic's gaze landed on me again.

"You," he said. "Stay."

I could feel the others look at me, their curiosity bristling. Some took a breath before scattering, muttering under their breath, but I didn't hear them. I had no energy for any of what they thought of me.

Roderic didn't speak again until he'd waited until we were alone.

"You're not the first bastard to come sniffing for an escape," he told me.

I stiffened.

He looked at me knowingly, as though he had already read the complete chronicle of my life just by my posture.

"You think you're special," he went on, "but I've met boys like you before. Beat down, eager to scratch their way out of the dirt, believing a sword will help them be more than they are.'"

I kept my expression still. "And do they?"

He smiled faintly. "Some."

"And the others?"

"They become corpses."

The words fell between us like a weight. I didn't flinch.

"I'm not going to die," I said.

Roderic chuckled. "Neither did they."

He looked at me for a moment longer, then sighed. "Show up at the barracks tomorrow. Don't be late."

With that, he whirled and walked, his footsteps sure on the stone.

I remained there a long moment, the cold squeezing itself against my skin, the odor of damp earth and iron heavy on the air.

I turn back to where my mother was standing.

That Evening

When I came back the house was dark, the one candle resting on the table sputtering shakily in the draft that always seemed to flow through the walls. My mother sat at the table, her back straight, arms laying on the wood in a stillness that felt intentional.

She did not look up when I walked in.

"You spoke to him," she said. It wasn't a question.

I loosened my cloak and shook the dampness from it. "Yes."

Silence stretched between us. The kind that made the air feel less dense, like there wasn't room in the space for both of us to exist at the same time.

She took a breath, long and slow.

"You shouldn't have."

I glanced at her. Her face was impossible to read, but her fingers dug a bit too hard into the wood.

"Why?"

She did not respond immediately. Instead, she grabbed the knife sitting on the table's edge and turned it over in her hands. The blade's dull edge caught the candlelight.

"Because I know what happens to boys like you," she said at last.

Her voice was not cruel. Not sharp with reprimand. Just… tired.

I frowned, shifting closer. "And what happens?"

Then she looked up, and our eyes met.

"They die."

The words were simple. Flat. Not an attempt to dissuade me, not an attempt to frighten me — just a fact, stated plainly, as though she had already accepted the outcome.

Something about that twisted in my chest, something I didn't fully get.

I should have been angry.

Instead, I only felt tired.

I crossed the small distance to the hearth, draping my damp cloak next to the licking flame that soon found the edges of the fabric.

"I don't plan to die," I said, echoing what I told Roderic.

My mother's gaze did not waver this time.

"Then prove it."

She stood up from the table, her outline crisp in the dim light. She didn't console me, didn't reach for me, didn't say she believed in me.

But for the first time, it dawned on me — she wasn't even trying to stop me.

And that, maybe, was the closest to approval she would ever bestow