The First Clue

The Echo Witch's cry, "Demon-marked!" still rang in Julius's ears, sharp and cold like the wind that bit at his exposed skin. He pushed onward, away from the muddy pool, away from her fear-filled eyes. He ran until the ridge hid him, until his lungs burned and his legs felt like lead weights. He dropped to his knees, choking on air thick with dust. The world felt empty. Cold. Alone.

Truly alone. The weight of it pressed down harder than before. Charon was gone, a fading scent of ozone and scorched stone. His parents… a raw ache he couldn't touch yet. Hunted by Trackers, by Knights, feared by Witches. And for what? For being empty. For being… a fragment.

Find the mirrored fragments! The key... it's not whole! Scattered... like reflections!

Charon's last words echoed, not with the Witch's confusing noise, but with the desperate urgency Julius remembered. Before, they were just sounds born of sacrifice. Now, after the Witch's terrified talk of echoes and shattered light, they felt different. Solid. A command. A path.

He sat up slowly, his body sore and shaking. Cold clung to him, and hunger curled in his belly like a fist. But the emptiness inside him felt… different. Still vast, still quiet, but now there was a faint thrum beneath the silence. A purpose.

Fragments. He was one. There were others.

Mirrored. Like him? Or reflecting something else?

Scattered. Like pieces of a broken pot, thrown across the dying land.

Reflections.

Julius frowned, rubbing his cold hands together. Reflections. He thought of the muddy pool, his own blurry face looking back. He thought of the strange, shimmering colours he sometimes saw behind his eyes, like light on water. What did Charon mean?

He remembered the ruins. Charon's small, circular room, filled with scrolls stacked like firewood. The old scholar, his eyes distant, talking about the past. About the Starborn. About the Sundering that broke the world. About the Divine Council rewriting history.

Charon had unrolled a brittle scroll that day, its surface covered in faded lines and symbols. A map? Julius hadn't paid much attention then, lost in the terrifying flood of new words – Purge, Void, Animus Vacuus. But he remembered Charon's finger tracing a path across the scroll, tapping a specific area.

"Places hold echoes, child," Charon had murmured, his voice thin and dry. "The Council fears them. They fear anything that reflects the time before their power."

Reflects. Echoes.

Julius closed his eyes, trying to recall the image, the feeling. Charon had been talking about the Starborn, about the Purge. He'd gestured vaguely towards the broken land outside. And he had tapped the scroll… where?

It wasn't a clear memory. Just a shape. A cluster of sharp lines on the old map. A name Charon might have said… Something about breaking? Shattering?

Sundered.

Yes. That felt right. Something about peaks… mountains broken long ago. The Sundered Peaks. A place tied to the great catastrophe Charon spoke of, the Sundering. A place old enough to hold echoes, old enough to reflect the lost power of the Starborn.

Could it be? Could one of the fragments, one of the reflections, be hidden there? In a place that mirrored the breaking of the Starborn themselves?

He focused, reaching into the quiet emptiness inside him. He thought of the name, Sundered Peaks. He remembered the vague direction Charon's gesture had implied – away from the coast, deeper into the desolate heartland. Was there anything? A pull? A sign?

It didn't feel powerful like the Knight's presence. It was quiet, almost nothing, a soft echo in the silence, like that strange chime before. A small pull, just enough to make him look east, toward the far-off line of broken mountains.

It was enough. A direction. A destination.

Each day felt the same - grey, windy, and hungry. The path was hard, but Julius started to sense the land. He kept away from the soul-draining zones, always alert to the quiet that meant danger.. He found shallow pools of brackish water, like the one where he met the Witch. He chewed on tough roots he dug from the stony ground, their taste bitter but filling the hollow ache in his stomach for a little while.

He kept the distant mountains in sight, that faint inner pull his only compass. He travelled cautiously, always listening, always watching the horizon. The Knight could still be out there. Patient. Relentless. The thought was a cold stone in his gut.

After what felt like weeks, the land began to change subtly. The grey rock was still dominant, but there were more patches of hardy, thorny bushes. He saw signs of old tracks, long unused but hinting that people sometimes passed this way.

Then, one cold afternoon, he saw it. Not ruins this time. Walls. Low, thick walls made of dark stone, enclosing a cluster of squat buildings huddled together against the wind. Smoke curled from a few chimneys, a fragile sign of life in the vast emptiness. A settlement.

Hope flickered, quickly followed by caution. His parents had taught him to be wary. Strangers were dangerous. Settlements attracted attention – sometimes the wrong kind. He approached slowly, keeping low, using rocks and folds in the ground for cover.

As he got closer, he saw guards patrolling the walls. They wore leather armor reinforced with dull metal plates, different from the Trackers' cloaks or the Knight's black shell. On their shoulders, they bore a crudely painted symbol: a clenched fist gripping a stylized stalk of grain. They carried sturdy spears and their faces were hard, watchful.

He hid behind a cluster of rocks overlooking the settlement's single gate. He saw people moving inside, wrapped in drab clothes, their shoulders slumped. A cart pulled by two thin, weary-looking people rumbled out of the gate, piled high with sacks. Two guards stopped it, their expressions bored but firm. One guard poked a sack with his spear, then nodded. The people pulling the cart bowed their heads low and continued on their way, their faces showed fear and resentment.

Julius watched for a long time. He saw other locals bringing bundles of firewood, baskets of hoarded roots, or skins of water to the gate, handing them over to the guards with barely a word exchanged. There was an air of oppression hanging over the place, thick as the dust.

Later, as the grey light began to fail, two men shuffled past his hiding place, heading away from the settlement. They kept their voices low, but the wind carried snippets to Julius.

"...another tithe," one grumbled, his voice rough with anger. "Barely enough left to feed the children, and House Vorlag demands more."

"Quiet fool," the other hissed, glancing around nervously. "Their ears are everywhere. Want to end up working the dust mines for daring to complain?"

House Vorlag. The name sounded cold, harsh. A tithe. Taking from people who had almost nothing. Julius looked at the guards again, at the symbol of the fist and grain. These lands, the path towards the Sundered Peaks, were ruled by this House Vorlag. A minor power, perhaps, compared to the Divine Council, but their grip here seemed absolute, cruel.

He sank back behind the rocks as full darkness fell. He had a destination. He had a direction. But now, a new obstacle stood in his way. To reach the Sundered Peaks, he would have to cross the lands claimed by House Vorlag. He would have to pass through territory controlled by people who squeezed life from the dying land and its inhabitants. And he, an anomaly, an absence, a 'demon-marked' boy hunted by far greater powers, would have to do it unseen.

The faint pull towards the mountains felt weaker now, overshadowed by the chilling reality of the fist and grain. The first clue had led him here, but the path ahead was guarded by more than just the wind and the cold.