Forging a New Path

As the people in the chamber heard the roars stop they decided to check

The great iron doors creaked open with a groan that echoed across the hollow chamber.

Light poured in not golden, not warm, but a cold, gray dawn filtered through smoke. The first to step out were the elders, blinking like cave dwellers. Then mothers, gripping their children's hands. Then the rest.

They emerged into silence.

Velmira had endured… but not without cost.

Roofs had collapsed into ash. Walls bore the marks of claws and fire. Shattered wagons littered the streets. Pools of blood, half-washed by the night's rain, stained the cobbles in black-red blossoms. The village square, once a place of song and market stalls, was now scattered with scorched timbers and broken stone.

Then came the footsteps low, deliberate.

Rane stepped into view, shoulders squared though his armor was in ruins. Behind him trailed the surviving knights: Brevin, face bruised and eyes hollow; Drail, limping, his arm wrapped tight in bloodied cloth. Only three returned. Of twelve.

The crowd froze.

Rane raised his sword, dented but still intact. His voice was rough but clear.

"Velmira stands."

A ragged cheer broke out uncertain at first, then rising as relief mingled with awe. Children cried. Some villagers fell to their knees, weeping. Others simply stared, trying to believe.

Ser Rothan, leaning on a cane, stepped through the thinning crowd, his expression hard.

He approached Drail, eyes sharp, voice low.

"Where is boy?"

Drail looked down.

"We… we lost him," he said. "Near the tower. We thought he was with us. After the last beast fell, everything scattered and after that we hadn't seen him"

Rothan's hand clenched around the cane.

Ferrin emerged from behind the guard line pike he was waiting for this very moment, robes pristine, untouched by war. He moved with practiced solemnity to the front of the crowd and raised both arms.

"Velmira owes its survival to the bravery of these men," he declared. "When darkness returned, they rose to meet it. When the walls failed, they stood firm. And to our dearest Ser Rothan who had to abondon the front line because of injury but, despite wounds and betrayal, refused to abandon his home we give our deepest thanks."

Applause surged. The people clung to the story. To the idea of survival. Of heroes. Of honor.

But Rothan didn't bask in it.

He turned and limped away, toward the smoking ruins.

The boy wasn't there.

And that meant only one thing.

...

The wind whispered through the trees like a forgotten hymn. Ash still clung to the air, but here, far from the remnants of war and judgment, the world was quieter. Wilder.

A narrow river curled like a vein between rocks, its waters silver with moonlight. The trees bowed inwards, branches gnarled like ancient hands, and somewhere distant, a bird called once then fell silent.

At the river's edge, half-covered in mud and blood, a boy lay motionless.

Khaos.

His body was battered, bruised from battle and betrayal alike. Cuts lined his arms, his tunic torn, soaked dark from the storm and the forest's thorns. His sword was gone. His eyes were closed. Breath shallow.

He looked… dead.

A faint rise of his chest. A twitch of his fingers. Somewhere beneath the stillness, the boy still clung to life barely.

A raspy croak echoed above. Then another. A shadow passed over his face.

A vulture.

It hopped closer, beady black eyes glinting with hunger. Another flapped its wings above, circling lazily in the air. A third perched on a branch, staring down like a watchman awaiting permission.

When the first bird pecked at his boot, Khaos jolted awake with a gasp.

Pain shot through every joint like lightning. His back arched instinctively as he swatted the vulture away. It squawked, flapped frantically, and took to the sky with the others.

Breathing hard, he lay still, staring up through the thick canopy of foreign trees. The leaves above were broad and a strange shade of blue-green, glistening with mist. The scent in the air was moss, mud, and something unfamiliar ferns or bark, perhaps, that didn't grow near Velmira.

His hands trembled as he pushed himself upright. His bones ached, and his skin burned with bruises and shallow cuts.

The river gurgled behind him. The water he'd washed up beside glinted innocently, unaware of the war, the betrayal, the blood.

He turned slowly, scanning the horizon.

Nothing.

No Barrier in the distance. No smoke from Velmira's chimneys. No peaks he recognized. Even the mountains were wrong their shapes jagged and spiraled, jutting into the sky like claws rather than the familiar domes of home.

His heart thudded.

He was lost.

No gone.

No he was Free.

His legs wobbled as he stood. Dirt fell from his cloak, dried blood cracked along his arms. He took a step, then another, barefoot, stumbling through the underbrush. Every sound made him twitch the crunch of leaves, the distant howl of something not quite a wolf, not quite a bird.

Time passed in fragments. He found a high ridge and climbed it just to see.

And when he looked out across the land rolling forests, jagged cliffs, and valleys that shimmered with a mist his breath left him entirely.

This was not Velmira.

Not even close.

He fell to his knees.

For a long while, he said nothing. His mind replayed flashes: the Xylen, Dylan's twisted smile, Rothan's blade slicing his chains, Ferrin's cold unmoved eyes

And finally Rane twisted smile at the end

The boy they hated.

The monster child.

The orphan cursed by blood.

He clenched his fists so tightly that his nails cut into his palms.

"…Enough."

His voice was hoarse. Raw. He almost didn't recognize it.

"I'm done."

He stood, breath shaking, eyes burning with something colder than tears.

"I'm done trying to prove anything. Done trying to earn a place in their world. Done with chasing their love like some stray dog."

He spat on the ground.

"They wanted me gone? Fine."

His chest rose as he forced in a deep breath.

"From now on, I live for me. I don't care if they rot. I'll survive. I'll grow stronger. Not for them. Not for Rothan. Not for anyone."

His lips curled into a snarl.

"I'll be the most selfish bastard this world's ever seen… if that's what it takes to live."

But first he needed food. Shelter. Healing.

Fortunately, those were things he knew how to get.

He'd been feeding himself since seven years ago. He knew how to track game, gut it, start fires from wet bark, stitch wounds with bone needles, and sleep with one eye open. His parents were dead long before the village turned against him.

He had taught himself how to kill.

Nature taught him how to endure.

So he did.

One Month Later.

The forest had begun to feel like a second skin.

Khaos moved with quiet confidence now. Barefoot when he needed silence, cloaked when the night fell cold. His body had grown leaner, hardened from days of hunting and climbing. The bruises faded. The wounds scabbed and scarred. His mind cleared like a sharpening blade.

He'd built a crude shelter beneath a cliff's overhang and kept a fire pit at the ready. He'd learned the calls of the beasts in this land none of them sounded Xylen. Not yet. Not even a whisper of one.

"They're not here," he muttered to himself one night as he ate by the fire. "Or they haven't reached this place."

It was a strange comfort. No villagers. No nobles. No monsters.

Just him.

And that was enough.

A deer hung over his shoulder, limp, freshly killed. He'd tracked it since dawn, watching its trail of broken twigs and shallow prints until it stopped to drink from a narrow stream. One arrow to the throat. Clean.

The weight wasn't much. His legs were stronger now, his steps faster. The trail home was familiar twenty paces east from the hollowed pine, then veer right at the moss-covered stone.

But he never reached the stone.

It happened in a blink.

No scent. No sound. No shift of birds.

Just Rustle.

And then

A flash of steel from the trees.

He twisted too late.

A boy with a blade in hand

lunged out of the shadows angled at his gut, quick and precise.

Khaos's eyes widened.

Pain. Shock. Blood.

Darkness.