Chapter 2: Cold Eyes, Quiet Fire

The lash came before Kaelen reached the door.

Not flesh on flesh—his father had more restraint than that. But words cut deeper when delivered with surgical precision, and Vern Branwen knew exactly where to place the blade.

"You think this is a game, boy?" The voice carried through the thin walls before Kaelen's hand found the latch. "Wandering off to wells that should stay dry?"

Kaelen pushed inside, cold air following him like guilt. His father waited by the kitchen table, knuckles already red from rubbing—a tell that meant pain was coming, one way or another.

"It wasn't a game."

"Then what was it?" The pewter mug slammed against wood hard enough to dent. "Spirit talk? Bone-chatter?"

Behind his father, Edira stood with her back to them both. Her braid unraveled down her spine, and her lips moved without sound—humming some old lullaby that had no words. She wouldn't meet Kaelen's eyes.

*Even Mother looks at me like I'm something sharp. Something she forgot to sheath.*

"The well was calling," Kaelen said quietly.

Wrong answer. Vern's jaw worked like he was chewing leather. "Wells don't call, boy. Wells don't do anything but hold water or hold nothing. That's all."

"This one—"

"This one sits dry because the earth beneath it died." Vern stepped closer, and Kaelen caught the scent of last night's ale on his breath. "Same earth that feeds our crops. Same earth that keeps us alive. You understand what I'm saying?"

Kaelen nodded, though he didn't. Not really.

"Good." Vern's hand moved to his belt, fingers tracing worn leather. "Then you understand why you won't go near it again."

The threat hung between them like smoke. Kaelen wanted to explain about the voice, about the heat rising from nothing, about the ash that shouldn't exist. But explanations were dangerous things in this house. They led to more questions, and questions led to doubt, and doubt led to the kind of silences that stretched for days.

"Yes, sir."

"Good boy." But the words carried no warmth. "Now sit. Your mother's made stew."

---

"Your hands are too soft."

Gerun appeared behind the smokehouse as Kaelen scraped frost from the rabbit pelts. The older boy carried something wrapped in oiled leather—long, curved, familiar in shape if not in detail.

"Let's fix that."

He unwrapped a bow. Not their father's war piece, scarred and deadly, but something smaller. Cruder. Hand-carved from ash wood and bound with sinew that still smelled of the deer it came from.

"Won't Father—"

"Father's a frost-breathing bastard." Gerun thrust the bow into Kaelen's hands. "You're my brother."

The wood felt strange under Kaelen's fingers. Warm, despite the cold. Alive in a way that made his palms tingle. He pulled the string experimentally—the resistance surprised him.

"Too much?" Gerun asked.

"No. It's..." Kaelen searched for words. "It fits."

"Good. Let's see if you can hit anything with it."

They set up a target of straw and rags against the back wall of the house. Gerun showed him the stance—feet planted, shoulders square, elbow high. The first arrow sailed wide, burying itself in the dirt with a soft thump.

"You aiming for a bird?" Gerun grinned. "Or was that a prayer?"

"Maybe both."

"Good. Sometimes birds are prayers."

The second arrow nicked the target's edge. The third went wide again, but closer. By the tenth, Kaelen was hitting center more often than not, and his fingers had stopped bleeding where the string bit them.

"Natural archer," Gerun said approvingly. "Father won't like it—means you're better at something than he expected. But I like it fine."

They collected the arrows as the sun climbed higher, burning off the morning mist but bringing no warmth. Kaelen's hands should have been numb by now, but they weren't. If anything, they felt feverish.

"Gerun?" He hesitated. "Do you ever feel like something's watching you? From the woods?"

His brother went still. "Every day since the calf died. Why?"

"Just wondering."

But it was more than wondering. Something pulled at him—not toward the village or the house, but outward. Toward the tree line where shadows gathered thick as spilled ink.

---

The tracks led nowhere, but they were warm.

Kaelen found them at the forest's edge, where Veldermere's tilled fields gave way to wild growth. Rabbit prints in fresh snow, nothing unusual there—except these prints glowed faintly under his palm when he touched them.

Not visible light. Something deeper. Heat that pulsed like a heartbeat.

He followed the trail for twenty paces before it vanished entirely. No fade, no scatter. Just there, then gone, as if the rabbit had sprouted wings and taken flight.

Kaelen knelt and pressed both hands to the snow where the prints ended. Heat exploded through his palms—so sudden and fierce he jerked backward with a hiss. The patch of snow beneath his hands had turned to slush, then steam.

*That's not normal. That's not anything close to normal.*

He looked around, expecting to see Gerun or one of the village children watching from behind a tree. Nothing. Just wind and winter and the feeling of being observed by something that had no business doing the observing.

With one finger, he sketched a shape in the steaming slush. Not quite human—the proportions were wrong, stretched in places and compressed in others. Not quite beast either, though it had the suggestion of claws and teeth and things that moved wrong in moonlight.

The drawing looked back at him.

*The heat sees me. Or maybe I'm seeing it. Either way, something's coming.*

He scrubbed the image away with his boot and walked home, but the sensation of being watched followed him all the way to the door.

---

Dinner was rabbit stew and silence.

They ate by the light of a single candle, shadows dancing across their faces like living things. The meat was tough—one of Gerun's kills from two days back, stretched to last. Edira had seasoned it with herbs from her drying bundles, but even they couldn't mask the gamey taste of fear.

"Gerun says he's teaching you to shoot." Vern didn't look up from his bowl.

Kaelen nodded.

"Keep your fingers clean. Bows are tools, not toys."

"Yes, sir."

Silence settled again. Kaelen stirred his stew, watching chunks of meat and vegetable swirl in the thin broth. The warmth should have been comforting. Instead, it reminded him of the heat under the snow—too fierce, too hungry.

"The snow steamed today."

The words slipped out before he could stop them. His family went still as death.

"Snow doesn't steam, child." Edira's voice was barely above a whisper.

"It did when I touched it."

Vern's spoon clicked against the bowl's rim—once, twice, three times. Then he set it down with the careful precision of a man fighting not to break something.

"Enough."

The chair scraped the floor like a blade on stone as Vern stood. He towered over the table, candlelight carving his face into harsh planes and deep shadows.

"Enough of the stories. Enough of the games. Enough of the—" He gestured vaguely at Kaelen. "Whatever this is."

"Vern." Edira's voice carried a note of warning. "He's just a boy."

"Boys don't make snow steam." Vern's eyes fixed on Kaelen with the intensity of a hunter sighting prey. "Boys don't hear wells calling. Boys don't draw pictures of things that don't exist."

*How does he know about the drawings?*

"I saw them," Vern continued, as if reading his thoughts. "On your bedroom wall. Scraps of charcoal and nightmare. What are you trying to summon, boy?"

"Nothing." The lie tasted like ash. "I wasn't trying to summon anything."

"Good. Because summoning is witch work. And witches burn."

The candle flame guttered in a sudden draft, shadows leaping and writhing across the walls. For a moment, Kaelen saw something else in the dancing light—wings spread wide, eyes like burning coals, a mouth full of teeth that belonged on no earthly creature.

Gone.

"I think..." Edira stood slowly, hands trembling. "I think we should all get some sleep."

Vern grunted agreement, but his eyes never left Kaelen's face. "Yes. Sleep. Dream of normal things, boy. Dream of sheep and sunshine and all the pretty lies that keep the rest of us sane."

---

Kaelen dreamed of fire.

He stood in the heart of the Blighted Woods, snow falling thick around him. But this snow was wrong—instead of melting when it touched his skin, it burst into flame. Tiny stars of light that spiraled upward like dying moths.

The trees wept ash. Not sap or water, but gray flakes that fell like rain and tasted of endings. Each drop that touched his tongue sent heat racing through his veins, sweet and terrible and utterly right.

He opened his mouth to call out—and fire poured forth. Not flame like from a hearth or forge, but something cleaner. Hungrier. The kind of fire that didn't just burn—it purified. It made things true.

Above him, something moved in the canopy. Wings stitched from bone and shadow, eyes that held the memory of starlight. It watched him with the patience of stone, the hunger of winter.

"You are the ember," it whispered in a voice like breaking glass. "You are the wound."

Kaelen tried to answer, but more fire spilled from his lips. The trees around him began to blacken and curl, their ash-tears turning to smoke. The snow-flames danced higher, reaching for the thing in the branches.

"You are the—"

He woke.

Smoke curled from his lips—actual smoke, thin and gray and tasting of burnt dreams. The quilt's edge smoldered where his hand had clenched it. He threw off the blanket and scrambled to the window, desperate for air that didn't taste of ash and prophecy.

Outside, Veldermere slept under its blanket of snow. The Bonewell sat at the village center, dark and patient. Waiting.

But the trees beyond the village were perfectly still. Too still. As if every bird and beast had fled, leaving only empty branches and accumulated dread.

Then he heard it—a soft clicking, like bone striking bark. Rhythmic. Deliberate. Coming from the direction of the Blighted Woods.

And above it, high and hollow, the cry of a bird that shouldn't exist anymore.

Kaelen pressed his face to the glass, breath fogging the crude pane. Whatever was coming, it was taking its time. Learning the lay of the land. Testing the boundaries.

*Getting ready.*

He closed the window and crawled back beneath his smoldering quilt, but sleep was done with him for the night. Instead, he lay listening to the click-click-click from the darkness beyond the trees, counting the beats like a funeral march.

Somewhere in that rhythm, he heard the echo of his own name.