Chapter 4 – The Path with No Lantern
Recap (Chapter 3):
The hunter has become myth and vengeance woven into a single form. After leaving Kiev in flames, he tracked the Gloved Lord's soldiers toward Nexaria. Along the way, he marked his path with ash, avoided detection in Rellmoor, and left behind fear like footsteps. Now, as whispers spread and ravens fly, the noble houses begin to stir.
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He moved without torchlight.
Not because he feared being seen—
But because he no longer remembered how to walk in light.
The trees grew sparse along the valley ridge. Branches skeletal, bark split in ways that whispered old wounds. The moon should have helped. It didn't. Clouds dragged across it like torn cloth, and the wind carried the smell of rot from somewhere distant.
The hunter kept walking.
His axe was heavier tonight.
Not with blood—there was none.
Not yet.
But the weight had changed. Again.
It now remembered names he hadn't spoken. Each step pressed into memory like a seal burned into wax. He could still feel the warmth of his daughter's hand on his forearm, her voice chasing imaginary birds in the woods. And sometimes, when the wind twisted through the dead branches, he thought he heard her laughter again—brief, cruel echoes that vanished before he could be certain.
By midnight, the road narrowed between two cliffs. Stone worn smooth by wagon wheels and boot soles. A perfect place for ambush. He slowed. Listened.
Nothing.
Not birds. Not wind.
Just the faint sound of something watching.
He turned fast—silent—axe half-raised.
But there was no one.
Only a feather. Black. Fresh.
Resting in the dust where no bird could've flown.
He didn't pick it up.
He didn't move for a long time.
Then, very quietly, he turned back around and walked into the valley below.
He remembered his father's words, long buried: "You'll know you're being hunted when the trees stop speaking." And they had. Hours ago.
Three villages lay across the next stretch. He stopped at none.
But they noticed him.
In the shadows of broken windows, behind torn curtains and cracked barn doors, they saw him pass.
No soldiers came through here anymore.
Only taxes.
Only crows.
So when they saw the cracked horn carved into the side of a stable post… they didn't speak.
But they memorized it.
A boy followed him for a mile, bare feet scraping gravel. Didn't say a word. Just walked behind until the hunter finally turned.
"What are you doing?" His voice rasped from a throat long rusted.
The boy looked up. Dirty face. Empty hands.
"You're real?"
The hunter didn't answer.
The boy nodded, as if that silence was permission. Then he pressed something into the hunter's hand.
A stone. Not carved. Not rare. Just flat, smooth, and warm from the boy's palm.
"For her," he said.
Then ran.
The hunter stared at the stone for a long time. His thumb traced its edge. It was meaningless, and yet... his fingers wouldn't let it go. His legs wouldn't let him drop it. It weighed less than air, but it landed like grief.
He didn't understand it.
But he didn't throw it away.
By morning, he reached the Scar Fields—burned plains from a war no one remembered. Nothing grew here. Not even silence.
Old siege towers lay broken like corpses left unburied. The air stank of iron and ash. Each step raised clouds of fine dust that clung to his skin like memory. He paused by a fallen banner whose colors were no longer visible, its fabric torn by weather and time.
He stepped carefully between rusted armor, shattered flags, and bones that no one had bothered to bury. Some skulls still wore helmets, others had arrows punched through eye sockets. The field wasn't haunted, but it should have been.
He wasn't the only one walking it.
At first, he thought it was a mirage.
Then a shadow.
But the shape didn't vanish.
A cloaked figure. Lean. Fast. Watching.
He moved toward it. No hesitation.
But when he reached the spot—nothing.
No tracks.
No scent.
Just a piece of parchment fluttering on a broken spear, tied with black thread.
He unrolled it.
No words.
Just a symbol: a closed eye with a single tear beneath it.
He crushed it in his hand.
The sky darkened again by dusk, clouds stretching low, threatening rain. He hadn't eaten in two days. Not that it mattered. Hunger had become as familiar as breath.
That night, he camped beneath an old war monument. A crumbling statue of a king no one revered anymore. Its face had been hacked off—likely by villagers too hungry to care who built it.
The fire he built was small. Just enough for warmth. Not light.
He stared at the flames.
Then at the stone the boy had given him.
Then at his axe.
"You followed me this far," he said to no one. "Might as well tell me your name."
Only the fire cracked.
But somewhere behind him… a twig snapped.
Not animal.
Too controlled.
He didn't turn.
"Speak."
Nothing.
Then a voice. Soft. Female. Old.
"You walk the path without a lantern."
He stood.
A woman emerged from the dark. Cloaked in fur, eyes like cracked glass, walking with a limp that didn't slow her.
"I know what you are," she said.
He didn't answer.
"And what you'll become."
Still no answer.
She reached into her robe. Pulled out a coin.
One side bore the cracked horn. The other—a symbol he didn't recognize: a broken sun.
"Not all monsters are born," she said. "Some are summoned."
She tossed the coin at his feet.
Then vanished.
He stared at it.
Didn't pick it up.
Didn't sleep that night either.
Far across the empire, the Gloved Lord received a new raven.
Its message was different this time.
It read:
He is not alone anymore.
The noble smiled beneath the gold.
And summoned the First Choir.
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Each chapter now carries more than blood—it carries whispers. The world is beginning to notice. The hunter's silence is no longer his own. Symbols are appearing. People are watching. Something stirs in the dark beside him.
If you're enjoying the journey, add this book to your library, leave a review, and drop a powerstone to help this story grow.
— QuiteKite