Prologue | The Scream

Wind knifed through the watchtower, setting the old timbers creaking. Varian leaned against a rough post and looked down at the village below—huts clustered beneath the forest’s shadow, mist coiling through muddy streets.

Behind him, Garrick shifted his weight. The boards squeaked underfoot. Firelight caught the lines on his face—marks of too many sleepless nights.

“Quiet,” Garrick said.

“Always is.”

“Could be worse. Heard they’re battling giant hordes in the Frostgard passes.”

Varian snorted. “Better than guarding turnip farmers from their own shadows.”

“Who says that’s all we’re guarding against?”

The question hung between them. Varian wanted to dismiss it—village gossip, nursery rhymes—but the words wouldn’t come. The forest watched them with a patience that made his skin prickle.

“My uncle served in the Grukmar campaigns.” Garrick’s voice dropped. “He told me things. Things they don’t want known.”

“Such as?”

A glance over the shoulder—quick, nervous, as if the night itself might be listening.

“The Grukmari revere old gods. They use captives for rituals. Blood magic.”

“Horseshit.” The denial came automatically. But doubt crept in anyway, cold and unwelcome.

“Then why did the Empire pull back? Why leave all this land empty?”

Varian poked at the coals. The stories from his childhood surfaced unbidden—blood-soaked offering stones, monsters that walked like men.

Foolishness.

“This backwater’s rotted your brain,” he growled. “Nothing out there but—”

A scream split the darkness.

High. Terrible. The kind that made trained men freeze in place.

Both men froze.

“The square!”

They moved. Muscle memory took over where courage failed. Boots hammered down rickety steps. Armor clanked too loud in the silent village.

The village lay shuttered and still. Only wisps of chimney smoke proved anyone was alive in there at all.

“There!”

A small figure stumbled from between two huts. A girl, twelve at most, dress torn and filthy. She lurched into the open with her arms flailing, fighting at shadows only she could see.

Varian reached her first. He dropped to a crouch, close enough to catch the smell of fear rolling off her—acrid, animal.

“Are you hurt?”

Her face lifted. A mask of terror. Tear-tracks cutting through the grime. Her mouth worked but nothing came out. Then her fingers found his arm and dug in, nails biting through fabric, and she was shaking so hard he could feel it in his bones.

“You’re safe.” The words rang false. “Let’s get you home.”

She wouldn’t move. Her eyes stayed fixed on the alley mouth, on the shadows pooling between those leaning walls.

Slowly, Varian turned to look.

Nothing.

Just darkness. Just an empty alley.

But the girl made a sound—small, wounded, more animal than human—and it cut through him worse than any shout.

His grip went white-knuckled on the spear. The night pressed close, thick with something he couldn’t name.

Later, he would tell himself she’d seen nothing. A trick of shadow. A fever dream.

But her eyes never left that alley. And when he finally turned away, leading her toward the lights of the village, the back of his neck prickled like something was watching him go.

End of Prologue 3 — continues in Prologue 4: Tavern Talk