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Chapter two

Nerys

N erys did not wake all at once.

It happened in one step after another as the various stages of awakening came over her, soon followed once again by darkness.

First, she was aware of sounds—clangs and screams—which registered to her still-dreaming mind as if from another world.

Then the sounds became mixed with smells, a miasma of smoke and the rotting earth on which her head rested.

Then light crept in, at first distant like a cloudy dawn, but eventually, painfully bright as her world came back into focus.

Nerys groaned and reached for her throbbing head with heavy arms. Where was she? She narrowed her eyes against the harsh sun. Why was she outside?

In a rush it came back. The nighttime meeting. The army. Cefin—that bastard hit her. She gently probed the violated spot on her head, swollen like a mushroom cap.

Nerys groaned, from more than just physical pain. He betrayed her. He hurt her. When she found him, she was going to make him suffer. Oh yes, a blow to his head would be just the beginning, followed by a blow to other parts he cared for even more.

Now, she just had to figure out how to stand first.

Nerys’s frozen and stiff body protested each movement.

How long was she unconscious? The sun was high in the sky.

Midday. No one had come for her. Why would they?

No one would be out in these thickets this time of year, and even if they were searching for her, this wouldn’t be high on the list of possible places to look.

But on second glance, the sun looked strange, it was red, and the sky was laden with—

“Smoke,” she whispered. Too much smoke to tell its origin. The word came out with far too much effort, her throat dry and thick. She coughed. The pounding in her head spread to her heart. What if the screams were not dreams after all? What if the enemy had finally come for them?

No. It couldn’t be. The army was still here. They were still protected.

Nerys rolled over and pushed herself up .

The village. She had to get to Raven’s Crest.

Adilette. Mother. Father.

Her dress was soiled—it didn’t matter. Her family.

Where was her family? Dizziness blurring her vision, she forced herself upright, no matter how much her stomach flipped.

Who cared about the danger, that the people who started the fire might not have left?

She should’ve never met with Cefin and left her family.

Too late for regrets. She’d be there now. No matter what.

Go. She had to go. Faster. Who cared about pain, the struggle to stay upright? The world lurched with every step, sending her crashing into trees. The bark scraped her hands and tore a nail. Nerys pressed on.

Go, go, go rang in her head with the pounding of her heart.

She passed the bushes and trees she had seen the night before, only now the hopeful romantic girl was gone, replaced by a desperate specter.

The R?ll’s shrine outside the village was intact, his statue still hovering above three oil lanterns and plates of burned-out incense.

Hopefully, the rest of her home would be the same.

It wasn’t.

At the village outskirts, Nerys stopped and took in the transformation that had come over her village, her first look at a new, twisted world.

An eerily silent world. While most of the buildings still stood, several were burned, smoldering husks.

The ones left unburned had smashed window shutters and broken doors.

Some were nothing more than charred logs and brilliant embers.

No. No. No. No.

Her family. What happened to her family?

…The same thing that happened to them ?

The carnage that had once been Nerys's fellow townsmen, women, and children lay before her.

Men and women—many nude and bearing gashes, burns, and brands—laid in the streets.

The lucky ones probably died quickly from a slit throat.

The “lucky” ones. Birds picked at their entrails and reluctantly flew away as Nerys approached, with one raven refusing to budge until it finished working a slimy piece free.

The village baker laid in the street next to his shop, his intestine-filled hands resting in his stomach, eyes nothing but dark, bloody sockets.

Her neighbor, an old woman, recognizable only by her red and black kerchief—was a pulp brutalized beyond recognition .

Nerys turned her head and bit back a scream. Her childhood friend, Mara—or at least her head—laid in the street like a child’s discarded ball. 6

This was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. Her eyes slammed shut, the horrors refusing to leave when she had reopened them.

Better that she had died than lived to see this.

Cefin. Was Cefin here? Did he perish in this massacre? Her eyes darted, searching for him among the endless bodies. Strange—none of Ca’mail’s soldiers laid amongst the dead. They should have been here, protecting her home. Were they called away and Cerdoran attacked? How long was she unconscious?

She couldn’t worry about the army now. She had to find her family.

Stepping deftly around viscera and puddles of blood and worse, Nerys worked her way through the slaughter.

Her breath heaved, and the taste of smoke and carnage rested on her tongue, a mix of cooked meat, charred wood, and human waste.

She covered her lips with a trembling hand. The gesture did no good.

Movement caught her eye. She wasn’t the only specter drifting amidst the scene. Other survivors wandered the streets. An occasional heartbreaking wail rang out as villagers found what remained of their loved ones.

“Arabella!” Nerys called out and ran towards the blacksmith’s wife. All unfamiliarity was brushed aside. “Arabella, you survived.”

At her touch the older woman cried out, and the two women collapsed, their arms wrapped around each other.

“Living Gods, protect us,” Arabella prayed.

“Living Gods, guide us. Living Gods, by the sacrifice of Ca’mail we were saved from oppression and despair, look now with mercy upon us, heirs of Ca’mail’s gift—”

Seeing the woman undone sent fresh tears to her eyes, though Nerys did not join in the prayer. She was done praying. The Living Gods may have blessed them by giving some of their kingdom the magic of sight, she had seen too much today. There was no sign of anyone’s mercy here.

Nerys was not ready to grieve yet. If Arabella lived, maybe her family still did, too.

“What happened?” Nerys asked. “Have you seen my family?”

Arabella shook her head, scattering ashes that had nested in her gray hair. “I don’t know,” she broke out between sobs. “We were attacked. They told me.” Arabella nodded towards two men sifting through a pile of corpses. Her wrinkled hands wrung her skirts, tearing at the worn fabric.

“By who? Who did this?”

“Soldiers.”

“Cerdoran’s?”

“Who else?”

Who else, indeed. It wasn’t bandits who committed this carnage. Bandits wouldn’t have been organized or numerous enough to be this thorough. But where was her family?

“I need to go,” Nerys said, lifting herself and then running to her home, leaving Arabella sobbing behind her.

Alone, Nerys made her way through the mangled corpses once more.

So much blood. So many empty eyes, mouths, and bowels leaking on the ground.

This wasn’t real. She would wake up and everything would be as it was before.

Where was her family? Adilette? Her father and mother?

Maybe Father was hunting and he survived.

Maybe Adilette had gone to visit one of her friends in a neighboring village.

Maybe—

Once she reached the village’s square, she stopped.

Glistening bodies in the square’s center reflected the early afternoon sun.

If only she could pretend she never saw them and continue on.

But they were posed so strangely… And then Nerys found herself walking towards the scene, as if her body wasn’t under her control.

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she had died and some phantom was dragging her through the wreckage of her life.

Slowly she came close enough to make sense of the scene, her mouth dry and body trembling.

And then she wished she had never entered the village at all.

Five corpses—three men and two women—were placed on the ground in a star pattern, with their feet touching and their arms angled down towards their feet to mimic points.

Holes were sliced in their abdomens, their entrails pulled out into an elaborate arc, so that the star was a design crafted from their own insides.

7 The smell of sulfur and something Nerys couldn’t place wafted through the air, and then she realized it came from a small fire that had been burning at the “star’s” center.

The bodies weren’t those of strangers—would it have been better if they were?

Instead, there was a neighbor displayed along with his wife and adult son.

They had given Nerys’s mother preserved apples last fall and had helped repair their roof.

The other man was an old widower, Regin, who had kept to himself but still managed to craft wooden toys as gifts.

And the last woman was Adilette, her hair sprawled out like she was sleeping, yet her eyes were open to the sun. Dead. At that moment a fly flew onto Adilette’s open eye, its twitching feet searching for a meal.

No. No. No. No.

Nerys heaved the few contents of her stomach onto the blood-stained ground, the rancid bile burning her throat.

When her stomach was empty, Nerys covered her mouth and averted her eyes—why couldn’t they have killed her too?

Why did she have to live through this? Wartime horrors were no longer a vague threat—they were real.

And here. Her plans didn’t matter—they failed.