Page 5 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

“Fate doesn’t knock. It drags you by the bones.” —Caelen Vorr, last rider of the Hollow Watch

Eliryn didn’t speak. Not when the guards arrived, not when the villagers watched from alongside the dirt path, afraid to meet her eyes. Her breath fogged in the morning chill, shallow and controlled.

One of the riders dismounted as she neared—boots sinking slightly into the frost-hardened earth.

His movements were smooth and practiced, like someone who had collected many things in his life: taxes, criminals, unwilling trial chosen.

His armor was scuffed but polished, marked by long travel but worn with obvious pride.

His face was stark against the pale morning—sharp cheekbones, a dark braid looped over one shoulder, and a narrow scar splitting his bottom lip. He looked at her the way someone might study the edge of a blade—curious, not yet impressed.

His eyes lingered on hers. Not with sympathy. But recognition. Noticing the strange, blind fog that coated her irises—and the distaste she did not try to hide behind them.

“So,” he said. His voice was rough but even, like gravel under snow. “This is what the Flame has chosen.”

She said nothing.

Another rider, still mounted, gave a laugh—dry and cruel. “She’ll last just long enough to die in the depths of the citadel. The only mark she’ll ever leave.”

Eliryn didn't flinch. Her jaw tightened, just enough to ache, but she'd heard worse from her own village.

“Lead the way,” she said.

That caught them. Both of them, for just a beat. The first rider’s brows lifted slightly, as if measuring her again with new information. The second gave a snort but didn’t answer otherwise.

The third rider didn’t speak at all.

He remained still, hood drawn low, horse perfectly motionless beneath him. His presence was unnerving—not just silent, but absent . As though he took up space without belonging to it. Eliryn couldn’t sense his attention outright, yet she felt watched.

Without a word, the first rider turned and gestured toward a fourth horse—tethered quietly behind the others. A compact, dark-coated mare with intelligent eyes. Her breath curled into the cold air like smoke, and she stood completely still as Eliryn approached.

No blessing. No words. Just the mare, waiting like a sentence handed down. Eliryn swung onto the saddle anyway.

Her fingers closed over the reins like memory—tight, but certain. Her mother had taught her well, even if her body had never left the village. She could feel the strength of the mare beneath her, the low hum of anticipation in its bones.

Behind them, her house was already burning.

The ember nests she’d laid—dried root-cloth, oil-soaked bark, birdflame twigs—caught fast. Smoke billowed upward in thick gray tendrils. The thatch had fallen in. She could hear the last groans of the beams as they collapsed.

The first rider paused to glance back. “What kind of girl burns her house down before she leaves?” he muttered—not to her. Not to anyone.

The second rider sneered. “The kind who doesn’t come back.”

She let the silence answer for her.

What kind of girl burns her house down?

The kind who can't afford to look back.

The road out of Lirin’s Edge passed quiet, shuttered homes. Smoke coiled into the sky, dark against the pale dawn. Silence accompanied the riders as they traveled forward.

They made no conversation.

By the time they stopped near a bend in the forest road, night had fallen in earnest. A fire was lit before Eliryn had the chance to dismount from her mare.

The others gathered close to the heat, muttering in clipped phrases, inspecting weapons and saddles.

Eliryn stood at the edge of the firelight, unsure if she was meant to join them, if that would even be allowed.

The silent rider approached.

He moved without sound. Not even his armor gave him away. He extended a blanket toward her, and she took it, their fingers brushing.

A chill went up her spine.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

His voice came so softly, it could have been mistaken for wind through leaves.

“You don’t ask questions,” he said.

Eliryn blinked. “Would you answer them?”

A long pause.

“No,” he admitted, but without cruelty.

She almost smiled. Almost. But that felt like too much, tonight. “Then we understand each other.”

He didn’t reply with words, but the smallest shift in his expression suggested amusement. He moved away like a shadow drawn back toward the trees.

Later, when two of the guards murmured among themselves, Eliryn sat alone. She kept her ears open. Not just to what they said, but to what they didn't. No names. Not even once.

The woods whispered behind her. Something cracked softly underfoot.

She hated how her voice cracked. Hated that she asked at all. “Someone there?”

Silence. Of course there's no answer. That would make things easy.

He was there again. The third rider. Watching. Always watching.

When a venomous crawler darted toward her, she flinched at the sudden thud of a stone. She never saw it die—she only heard the crack of bone, smelled the metallic tang of something broken. Her stomach flipped. She hated that, too.

That night, she dreamed—of wind and voice and presence too large for shape. She woke gasping, the pendant branding heat into her sternum. She tore it out from under her armor, clutching it in her fists until her knuckles turned white. A perfect ring of melted frost had formed around her bedroll.

The others said nothing. But their eyes lingered too long.

By the next afternoon, the towers of the capital broke across the horizon. The road beneath them seemed to pulse, as if something ancient stirred far beneath its stone spine.

They passed a black-liveried wagon going the other way.

“Royal physician’s crest,” the scarred rider muttered.

“Strange time to run,” said the cruel one.

“Strange time for everything. First the call. Next the culling.”

Eliryn stayed silent. But the words coiled somewhere low in her stomach, heavy as stone.

By nightfall, the city swallowed them in stone and shadow.

And somewhere far below it all, something old stirred.

Waiting.

And whispering her name.

Eliryn clenched her jaw and told herself it was the wind.