The next morning, I woke to the sound of someone throwing fruit.
"Catch!"
Too late.
An apricot—or something like an apricot—smacked me dead between the eyes and bounced into the moss.
I groaned.
Selaithe stood above me, hands on her hips, grinning like she was proud of her crimes. "Breakfast. Sort of."
"You could've handed it to me like a normal person."
"You say that like I've ever been normal."
I sat up, rubbing my forehead. "Do elves even eat apricots?"
"Apparently not," she said, eyeing the now-bruised fruit on the ground. "This one's filled with glowing jelly. I think it's still moving."
"...I'm not hungry."
A new voice piped in—soft, lilting, and amused. "It's called a shiva blossom. Don't eat the center. It stuns your tongue."
I turned.
Two young elves stood a few feet away—barefoot, both dressed in bark-stitched robes. One had eyes like shifting amber, the other carried a practice staff carved with vines and tiny bells. She looked maybe nine. Eleven, if she was being particularly elven.
"I told you we should've warned them," the staff girl said.
"Wouldn't have been as fun," said the other.
Selaithe raised a brow. "What do you want?"
The staff girl stepped forward and gave a tiny bow. "You moved like someone who's fought before. The elders said outsiders don't stay long, but while you are here, I was wondering…"
"Wondering what?" Selaithe asked, crossing her arms.
"If you'd spar with us," the elf said.
Selaithe blinked. "Seriously?"
"You fight like a crowbitten shadow," the other elf said cheerfully. "One of the elders compared your stance to an injured fox in a meat pit. But a clever fox."
Selaithe's face contorted through several emotions.
I sat back and tried not to laugh.
"I'm taking that as a compliment," she said finally.
"You should," the staff girl replied.
Within ten minutes, we found ourselves at the edge of a moss-wrapped dueling circle—marked not by lines, but by hanging vine loops and low-sung chants that vibrated through the roots.
Selaithe rolled her shoulders, adjusted her stolen belt, and turned to me. "If they stab me, avenge me dramatically."
I gave a mock bow. "With a song and tears."
The duel was… bizarre.
It wasn't fast. Not at first. The elves moved in slow, sweeping arcs—staffs whispering through the air, feet gliding across moss like dancers mid-ritual. But Selaithe didn't bother mimicking. She went full street-elf chaos: lunges, spins, momentum-powered elbow jabs that made the staff girl yelp.
"Your form is—unusual!" one of the elves shouted mid-sidestep.
"So's my childhood!" Selaithe called back.
They circled. Swapped stances. Someone whistled from a high branch.
A few more elves gathered to watch—some with woven sashes marking them as apprentices, others older, wearing carved bone tokens. Sylrienn didn't seem to mind outsiders as long as they were interesting.
I sat back with my legs crossed, chewing on a root that tasted vaguely like mint and regret.
One of the elder elves eventually took notice of me.
She sat beside me, quiet as fog. Her eyes were almost translucent—pale green, with pupils shaped like leaves.
"You are the boy with the burning thread," she said.
"…What?"
"Your aura," she clarified. "It trails behind you when you breathe. I've seen few like it."
I swallowed. "Is that bad?"
She smiled gently. "It's unwritten. That is neither good nor bad. Just… strange."
I didn't know how to respond to that. So I asked something else.
"Do you know what a tainted white aura means?"
The elf's smile faded.
She looked away, toward the trees. "Only that it should not exist."
That didn't help.
At all.
Selaithe eventually won the spar—not with grace, but by sheer refusal to yield. She disarmed one of the elf girls by kicking her staff into the air and catching it, then tossing it over her shoulder while making finger-guns.
"Champion of style," she declared.
"You're not supposed to win, it's ceremonial!" one of them whined.
Selaithe blew her a kiss.
Later, back in our guest hut, she flopped onto her back and sighed into the thatched roof. "I like this place."
"Even if it makes no sense?"
"Especially because of that."
I sat beside her and looked at my hand—the one that had sparked when I trained yesterday. The shimmer was gone now. Dormant. But I still felt it, pulsing faintly beneath the skin.
"I think they know something," I murmured.
"Who?"
"The elves. About my aura. Or my magic. Or something."
She yawned. "They probably do. But it's an elf thing. They won't just tell you. You have to earn it."
"How?"
"Not being boring helps."
I kicked a pillow at her.
She kicked it back.
We laughed until we couldn't anymore.
⟡
The rest of that week passed like a slow dream. We traded coin for dried herbs and spare boots. Selaithe gambled away a whole pouch of counterfeit money in a dice game she somehow won anyway. I sparred with an elven boy who used a spear like it was an extension of his spine. I lost, obviously.
But I learned.
We didn't forget about Veyr. Or Calden. Or the hunters that might still be chasing us. But for once… we weren't just surviving.
We were living.
And somewhere deep in me, I started to believe—
Maybe we could keep it that way.
Even just for a little longer.
⟡
It happened at dusk.
Not a dramatic dusk. Not red skies and thunder. Just… soft colors. The kind that made the whole village glow like amber glass. The kind that makes you believe things will be okay.
That's why it hurt worse when it broke.
Selaithe and I had just finished practice. She'd spent the last hour bullying one of the elf boys with sharp words and sharper footwork, then sauntered over like she hadn't bruised half the village's pride. I was still catching my breath when it hit me.
That shift in the air.
Like the forest blinked.
The wards fell.
One second, birdsong. The next, silence so deep it made my ears ring.
Then the screaming started.
Not people. Not yet.
The trees.
They screamed.
A horrible bending shriek—like bark tearing itself apart. The canopy cracked open, and something landed beyond the outer grove with a sound that broke the dirt.
Elven horns cried out. One of the watchtowers flared blue before being crushed under something we couldn't see. Lights flickered. The wind changed direction.
"Kaelen," Selaithe said.
Just my name. Not a question. Not a warning.
I was already moving.
We raced up the root paths toward the outer perimeter, past panicked sentries and a child with glowing eyes pressed against her mother's side. Elves were calling spells into their palms. I saw an old archer dragging a runed bow from a shrine wall, and I realized—
They weren't used to this.
Not anymore.
They weren't ready.
The creature hit the warding line again. This time, we saw it.
Its jaws shimmered and shifted with each breath, refusing to settle on a shape. Its legs were too many. Its mouth split sideways, then down, then in. And it reeked of something unwritten—something that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
"Back!" a scout shouted, but the line faltered.
A young elf barely twelve tried to cast a binding vine spell, but the roots twisted mid-air and withered before reaching the beast. Magic wasn't holding. Nothing was holding.
Except Selaithe.
She stepped forward.
Not hesitantly. Not cautiously.
Casually.
She pulled her blade.
Not the curved elven training weapon. Her real one. The short-handled knife she carried like it was just another limb.
"Don't," I said.
She smiled over her shoulder. "Stay behind me, ghost prince."
"Selaithe—"
"I'm not letting it hurt anyone."
The beast charged.
It didn't move like something that belonged to this plane. It slid forward and glitched, like time couldn't quite agree where it was. It shattered the air in front of it with a pulse of hollow mana.
And Selaithe met it head-on.
Her movement wasn't clean. It wasn't graceful.
It was real.
She slid under its first strike, stabbed upward, and carved through its shifting chest with a scream of steel and blood and pure, unfiltered rage. Not magic. Not holy power. Just Selaithe.
She fought like the world had dared to touch something she cared about—and she'd make it pay.
The creature lashed out. She bled. It staggered. She didn't.
And when it shrieked again—high and hungry—she didn't flinch.
She roared back.
The entire village felt it.
The monster collapsed, body half-decaying mid-air, and Selaithe stood over it panting, knife still humming with residual energy.
The trees held their breath again.
Then they exhaled.
The wind returned. The birds sang once more.
And the silence broke with the voice of an elder stepping forward.
"You bear it," she said. "The mark of defiance. The howl of blood. The step of the broken moon."
Elves began whispering—soft, reverent, confused.
The elder turned fully toward her and raised a hand in blessing.
"Selaithe of the Thal'Zurein" she said. "Let the woods remember you."
Selaithe blinked. "I didn't agree to that name."
"You earned it," the elder said simply.
"Can I at least negotiate the phrasing?"
"No."
She turned toward me then. And that smirk came back.
"Well," she said. "Now we're both cursed and famous."
I didn't say anything.
I was still watching her blood drip onto the bark. Still hearing the creature's final scream in my skull.
Still watching how her shoulders hadn't relaxed even after the danger passed.
She noticed.
And shrugged.
"I told you I'd bury anyone who tried to take you," she said. "That one just got a head start."