Velgrath's Eastern Fringe, Autumn's Fading
The stench of wet timber and horse sweat clung to the misty valley as dawn unfurled over the eastern marches. Smoke coiled lazily from the scorched shell of a farmhouse—nothing more than a blackened husk, its thatched roof collapsed inward like a broken ribcage. Beneath it, the soil still steamed, soaked with yesterday's rain and blood.
Aeron Thorne crouched beside the ruins, one hand braced on his knee, the other gloved and trailing through the ash. His fingers stopped on something half-buried. Not bone. Not steel. Cloth.
He tugged it free. A child's doll, the linen charred but intact enough to see the stitched smile. He turned it over once in his hand, then tossed it back into the cinders.
"Riders?" he asked without looking up.
"Two," replied Ser Harwin Vellor behind him, voice like gravel crushed under a boot. "At least. Hoof marks. One had iron shoes, the other none. Locals say they were asking about coin, maps, and a red sigil."
Aeron rose. His leather coat was worn, patched at the elbows, dyed long ago with the faded green of House Thorne—a house no longer welcome at court, no longer whispered at feast tables. A house struck from the rolls after the Crown's judgment and sealed by fire.
"They're scouting," Aeron muttered. "Testing what's left of the roads."
"And testing you," Harwin added, his tone lacking sympathy.
Aeron gave him a glance. The knight's face was lined with the hard years of hedge service—he bore no sigil save the scars on his arms and the long blade at his back.
"They'll find nothing worth stealing here," Aeron said, gaze sweeping the valley.
Once, this place had been a border steading under House Thorne's ward—grain grew thick in the lowlands, flax and barley traded at the bridge market three leagues east. That market was gone now. Burned out a year ago when loyalists to House Velstrom purged Thorne's bannermen. Most of the villagers fled into the northern woods. The rest fed the crows.
A boy—barely ten—watched them from behind a tree stump, hollow-eyed, clutching a rusted trowel as if it were a sword. Aeron caught his stare.
"Name?" he asked.
The boy didn't answer. He only looked at Harwin, then back to the ashes.
"Go on," Harwin said, not unkindly. "Speak to him."
"I'm not your lord," Aeron said softly.
"You wore a crown once," the boy muttered, voice brittle.
Aeron didn't respond. He knelt again, this time closer to the boy. "I wore a name. And they burned it. You have yours still. Keep it. It's worth more than gold now."
The boy shifted, uncertain. Aeron stood and turned toward the rising slope where their horses waited.
"Harwin. How far to the nearest still-standing inn?"
"Two days north. The Trillstone Way. Folk call it 'The Widow's Hearth.' Built into the hillside. Safe, if you don't ask questions."
"Good," Aeron said. "We'll ride at dusk."
Harwin raised a brow. "Not now?"
Aeron's gaze drifted westward—toward the long, invisible road that once linked Thorne's bannered halls to the river keeps and crown seat. Toward Caer Velnar, where lords still drank behind high walls, speaking of old laws and omens.
"No," Aeron said. "Let the wind carry what's left of this place. We ride after dark."
He mounted in silence.
The boy remained by the ruins, the charred doll half-buried beside him, while smoke spiraled up to meet the crows.
rs to dig."