She Was the Kind of Fire That Forgot to Ask Permission
The woods weren't quiet. Not in the way peace was quiet.
They were listening.
Branches didn't rustle, they inhaled. Fog didn't drift, it waited. The air held that unnatural stillness that came before a beast struck the last blow.
Lyara Brightbane didn't mind.
She knelt in the brush, one gloved hand resting on the hilt of her sword, the other pressed to the soil, eyes shut.
She wasn't praying.
She was remembering.
"The hybrid's alive," her second-in-command had said two days ago. "We've got reports he was seen near the border of the Thirteenth. He's got something with him."
Something.
Lyara knew what "something" meant.
The prophecy-child.
The one the Order called "the Bridge-Walker."
The one she was sworn to kill.
Her lips barely moved as she whispered the Oath again, not because she needed to, but because repetition burned hesitation from the bones.
We walk in silver. We bleed in light. Let all that hides in shadow fall before the Dawn of Light.
She opened her eyes.
The footprint was there deep, irregular. Not fresh, but recent enough. Male. Heavy. But not armored. Swift, evasive. Shadow-step patterns. She recognized the shape.
Ashkore.
Her jaw tightened.
The Order still spoke of him like a myth. The Forsaken Guardian, the Council's mistake, the cursed hybrid who walked between worlds and left ruin in both. Some knights whispered he was a demon wearing flesh. Others said he was just a man with too many scars.
Lyara had seen him once.
Years ago.
On a battlefield made of ash and bone, where her sister's body had burned.
She didn't forget faces. Especially not the ones that didn't beg for mercy.
She moved like water over razors, fluid, silent, inevitable. The forest parted for her, in a way it didn't for others. She wasn't a mage, but some kind of violence had rooted itself in her spirit long ago, and the Veil recognized its own.
The trees here, these grotesque, semi-living things trembled as she passed. Thornhearts had once ruled this stretch, before they were culled. Their vines still twitched underground, waiting for orders that would never come.
Lyara ignored the eerie stirrings. She had hunted among worse.
Ahead, a flicker, there. Not sound. Not sight. Scent.
Smoke, bone-dust, and oddly, milk. Burnt cloth.
A baby.
She stilled. Her fingers hovered over her weapon.
So the rumors were true. The hybrid had a child. Not his, of course. Not possible. But carried. Protected. Why?
She moved closer, heart steady, breath paced. The rhythm of battle, there even when blood hadn't yet touched air.
The old Boneclaw's hut was barely a structure. More like a fever dream someone dared to live in. Bones threaded into walls like veins, sigils scrawled in dried sap, wind-chimes made of finger joints. It smelled like wet rot and regret.
She circled the perimeter once, slowly, mapping escape points, weak structures, any symbols that might trigger traps.
Then she found the hybrid's shadow.
It wasn't cast by light. It moved against it.
Ashkore stepped into the open without surprise. Like he'd been waiting. His coat stirred with motion that didn't come from the wind. His eyes had shifted: silver around the edges, black at the core, like someone trying very hard to not become something worse.
He didn't reach for a weapon.
Lyara did.
Her blade sang as it left its sheath slender, curved, etched with the Oath down its spine. It reflected no light.
"You're slower than the legends," she said.
"You're louder than I expected," he replied.
Their words were calm, clipped. The way old soldiers spoke before the blood started.
Lyara advanced a step. "Hand her over."
"No."
"I won't ask twice."
"You just did."
She lunged. Blade-first.
Ashkore caught the motion, sidestepped but not clean. Her edge nicked his shoulder, slicing through the illusion he'd wrapped around himself like breath. Blood welled dark, but he didn't flinch.
He countered fast. Shadows spiraled from his fingertips, weaving into spears, knives, feints. She dodged three. Blocked one. Let the last cut her thigh on purpose, get close, trade pain for opening.
Her elbow slammed into his jaw. He staggered. She spun low, slicing for his knees.
He vanished.
Literally.
Voidstepped.
She rolled, knowing it'd put him behind her, came up just in time to parry a blade of pure darkness aimed at her spine.
Steel met shadow with a hiss that sounded too much like a scream.
For a moment, they locked. Blade to blade. Eye to eye.
"You still working for the Council?" she growled.
"They tried to kill me first."
"How noble."
"I don't work for anyone anymore."
"Then die for someone."
Lyara kicked off him, landed two steps back, panting. Sweat beaded on her brow. Not from exertion but from the truth whispering at the edges.
He wasn't fighting to win. He was buying time.
Her eyes narrowed.
She could hear it now. Inside the hut.
The baby.
Not crying.
Just… breathing. Calm.
She remembered her sister's baby. The one born during the Emberfiend raids. The one who didn't survive the journey west. She'd only held him once.
She clenched her grip harder.
Ashkore watched her.
"This isn't the fight you think it is," he said, softly now.
"No?" she asked, raising her blade again. "Then what is it?"
He looked tired. Not weak, just... hollowed.
"She changes things," he said. "She isn't what the prophecy says. They're wrong."
"Or you're deluded."
"Maybe. But I'm still bleeding for her."
Lyara paused. Just a breath.
Then the hut door creaked.
Grim stood there, pale and shaking, holding the baby wrapped in old cloth and shadow.
And for the briefest, shattering instant…
Lyara hesitated.
Because the girl looked at her. Mismatched eyes, steady and open.
And Lyara felt,
not a spell, not magic,
but seen.
Something sharp inside her cracked.
Just a little.
Just enough.
She didn't lower her blade.
But she didn't swing again either.
Ashkore stepped between her and the girl, slowly. Hands down. Blood dripping from his arm.
Lyara spoke, quietly now. "You're going to try to run."
"Yes."
"And I'm going to have to chase you."
He nodded. "I know."
She looked down. Then up again.
"Then run fast."
And turned away.