The village had no walls, because it had never needed them.
It lay open beneath the sky, resting between rolling wheat fields and a slow, winding river that caught the light of the sun like polished silver. Seasons passed gently here. The people trusted the land, and the land had never betrayed them.
Children ran barefoot along dusty paths, their laughter carrying over the fields as they chased one another through stalks of grain taller than their heads. Old men mended nets near the riverbank, arguing softly about weather and harvests. Women hummed as they worked, their voices blending with the creak of wagon wheels and the lowing of cattle.
Logan belonged to this peace.
He remembered his mother's laughter most of all—clear and warm—floating through the evening air as she ground grain beside the hearth. She sang old songs, passed down from her own mother, songs about stars, rivers, and heroes who never truly existed. His father would smile at the sound, pretending not to listen while sharpening tools or repairing fences.
At sunset, his father would lift Logan onto his strong shoulders, calloused hands steady and sure, and together they would watch the sky burn gold and red as the day surrendered to night. In those moments, the world felt unbreakable.
Then the ground began to shake.
At first, it was distant—like thunder trapped beneath the earth. The laughter faded. Birds burst from the trees in frantic black clouds. Cups rattled on wooden tables. Someone shouted a question that never received an answer.
Horses thundered in from the west.
Steel flashed in the dying sunlight. Fire followed close behind.
King Xerath's banners—black and gold, crowned with the sigil of a coiled serpent—rose above the village like a curse made cloth. Logan had never seen such colors before, never imagined something so beautiful could mean something so terrible. Soldiers poured in like a flood, their armor gleaming, their boots crushing wheat and bone alike. Their faces were hidden behind helms, and where faces should have been, there was only cruelty.
Screams tore through the air.
Logan stood frozen as his world shattered around him. Homes burned. Animals broke loose, shrieking in terror. A man he recognized—kind, quiet, always quick with a smile—fell with an arrow buried in his throat.
His father moved first.
He grabbed a farming scythe, its blade dull from honest work, and shoved Logan toward his mother. "Run," he shouted—but the word never finished leaving his mouth.
A sword took him across the chest.
His father fell at the doorway, blood soaking into the dirt he had worked his entire life. Logan watched him die without understanding how such a thing was possible.
His mother screamed.
She pulled Logan to her, wrapping herself around him as shields and prayers failed alike. A spear punched through her back, its tip emerging red and wet before her. She gasped, staggered, and collapsed atop her son.
Her blood soaked into the earth, warm and steaming, her weight pressing him into the ground. Logan stared at her face as the light drained from her eyes, her lips moving soundlessly as if still trying to sing.
Logan did not scream.
The shock stole his voice. The world narrowed to firelight, smoke, and the pounding of his own heart. He lay still beneath his mother's body while boots passed inches from his face. A soldier laughed nearby. Someone kicked over a pot. Someone else set the house ablaze.
When the soldiers finally left, they left nothing behind but ash, corpses, and silence.
They left Logan alive—either by accident or by cruelty. He never knew which was worse.
Night fell slowly, suffocating the village beneath smoke and stars. Flames died down to embers. The wind carried the smell of death across the fields where children had once played.
Logan crawled free.
His hands were slick with blood that was not his own. He stumbled through ruins, calling for voices that would never answer. He found bodies twisted in ways no living thing should bend. He found toys crushed beneath boots, doors hacked apart, and dreams reduced to cinders.
When exhaustion finally took him, he curled up beneath the open sky, surrounded by the dead.
That night, beneath a heaven choked with smoke and indifferent stars, a boy died.
And something harder, colder, and far more dangerous was born in his place.