Elara jolted awake in the back of a cart, the rumble of its wheels a dull ache in her bones. She shifted, the simple fabric of her new dress scratching her skin, a constant, irritating reminder of everything sheâd lost.
The town appeared like a mirage, its walls unbreached, its houses mostly intact. No smoke climbed to the sky, no screams rent the air. Just the quiet hum of ordinary life. It was smaller than Hatting. Kael met her and greeted her at the gate. The heavy pouch of coins he pressed into her hand felt too warm, too real, a burden more than a gift. "Stay safe, Elara. Try to build a new life here." His eyes held a knowingness that made her skin crawl. He understood. He forgave. He and his knights rode off, swallowed by the horizon, leaving her to face the fragile peace.
Life became a strange, muted rhythm. The rented room at the inn, clean and surprisingly cozy, offered a thin veneer of normalcy. She walked the quiet streets, trying to fit the pieces of this new world together, but they always felt slightly off, misaligned. She met people. A baker with flour dusting his apron, a weaver whose nimble fingers created intricate patterns, and an old shoemaker whose hands were gnarled with age. They spoke of loss, of homes swallowed by the spreading chaos, of families scattered like ash. Elara listened, her throat tight, each shared sorrow a mirror reflecting her own hidden culpability. She never spoke of her true origin, never hinted at the spell, or the cataclysm it had wrought. The secret sat heavy, a constant pressure inside her.
The rhythmic clang of hammer on metal became her anchor. Crafting. It was familiar, a quiet, purposeful act. She spent afternoons in a rented smithy, the old ownerâs silent presence a comforting companion. Each strike of the hammer echoed, not just through the small space but through the chaos in her mind, quieting the gnawing anxieties.
In the evenings, she listened to the innâs chatter, the distant laughter, the murmur of voices. It was nice, she thought, to simply be in a place where normal sounds existed.
But even this small comfort came with its own frustrations. Raw materials were elusive, snatched by the warâs hungry maw. Miners couldn't risk the mountains. Hunters couldn't venture deep into the shadowed forests. Metal, wood, leather. All were precious, all expensive. Her ambitions of a thriving business dwindled, replaced by the grim reality of mere survival. Kael's coins, a finite shield against destitution, kept a roof over her head and food in her stomach, just enough to practice, to hold onto a sliver of her former self.
After weeks, rumors, like a festering wound, began to creep into the townâs quiet corners. Scouts, grim-faced and weary, passed through, carrying whispers from her old town, the one she had shattered. Fighting. Different armies. Each report twisted the knife in her heart. Then, the new whisper, colder, more insidious than the rest. "Someone who could change the documentation." It started as a faint rustle, growing into a low hum, then a jarring drumbeat. A powerful being, they said, rewriting reality. Her blood ran cold. They were talking about her.
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Then, days later, the focus shifted. The whispers morphed into a name she knew, a name that made her tea slosh in her mug, almost choking her. "Emperor Kael." Kael? Her kind protector? The one who had saved her? An emperor? The idea felt like a cruel joke. Yet, the stories flowed, relentless. Emperor Kael, with his powerful allies, his knights, his wizards, his armies. He wasn't just fighting. He was rewriting spells, using the documentation to conquer towns, to forge an empire from altered reality. A profound, icy dread seeped into her bones. This was her fault. The power sheâd stumbled upon was now a weapon in Kaelâs hands. The war, already a monster, was growing teeth she had unwittingly sharpened.
A few days later, the rumors solidified into the tramp of marching feet. An army, vibrant in unfamiliar colors, their drums a heavy pulse against the ground, stretched across the field outside town. Generals, their voices hushed with anger, lodged at the inn. Elara listened, her breath held tight. Other lords, horrified by Kaelâs ruthless use of the documentation, had united. This was their answer. This was one of their armies, come to stop him.
Even after they marched on, the whispers persisted, carried on the wind. Kaelâs spells, they said, were becoming monstrous. He could level armies with a single word. Not just fight. Destroy. Because he could change the rules. But a flicker of hope, thin as spun glass, emerged. The resistance, adapting, had begun to watch the documentation. They mirrored his destructive edits, fought fire with fire, or used his newly buffed healing and protection spells for their own.
The guilt settled, heavy and suffocating, until she felt she might drown in it. She had started this. She had opened the door. Kael, her friend, was now a conqueror, reshaping the world with the very power she had unleashed. She had to stop him. She was the only one who truly understood.
She gathered the few people she trusted. Good people she thought. She sat them down. The baker, the weaver, the shoemaker. Their faces were etched with the everyday concerns of simple villagers. Her voice was barely a whisper as she told them her secret, revealing the impossible truth of the documentation, of feeling the menu, of willing words to change. The weaver recoiled, her eyes wide with a primal fear. Changing reality was too much, too terrifying. The baker, though, leaned forward, a strange hunger in his gaze, his face alight with a dangerous excitement. Power. A chance to fight.
She spoke to more people and tried to rally them. She tried to gather them, to prepare them. To leave this fragile peace behind and march towards the raging storm. Her power, she told them, was their only hope.
But their faces, once eager, hardened into familiar lines of apprehension. "We're just simple villagers," the baker mumbled, shaking his head. "We want no part of war." The shoemaker and a few others she told melted away, back to their routines, pretending the world wasn't collapsing around them. They wanted no blood on their hands. The weaver simply vanished, swallowed by the surrounding woods, too scared to stay, too scared to fight.
In the end, only a handful remained. A few young men and women with a hatred for Kael, a scapegoat for all the destruction they had seen over the years. A couple of older souls, stripped bare by loss, with nothing left to cling to but defiance.
They gathered meager provisions. Dried food, water, rusty swords, and chipped axes. They were not an army. They were just a small, ragged knot of desperation.
Elaraâs heart, heavy with the weight of her failures, pulsed with a fierce, new determination. The guilt that had shadowed her every step now pushed her forward, a relentless force. She had caused this. And she would stop it. No matter what.