Chapter 1
The smell of spilled ale and sweat clung to the air like a second skin. It was the kind of stink that settled into your bones after enough years and never quite left. But I was used to it. Another long night at the Rusty Lantern—the only halfway-decent job in this gods-forsaken hamlet just beyond the shadow of the castle. My purgatory. My cage.
The tavern groaned with noise—drunken laughter, shouted card games, the scrape of boots dragging across warped wood. The air was thick with smoke and old sorrow. Most patrons were bundled in thick furs or patched winter jackets, their wool scarves limp and damp from melted frost. Fingers wrapped tightly around mugs of spiced liquor, they huddled as close to the hearth as they dared, faces flushed from drink or fire or both. The blazing flames behind the bar crackled with a fury that never quite reached the floorboards, a desperate shield against the bite of the wind clawing through the cracks in the walls.
That morning, I’d been outside behind the tavern chopping firewood before sunrise. The cold had sunk into everything—my fingers numb beneath wool gloves, breath fogging the air with every exhale. I’d worn my thickest coat then—a stitched leather thing lined with bear fleece, heavy across my shoulders. It made every swing of the axe feel like dragging through snow, but without it, I would’ve been a statue of ice before the kindling was even stacked.
Now, the coat hung on its usual hook in the corner closet, steaming gently from where the snow had clung to it earlier. With so many bodies pressed together and the fire roaring, the tavern had warmed to something almost tolerable. I worked in a long-sleeved blouse, the cuffs rolled up to my forearms, and a woolen skirt I’d hemmed two inches shorter than standard issue. I hated when it dragged across the dirty floors, catching soot and spilled ale.
I was halfway through wiping down the bar, trying not to think about how many hours I’d been on my feet, when I felt it. A hand. Creeping onto the small of my back. Slow. Entitled. Unwelcome.
“Hey, sweetheart,” the drunk slurred, breath thick with rot and bad decisions. “Why don’t you come keep me company?”
I didn’t turn. The weight of his hand was all the invitation I needed—and all the warning he would get.
My cyan eyes—ethereal blue, like starlight frozen in motion—locked on his, the way two blades meet before they strike.
People always stared at my eyes. Said they looked like stars lived inside them. Like they belonged to someone from a place of magic, not to a girl like me. And it’s true—Sylvaris is laced with old power. The land itself breathes with it, humming beneath the ice and stone. Some people are born with it. Most aren’t. The ones who are usually find out early. It manifests when you’re young—when your bones are still soft and your heart still believes.
Mine never did. At least, I don’t think it did. If I ever had magic, it never showed itself. Not in a spark, not in a flicker, not in a whisper.
The drunk’s fingers tightened like he thought he was being clever. Like he hadn’t just made the last mistake of his night.
I grabbed the nearest thing—a wooden mug, splintered at the rim—and swung it with every ounce of the week’s swallowed rage. He ducked. Barely. The mug shattered against the stone wall behind him.
He blinked, startled. Dull eyes trying to catch up.
I didn’t wait.
I spun, grabbed his collar, and slammed him against the stone. His head cracked hard. A grunt, a crunch of bone. He folded like paper.
“Touch me again,” I growled low into his ear, “and I’ll break more than your nose.”
He stumbled back, clutching his face. No apology. Just a muttered curse and coward’s retreat, knocking over a stool on his way out the door.
No one intervened. No one even blinked. The Rusty Lantern thrived on violence. Half the regulars probably thought I’d gone soft.
I slammed my palm against the bar. Louder than I meant to.
“Alright! Closing time!” My voice rang out, sharp as glass.
A few groaned. Most stood.
“Last call! Anyone still here in five minutes is sleeping in the alley,” I added, steel in my tone.
The crowd thinned. The usual mutterings about hangovers, debts, and snow-choked mornings filled the silence they left behind.
A couple lingered near the back. I stared them down until their smirks died. “Out. Now.”
The door slammed behind them. The quiet after was almost holy.
I turned off the overheads, leaving only the hearth’s orange glow. It danced against the walls, shadows stretching like worn-out memories.
The boss? Passed out cold in the back, mouth open, bottle still in hand. Useless. He hadn’t moved in hours, hadn’t worked a minute.
I tossed the rag into the sink. The wet slap echoed like punctuation.
Then I climbed the stairs—steep, narrow, and mean—to the attic above the tavern. My home. My refuge from the world.
It was small, barely enough for a bed and washbasin. A cracked window let in more cold than light. It smelled like woodsmoke and worn dreams. But it was mine.
I peeled off my jacket, then my shirt, scrubbing grime from my skin in the basin, watching the dirt swirl like ink in water. It never really came off. Not the sweat. Not the memory.
My auburn hair stuck to the nape of my neck, damp with effort. I hated how it glowed in firelight—like a flare against the dark. I used to love it. She used to braid it, tell me it shimmered like copper spun with sunlight. Now it just made me feel seen when all I wanted was to disappear.
Eighteen years in this same hamlet.
Born here. Raised on frostbitten mornings and frozen paths. I’ve never seen Thornmere or Floraville or any of the kingdoms across the sea people whisper about when the ale runs deep and the fire burns low. My world was always Sylvaris—a land of stone and silence, where the sun only visits for three months each year.
Ruled by a man they call a myth. A king carved from frost and stars.
The castle looms to the north, its towers clawing at the sky. Isarus Glacien, they whisper in the dark. A name no one says in daylight. Some claim he drinks blood. Others say he is the embodiment of death.
Our hamlet lies just beneath the shadow of his mountain. Close enough to see the glint of his palace when the clouds part. Far enough to be ignored.
The Rusty Lantern hugs the road that winds toward the castle gates—a crooked little thing propped up by ale and rusted nails. It survives on travellers with nowhere better to be and locals who’ve stopped believing there ever was. People come through, eyes hollowed out by the cold or the weight of something darker. And I serve them. Wipe their mess. Swallow my own.
Some days I wonder if I was born unlucky, or if I just learned to wear it better than most. The thought loops through my head more often than it should—usually when I’m scraping frost from the inside of the attic window or counting bruises I didn’t ask for.
But gods, I want more.
To leave this place. To walk into warmth and not just wish for it. To feel something—anything—besides the dull, constant ache of surviving.
I want to see sun that stays longer than three months. Oceans that don’t freeze. People who look at me like I matter.
But I stayed.
Because there was nowhere else. No coin. No map. Just ash where dreams used to be.
And maybe—just maybe—because some part of me still believed in something. Not kings with frozen hearts. Not the stories old men spin after too much drink. Not even fate.
But maybe in fire.
The idea curled around me as I sank into the narrow bed. The frame creaked beneath me, the same tired song it always sang. The hearth downstairs still whispered through the floorboards, its light barely reaching me. I pulled the blanket up to my chin, but it wasn’t the cold I felt most—it was the weight of all I hadn’t said. All I still didn’t understand.
My darling Aveline,it began.
My breath caught.
The handwriting was delicate. Beautiful. My mother’s. The only thing she left behind when the sickness took her.
I read the lines I knew by heart:
If you’re reading this, it means I’m gone. And gods, I hate that. I wanted to be there for everything—for your first fall, your first love, the first time the world makes you feel small. But there are things I could never tell you, Aveline. Things hidden for your sake. Secrets older than our bloodline, buried deeper than you know. Just know this: you are more than what this village will see. You’re stronger than you know. You’re a living flame, even if the world tries to smother you—and one day, you’ll understand.
Love always,
Mum
My mother was a healer in this town once. And when they came for her cures—when they brought her their fevers, their broken bones, their dying children—they praised her. Because my mother wasn’t just anyone. Her hands carried warmth that went deeper than poultices or boiled herbs. Magic lived in her, quiet and steady, like a flame held behind cupped palms.
She never flaunted it, never called herself special—but people noticed when the fevers broke faster, when pain dulled with a touch. And they noticed when the castle sent for her, over and over, to tend to wounded soldiers returned from the war in the mountains.
It was said she came back empty. That something in her eyes changed each time she passed through the castle gates. She never told me what she saw there, only that the cold beyond the gates ran deeper than the ice outside. Deep in the snow-capped mountains, they say a race of Sasquatch dwells—feral and brilliant, their minds sharp as their claws, their war with Sylvaris ancient and endless. The soldiers she helped bore scars that magic alone could not erase.
I used to wonder if I’d wake one day with that same light in my hands. If maybe it slept somewhere inside me, quiet and waiting.
But I never did.
My hands trembled. My jaw clenched so tight it hurt. That ache lived in my bones now.
The world had taken everything else—my future, my safety, my belief that things could be good. It had buried me beneath its weight, again and again.
But not this.
Not her words. Not her memory. Not the one piece of warmth I had left.
Still, a part of me burned with something bitter. Why didn’t she tell me the truth? Why hide the secrets—whatever they were—in veiled words and half-meant comfort? Why write a letter full of hope but leave me nothing solid to hold onto? If I was meant for more, why not trust me with the truth?
Maybe she was trying to protect me. Maybe she thought I wasn’t ready.
But I was drowning in the silence she left behind.
There was a flame she saw in me, even when I couldn’t see it.
Sometimes I try to imagine what she meant—what she saw that I don’t. Was it strength? Magic? A future I still can’t glimpse through all this frost and dust? I don’t know. And gods, I hate not knowing. I hate the silence she left me with more than I hate this town. I hate that she gave me just enough hope to hurt.
But maybe... if I can believe in that flame again—if I can find it in myself, even now, even here—then maybe that will be enough.
Maybe that will be the start of everything.
