CHAPTER 1
Run. Faster.
The command hammers in my skull in time with my footsteps. My lungs burn, my legs are all screaming muscle and mud, but I don’t dare slow down.
The guards are still behind me. I can hear them – steel, curses, heavy boots chewing up the ground. Always closer.
The book slams against my ribs with every stride, a solid, guilty weight under my arm. Not just ink. Not just paper. But truth. Power.
Everything they fear.
And it’s mine.
Branches whip at my face as I shove through the undergrowth, thorns catching on my cloak. The forest ahead thickens, shadows pooling like ink.
The Darkwood.
Most people cross themselves and go around it. They whisper about old spirits, monsters, and cursed trees that remember your name.
I don’t go around.
The darkness opens to me like an old friend, and I throw myself into it.
“Stop her!” someone roars behind me.
Not today.
I duck low, lungs tearing, ignoring the hot stab in my side. Every step is rebellion. Every breath, defiance. I am not running just for me.
I am running so that one day, no one else will have to.
The trees swallow the guards’ shouts, chewing them into muffled echoes. The air turns cooler, damp with moss and something older, something that feels like memory. Moonlight barely slices through the canopy, falling in broken beams over roots and rock.
I’m slow. Just a little. Listen.
Silence.
My whole body trembles, sweat cooling on my skin, but I keep moving. Stopping would be stupid.
Faces flicker behind my eyes. My parents. Not their smiles – those are blurry now – but the night the soldiers came. The crack of the door. My mother’s voice breaking. Smoke. Screams. The smell of burning flesh.
I was under the floorboards, hands over my mouth, nails digging into my own skin to stay quiet.
They called them traitors.
They called it justice.
They burned them.
I swore that night – with my cheek pressed to cold wood and my heart shattering in my chest – that I would learn the truth.
And when I found it, I would make them pay.
Now the truth thumps against my ribs.
The trees ahead lean in, branches like fingers reaching. I grit my teeth and push on.
Just a little farther—
I round a tight bend in the trail and slam into a wall of muscle. The impact punches the air from my lungs. The book flies from my arms, skidding over dirt and dead leaves.
I hit the ground hard, palms scraping. Instinct kicks in. I roll, scrambling for the book, fingers closing around worn leather.
I look up.
A man stands over me, tall and broad-shouldered, cloaked in grey. Moonlight snags on the edge of his jaw, on the blade at his hip. His eyes lock with mine. For one stunned heartbeat, both of us freeze.
“Who—” he starts.
“Move!” I snap, already shoving past him.
I don’t have time for mysterious forest men or their questions. The guards are somewhere behind me, and now he’s their problem, not mine.
I sprint on, the book tight against my chest.
Seconds later, shouts erupt behind me again, louder this time. Different voices. The strangers and the guards.
I don’t look back.
By the time the trees thin, the sky has faded to a deep bruised blue, evening bleeding into night. Down in the valley, the lights of Aura Village flicker to life – small, scattered stars on the earth.
Home, or what passes for it.
I take the long way in, slipping through goat paths and overgrown trails instead of the main road. Even here, among “my” people, I don’t trust anyone enough to walk in openly with a stolen royal book strapped to my side.
My cottage stands at the very edge of the forest, crooked and stubborn, half-swallowed by ivy. Forgotten. Like it was meant for a ghost.
Perfect.
Inside, it’s still and dry. I bolt the door, pull the curtains tight, and finally set the book on the table. My hands are still shaking.
For a moment, I just stare at it.
This stupid, dangerous thing that I just risked my neck for.
Then I light the lantern. The little flame flares, settling into a soft orange glow. Shadows stretch and crawl up the walls.
I sit.
My heart is still beating too fast as I open the cover.
The title is almost gone, rubbed away by years of fingers that shouldn’t have touched it. Corners are frayed; entire pages are missing.
But it’s here.
It’s real.
The Lavera Kingdom.
The early chapters are exactly what I expect – pretty lies. Glorious conquest. Heroes with shiny armor and cleaner consciences. All the stories they feed to children who don’t yet know better.
I flip through them, faster and faster, until my eye catches the heading I’ve been hunting.
The Adroit
The Gifted. The Condemned.
My chest tightens.
In the ashes of the Dark War, children started to be born wrong. That’s how the book phrases it. Wrong. Marked. Each with some unpredictable gift no one understood.
Fire. Shadow. Light. Earth.
At first, people worshipped them. Saints. Miracles. Weapons wrapped in skin.
But fear grows faster than faith.
Rumours spread. Kingdoms panicked. And eventually, a king decided that anything he couldn’t control, he would destroy instead.
The decree was simple:
No Adroit shall live.
Gifted children were taken. Tested. Broken. Killed.
Generation after generation, the decree held.
Ink bleeds and blurs across the page. Big sections are gone entirely, torn out so cleanly it hurts to look at. Someone didn’t just want to hide this history.
They wanted to erase it.
They failed.
A storm churns in my chest – grief for people I never knew, rage that tastes like blood, and something sharper than both.
We were hunted for being born different.
For being powerful.
For being Adroit.
The small fire in my hearth suddenly feels far away. I run my fingers over the ruined parchment, tracing the missing lines as if I can pull them back by wanting it hard enough.
Each sentence is a scar.
Each missing piece, a wound still open.
But I’m not alone. Not anymore.
Evan. Mira. Others like me, scattered and hiding in plain sight. Waiting.
For me.
For something.
Tonight, sleep doesn’t really come. Just jagged pieces of it. In my dreams, thrones crumble, kings scream, and fire eats the sky. I wake with the book pressed against my chest like a second heart.
Before dawn, I dress in silence. Tuck the book under my cloak. Slip out into the chill grey morning, dew soaking my boots.
Every step I take away from the cottage feels like the world tipping.
We have been in the dark for centuries.
I have no intention of staying there.
