Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Girl Who Never Missed
The forest was alive with the soft whisper of leaves and the distant cry of a hawk circling above. Elira stood at the edge of the clearing, bow in hand, arrows neatly fletched in her quiver. She drew in a slow breath, feeling the tension in her muscles and the familiar pulse of anticipation in her veins. Every villager had been watching her from the safety of their cottages, their eyes wide with awe and expectation.
She hated it.
To them, she was the Golden Archer, the prodigy, the protector of the village. To her, she was a prisoner of precision, a girl who had learned to kill before she had learned to dance. Every arrow she released was a fraction of her freedom she had surrendered, a fragment of her childhood that she would never reclaim.
The target—a simple wooden disc nailed to a tree—was barely visible in the dim morning light. She nocked an arrow and pulled, feeling the familiar burn in her shoulder as the string pressed against her fingertips. She exhaled slowly, letting go, and the arrow flew with unerring accuracy, embedding itself deep into the wood with a soft thud.
“Again!” shouted Old Marin, the village elder, clapping his hands in delight.
Elira bit back a sigh. She obeyed, drawing another arrow, letting it fly, feeling the weight of expectation settle heavier with each release.
She did not notice the figure watching from the edge of the forest. A boy, pale and trembling, leaning against a tree, bleeding from a wound across his side.
