The Harvest
A weather-beaten decree flapped on a cracked post. Warped grain split by years of rain and frost still held firm.
The ink had bled, but Sethos’ jagged black sun sigil still glared through the damage like something alive.
Beneath it, the words remained:
SHADOWBOUND MUST PRESENT THEMSELVES FOR IDENTIFICATION.
FAILURE TO COMPLY IS TREASON.
Raven stood before it, hood low as the wind snapped the parchment with a dry, papery crack.
She’d read this decree in a hundred villages. Still, she read it again, as if pressing a thumb to an old scar just to remember how deep it ran.
A sharp, relentless ache hammered behind her temples, each throb spiking anxiety until her breath caught.
She exhaled to steady the dizziness. The world tilted. For a moment, white light flickered behind her eyes—bright as sunlight through water.
Her gloved hand rose to her brow.
Subtle.
Controlled.
Unseen.
Not now.
Not here.
She drew a slow breath and held it. She waited until pain faded to dull ache.
Lately, the headaches were worse—sharper, more frequent. Harder to bury.
Maybe it was the cold.
Maybe it was the endless road.
Maybe it was five villages in three days—each folding into the next. Grief blurring together.
Snow drifted across the road, clinging to armor and piling on leather. It hadn’t stopped since they left the capital. The endless fall wore at her resolve.
The cold seeped into everything.
Her cloak. Her boots. Her bones.
Bootsteps crunched behind her, slow and deliberate.
“Commander” The soldier’s voice quivered, raw from the cold.
Raven lowered her hand before he could see it shake. She forced a single, controlled nod, masking the turmoil she felt.
She always hated this part. Guilt and dread coiled beneath her calm exterior, a silent storm she never managed to quiet.
The breath before breaking.
The moment before lives shattered.
She moved with her soldiers, passing beneath the crumbling arch.
Their entry was deliberate, every motion precise. Like a knife drawn from its sheath, they advanced with purpose.
The village was poor. That was obvious before they reached the square.
Wood splintered underfoot. Snow sifted through shattered roofing. Doors drooped on rusty hinges. Smoke curled from battered chimneys.
And yet the place was loved.That was plain, too.
Despite hardship, the place was cherished.
Color seeped through gray: dyed cloth strung between buildings. Bright thread-laced railings. Faded paint marked wooden signs, patched more often than replaced.
The square was full.
Too full.
The entire village gathered for something they were not supposed to celebrate.
A Shadowbound holiday.
Raven could see it in the details:
Two cups left side by side at a stall.
Knotted ribbons were tied in pairs along the well.
A band played on the corner. Music rang throughout the square.
Old traditions.
Hidden.
Most of the kingdom denied those days ever existed. Sethos banned these rites, calling them perilous, traitorous, remnants of an unruly era. Yet old festivals endured in secret offerings, communal meals, and whispered songs.
Children darted between market stalls, boots too big for them slipping in packed snow. Fresh bread steamed on carts, the crusts split and golden despite the cold.
A woman with flour dusted across her apron and streaked into the lines of her hands laughed at something a man said. She wrapped bread in cloth, her cheeks flushed from the ovens, her hair half-pinned and already falling loose.
Men unloaded firewood beside a shrine so worn it had become little more than a mound of smoothed stone. Someone had tucked dried winter berries into its cracks anyway.
Even in hunger, even in cold, they had come together.
For a few fleeting seconds, the world looked right.
Untouched, for a precious moment.
Raven’s jaw clenched hard. Her lips cut to a thin white line. It always looked most alive just before she helped carve it hollow.
A pressure gathered in her chest, subtle at first, then sharper, like the beginning of a breath that wouldn’t come all the way in. She ignored it, straightened her spine, and kept walking.
They reached the village square, and the formation stopped as one on an unspoken cue.
The market stilled.
Silence crept over the square, suffocating, as if a hand clamped the village’s mouth.
The only sound left: the rhythmic crush of soldiers’ boots biting into fresh snow.
At Raven’s signal, the soldiers parted like iron gates. They split in perfect sync until she stood alone at the center of the square.
She stepped forward.
Every movement was shaped by repetition. The script never changed; only the faces did.
Raven lifted a gloved hand and lowered her hood.
Gasps tore through the market like a sudden wind.
Fear didn’t whisper. It struck.
A man stumbled into a stall. Jars shattered against the frozen ground. Someone else cursed under their breath.
Another whispered “Shadow-Seeker…”
“Cebrus…”
“Raven Cebrus…”
Her name spat out of mouths like something that tasted bad, the sound stinging as Raven felt the crowd’s judgment settle on her.
Fear rippled through the crowd—eyes wide, shoulders tensed, breath catching.
Of course, they knew who she was.
How could they not?
The capital masked violence as law. It called the Harvest necessary and merciful. But the villages knew the truth.
It was their people who vanished.
Their sons.
Their daughters.
Their bonded pairs who never returned.
The crown could hide the truth from nobles or merchants. Not from villages. Not from families whose homes emptied, one pair at a time.
Raven looked over the crowd and saw it clearly in their faces.
Hatred.
Terror.
Desperate hope lingered in wary, defiant eyes—dangerous and alive.
A captain stepped forward at her left shoulder.
“Command?”
Raven flicked her wrist.
“Begin.”
The soldiers surged forward.
Chaos followed instantly.
Hands grabbing.
Cloth tore.
Boots slipping.
A table overturned, tin cups skidding across the ice. A fire pit kicked apart—embers scattering, hissing in snow.
The scent shifted instantly—fear, smoke, and the copper tang of blood.
A woman was dragged from her husband. Her fingers clawed at his coat until the fabric tore in her hands. A boy tried to run and was tackled hard enough to knock the breath from him.
The sound of bodies hitting frozen ground echoed like dull cracks.
Raven stood in the center of it.
Still.
Unmoving.
Watching.
Women screamed. Men shouted. Children cried for parents torn away. Bodies struggled, boots sliding on panic-slick snow.
A basket overturned, apples tumbling—red bursts against the white.
One rolled to a stop at Raven’s boot.
She bent and picked it up.
Deep red. Smooth. Unblemished.
For a moment, she turned it slowly in her gloved hand, as if weighing it. As if the world around her had gone silent.
Then she bit.
The skin split clean. Juice ran cold across her tongue.
Behind her—
A scream broke into sobbing.
A man shouted.
A child cried out for someone who would not answer.
Raven lowered her gaze to the apple—
A worm writhed inside.
Pale. Buried. Alive beneath the surface.
She spat.
Her jaw tightened.
Everything in this realm is rotten.
A woman’s sob rose into a piercing wail, knifing through Raven’s skull and making her wince, anguish pricking beneath her control.
Inside her, something twisted.
Grief. Fury. Pain.
She couldn’t name the shape of it anymore. She only recognized the tearing.
White light flashed again at the edge of her vision. Raven sucked in a sharp breath and squeezed her eyes shut until it bled away.
Not now.
Not here.
She opened her eyes.
Ignored the pain.
She had been trained to.
Villagers herded into rows. Soldiers stalked the lines, eyes gleaming, butchers assessing stock.
At the head of each row stood a soldier ready for identification.
Pain was the fastest method.
A wrist seized—bones grinding under pressure.
A slap. Sharp enough to split skin.
A fist driven into a gut until breath failed.
Pain revealed what fear tried to hide.
A flinch.
A mirrored movement.
A flicker of something beneath the skin.
Magic.
The strain reaction surfaced quickly. Shadowbound were bonded too closely to hide under stress. One flinched; another echoed. Light flickered beneath skin.
A woman collapsed when one soldier shoved her too hard, hitting the snow with a strangled gasp.
A man lunged toward her.
Instinct.
Desperation.
Love.
Magic.
They both flared.
Barely more than a shimmer, but enough.
“Paired!” a young soldier barked.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty. Wild red hair stuck out from beneath his helm, damp with melted snow. His nose was pink from the cold. His grin was too wide, too eager—as if he relished the hunt instead of dreading it.
Something cold settled beneath Raven’s skin. It lingered there, heavy and persistent.
This was the world Sethos had built.
And she enforced it.
The man fought when the soldiers dragged the woman from him.
“Sera!” he roared.
He sent one soldier sprawling with a savage punch. Three more slammed into him and beat him raw—fists thudding, boots shattering ribs. The snow beneath him pooled red.
“Please—please, don’t—he didn’t—” the woman cried. Her glow intensified, trembling along her skin. She screamed his name until her voice went raw.
Raven watched the man’s cheek grind into the snow beneath a soldier’s boot. His breath came out in thin, fogged bursts that barely reached the air before fading.
His fingers twitched once.
Then again.
Then slower.
The pounding behind Raven’s eyes detonated, and panic lanced through her resolve, making her stagger inside as her composure threatened to crack.
White-hot.
Blinding.
The world tilted.
For a single, dangerous second—
She nearly swayed.
No.
Her teeth sank into her cheek. Copper flooded her mouth, grounding her.
Pain for control.
“Enough,” she said.
Her voice cut through the square like a blade.
Silence snapped into place around it.
Raven’s face stayed cold.
“Bind them both.”
The soldiers moved immediately.
Ropes tightened around wrists already bruised and bloodied. The woman sobbed as they pulled her away. The man no longer fought.
Couldn’t.
The Harvest continued.
It always did.
A boy no older than fifteen was dragged forward.
He stumbled as a soldier’s grip tightened around his arm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. He stumbled once—hard—then caught himself before he could fall.
Barely.
The soldier’s grip tightened around his arm, fingers digging in deep enough to bruise through cloth. The boy’s jaw locked, breath coming sharp through his nose, chest rising too fast.
A ripple of light moved across his cheek.
“Hold him still,” the soldier muttered.
The boy didn’t cry out.
Didn’t beg.
He just stood there—rigid, shaking despite himself, as something braced for impact.
Somewhere behind him—
A scream.
High. Small. Breaking.
A little girl tore free from the group that was already processed.
Her boots slipped on the snow as she ran, arms outstretched, fingers grasping for him before she could reach him.
“No—!”
The woman with the flour-streaked apron.
The same one who had been laughing minutes before lunged after her, nearly falling as her skirts tangled around her legs. She caught the girl just in time, dragging her back against her chest.
The girl fought.
Kicked.
Reached.
Her fingers clawed at the air as if she could pull him back just by wanting it hard enough.
“Please—please, stop—” the mother begged, her voice cracking, words tumbling over each other as she pulled the child tighter. “Don’t—don’t look—don’t—”
She turned the girl’s face into her shoulder, pressing her there, hiding her.
Or trying to.
The girl twisted anyway.
Her eyes found him.
They didn’t look away.
The soldier who moved toward them was the same red-haired one.
Still grinning.
Still breathing hard with the rush of it.
His hand reached—
Too fast.
Too eager.
Flash.
A child’s arm.
Fingers digging too deep.
A grip that didn’t loosen.
Air that wouldn’t come.
Raven’s vision flared white.
Her chest seized.
She moved before thought could catch up.
One small shift of posture.
A commander’s presence settled over the moment like a blade.
The soldier froze mid-step.
Raven’s voice cut clean through the noise.
“Leave her.”
The soldier hesitated.
Raven stepped closer, her tone dropping—quiet, controlled, final.
“She shows no signs. Stay on task.”
A beat of tension stretched too long.
Then the soldier backed off.
The mother sagged slightly, clutching the girl tighter, her breath shaking against the child’s hair. The girl still reached, small hands grasping at nothing, fingers curling into empty air.
Raven’s gaze flicked once—brief, precise.
There was something there.
Not enough to draw attention.
Not enough for the soldiers to question.
But enough.
The boy didn’t look at her.
Didn’t look at the girl.
Didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead.
The boy was dragged away.
The girl remained.
Inside, something pulled tight and didn’t let go.
Raven’s expression didn’t change. It had long since calcified into the same cold mask she wore in every square, every village, every ruin of a home she walked into.
Inside, something tore a little more.
She straightened.
“Continue.”
Further down the line, another pair was identified—this time a mother and son. The boy was barely old enough to stand straight, his legs shaking so badly he nearly collapsed before they even touched him.
A soldier laughed under his breath.
Another dragged an older man forward by the collar, his boots leaving uneven grooves through the snow.
More pairs were found. Quickly. Efficiently. Hopelessly.
And fewer of them fought than they used to.
Five years ago, every Harvest had been a battle. People had clawed and bitten and thrown themselves in front of bonded kin. Whole villages had bled for a chance to hide their own.
Now?
Most bent with barely a nudge.
Fear had worn them down.
Grief had taught them obedience.
The process lasted less than an hour.
That was another thing Sethos had perfected.
Make it fast enough that people couldn’t organize. Brutal enough that they wouldn’t try next time.
By the end, the chosen villagers were lined near the transport wagons with their hands bound, snow collecting in their hair and lashes. Some wept. Some stared forward.
One old man mouthed a prayer Raven remembered from childhood, his lips cracked from cold, his beard stiff with frost. The words were silent—but she knew them anyway.
She hadn’t heard them spoken aloud in years.
A soldier approached her.
“Commander, all identified. Orders?”
Raven looked at the shivering line of the taken.
Fear had a shape. A sound. A rhythm.
“Escort them to transport. They go to the capital.”
No one asked what waited there.
No one needed to.
The soldiers tightened the perimeter. Families screamed. Some villagers dropped to their knees in the snow. Others threw curses. A woman hurled herself at the wagon and was struck back hard enough to split her lip.
Raven stood at the center of it all, unmoving.
Another village — broken.
Another truth buried beneath her gloves.
A lieutenant approached with a wooden board in hand, his face pale from more than the cold.
“Commander… the count is complete. We have—”
The lieutenant faltered.
Raven didn’t turn right away.
She let the silence stretch just long enough to make it uncomfortable.
“Finish the sentence,” she said.
He swallowed.
“…an inconsistency.”
Now she turned.
Slowly.
“What kind of inconsistency?”
The lieutenant’s gloves were damp through at the fingertips, ink smudged across one knuckle where he’d been marking the count too quickly.
The man shifted his weight, board clutched too tightly in his hands. Snow clung to the edges of his boots.
He didn’t meet her eyes.
“We identified seventeen Shadowbound,” he said.
Raven’s brow lifted, just slightly.
“There should be even numbers.”
Her tone was dry. Precise. Not a question.
The lieutenant nodded too quickly. “Yes, Commander. That’s—yes. That’s exactly the issue.”
A pause.
Then, quieter—
“We’re missing… one.”
The words landed wrong in the air.
Around them, soldiers shifted, subtle but unmistakable. One cleared his throat. Another adjusted his grip on his weapon, though nothing had changed.
No one liked inconsistencies.
Inconsistencies led to questions.
Questions led to Sethos.
And Sethos did not tolerate mistakes.
Raven took a step closer.
The lieutenant straightened instantly.
“Walk me through it,” she said.
“We tested each subject twice,” he said quickly. “Initial identification, then confirmation. The readings were consistent. The seventeenth —he reacted. There was no doubt.”
“But no partner,” Raven finished.
“No partner,” he echoed.
Raven’s gaze flicked briefly toward the line of captives. The villagers had started whispering now, low, fearful murmurs spreading like cracks in ice.
The lieutenant lowered his voice.
“We thought… perhaps we missed someone. In the confusion.”
A dangerous thing to admit.
Raven’s eyes snapped back to him.
“You thought,” she repeated.
The man stiffened. “Only as a possibility, Commander.”
A murmur rippled through the nearby soldiers before one of them spoke—hesitant, but unable to hold it in.
“That’s not right,” he said.
Silence snapped tight.
He stiffened immediately under Raven’s gaze, but forced himself to continue.
“I mean—” he corrected, voice tightening, “that’s not how it’s supposed to work. They usually… they usually don’t separate. Not without consequences.”
Another soldier muttered under his breath, “Maybe the other one’s dead.”
“Or hiding,” someone else added.
“Or we missed them,” the lieutenant said quickly, trying to regain control of the moment.
A young redhead near the back let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “If his other half is gone, he’ll die anyway. They all do. Go mad first, usually.”
A few of the newer soldiers snickered under their breath.
Raven’s jaw tightened.
The fucking prick.
Her gaze slid to him—slow, deliberate, memorizing.
I’ll have you reassigned the second we get back to the capital. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere far away from me.
Raven’s eyes flicked between them.
Listening.
Measuring.
“Enough,” Raven said.
The murmuring stopped instantly.
She extended her hand slightly.
“Show me.”
“Yes, Commander.”
The lieutenant moved at once.
The others fell back into silence, the unease still there but buried now, where it was safer.
Because whatever this was, it was Raven’s to decide.
And none of them wanted to be the one who questioned her twice.
The lieutenant led her to the end of the line.
The boy stood alone.
Jaw locked. Shoulders pulled too tight. Trying not to shake and failing.
“This one flared on contact,” the soldier holding him said. “Strong reaction. But no one in the village answered him.”
Raven studied the boy.
Then, briefly, carelessly, her gaze slipped past him.
Into the crowd.
A mother still held a little girl too tightly, arms wrapped around her like a shield. The child’s face was now buried against her shoulder. Hidden.
Raven’s eyes returned to the boy.
Of course.
The soldier’s grip tightened, fingers digging into the boy’s jaw, forcing his head up.
“Where is your bound?” he demanded.
The boy’s eyes flashed.
Fear
But something else sat beneath it. Hardened.
“Dead.”
Immediate.
Flat.
The soldier leaned in, tightening his hold. “Dead?” he repeated. “Who?”
A pause.
Measured.
“My grandmother,” the boy said. “She died last week.”
Silence pressed in.
Raven watched him.
The lie sat clean.
Before anyone could pull at it—
A second soldier jogged forward, breath sharp, eyes darting.
“Commander—shall we begin another sweep? Protocol states—”
Raven watched the boy, his blue eyes like steel.
“There will be no second sweep,” Raven announced
The words struck like a blade.
The soldier faltered mid-step. “But… we may have missed—”
“We did not.”
Her voice was ice.
No rise. No force.
Just certainty.
The air tightened.
Raven stepped forward—just enough.
“We have the bonded pairs required,” she said. “The rest hold no value to the Crown.”
Sethos’ words.
Sethos’ reasoning.
Sethos’s cruelty, spoken cleanly from her mouth.
The soldier hesitated, caught in it.
“But Commander—if there is another—”
“There isn’t.”
Quieter.
More dangerous.
That ended it.
“Yes, Commander.”
He stepped back.
But the damage was done.
Raven felt it.
The shift.
Eyes lingering.
Thoughts forming.
Not spoken.
Not yet.
But they had seen enough. The shortened sweep, the untouched edges, the boy who stood alone and still stood.
They would whisper.
And whispers traveled.
Especially to men like Jason.
Raven didn’t acknowledge it.
Didn’t look.
She turned back to the boy.
“What do we do with him, Commander?” the captain asked.
Raven didn’t answer immediately.
Something pulled tight in her chest.
Sharp. Sudden.
A thread drawn taut somewhere just out of reach.
Her vision flickered, white at the edges.
A pressure behind her eyes.
A breath that wouldn’t fully come.
She buried it.
Like everything else.
“Release him.”
Stillness fell.
The wrong kind.
“Commander?” the captain said.
“He is unpaired.”
“But—”
“Sethos cannot unbind a single Shadowbound half,” Raven said. Cold. Final. “He requires both.”
Silence spread.
She stepped forward.
“An unpaired Shadowbound has no value to the Crown. Taking him wastes transport, rations, and men.”
Her gaze moved across them—pinning, holding.
“Release him.”
The captain hesitated.
Too long.
“Is that… protocol, Commander?”
Raven met his eyes.
Her voice didn’t rise.
It didn’t need to.
“As your soldier said,” she continued, tone edged just enough to cut, “he’ll be dead soon anyway.”
A beat.
Her gaze flicked just briefly to the redhead.
“What would we want with a dead Shadowbound prisoner?”
Silence.
He swallowed.
The captain straightened.
“Release him,” he ordered.
The soldier’s grip loosened.
The boy didn’t move at first.
Didn’t understand.
Then—
He stepped back.
Once.
Twice.
No one stopped him.
“Go,” someone muttered.
That was all it took.
He ran.
Not toward the place his eyes had flicked—only once.
Not toward the girl.
Not toward the arms waiting for him.
Away.
Into the crowd.
Into safety.
Into survival.
Raven watched him go.
Saw the choice.
The restraint.
The understanding.
A ghost of something tightened in her chest.
Clever boy.
He vanished between bodies, swallowed whole by the village.
Raven did not move.
Did not react.
Did not allow even the smallest fracture in the mask.
Inside—
Something shifted.
Not relief.
Not guilt.
Something quieter.
More dangerous.
Her gloved hand curled at her side.
Beneath the leather, something stirred.
Low.
Restless.
Alive.
Then—
Still.
