The forest, cloaked in mist and silence, held its breath.

  Two children wandered where they shouldn’t have, ughter soft and careless beneath the frost-bitten pines. A boy with tousled hair and muddy boots, and a girl with uneven braids trailing down her shoulders. They weren’t supposed to stray past the hollow stump—but childhood had little patience for rules and even less for fear.

  They stopped when they saw him.

  “Wait,” the boy said, his voice barely more than breath. “Do you see that?”

  There, half-buried beneath a curtain of dead leaves and crooked roots, was a body—small, still, and broken. The girl crept closer, one step at a time.

  “It’s a boy,” she whispered. “He’s hurt.”

  The boy stirred slightly in his sleep—if it could be called sleep at all. His face was gaunt, his limbs stiff with cold. Strange bck markings, like branded script, marred the length of his arms. His hands were clenched tight, curled as if holding onto something no one else could see.

  “Is he dead?” the boy asked, afraid of the answer.

  “No. He’s breathing.” The girl bent down. “We have to tell Sister Maren. Now.”

  Kael was not awake.

  Not truly.

  He was still running.

  Through trees that bled like veins and shadows that screamed his name. The world twisted and narrowed into a nightmare so real it wore the skin of memory. The sky churned, colorless and cold. The ground buckled beneath him.

  Voices swarmed like flies.

  The elders.

  “You cannot resist what was given.”

  The masked ones.

  “Coward. Saint of nothing. Return and burn.”

  And above them all, the gods whispered—faint and thunderous.

  “You are ours, Kael. You are always ours.”

  He tried to scream, but the trees swallowed his breath. Roots climbed his legs. The forest turned inward. He fell—

  Light.

  Real, golden light spilled across stone walls and rough-spun bnkets. Kael’s eyes cracked open. The pain came first—sharp and dull all at once, stretching from the runes on his arms to the hollow pit inside his chest.

  He tried to sit up, and failed. His body trembled like something left out in winter too long.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Children stood nearby, their eyes wide and wary.

  “He moved,” one of them whispered.

  A little girl in a hand-stitched dress clutched a stuffed bear by the ear. “Is he okay? He looks like he got stepped on by a troll.”

  “He looks scary,” said a boy with a chipped tooth. “Like the kind of ghost that eats people.”

  A freckled girl gave him a light smack on the arm. “Don’t say that! He’s just hurt.”

  Kael couldn’t find the words.

  His throat burned. His chest felt too tight. Why were they talking to him? Why weren’t they afraid?

  An older boy stepped forward, careful and quiet. “You’re safe here, okay? You’re in the vilge. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  Kael’s eyes darted toward the firepce, toward the door. Everything felt… wrong. Soft. Warm. It couldn’t be real.

  Then she appeared.

  The nun.

  She moved past the children and knelt beside his bed. Her robes smelled faintly of flour and herbs. She had kind eyes and a voice that didn’t force itself into the silence.

  “You’ve been asleep a long time,” she said. “But you’re safe now. No one here knows what happened to you. We won’t ask, unless you want to tell us.”

  Kael didn’t respond.

  The youngest of the children toddled up to the bed, chubby hands curled around something sticky and colorful.

  “Here,” the boy mumbled. “It’s candy. I saved it ‘cause I didn’t eat all mine st night.”

  Kael stared at the offered gift like it was a bde. Slowly, uncertainly, he reached out—and took it.

  The boy beamed. “You can keep it! It’s red. Red’s lucky.”

  Another girl leaned in, whispering loudly, “You can sit by the window ter. It’s the warmest spot. But don’t tell Peter I told you—he thinks it’s his.”

  “Hey!” Peter shouted from the back. “I heard that!”

  The nun ughed softly and turned back to Kael, pcing a hand gently over his head.

  “There’s food in the pot, and clean water by your bed. You don’t have to speak. Not yet. But if you want to stay… you can.”

  He couldn’t. Not with words.

  But something in his expression cracked, just barely. He turned away, curling in on himself. The fire warmed his back. The children's ughter, however distant, didn’t feel like a threat. Not yet.

  No chants. No blood. No gods.

  Only stew and soft voices and sunlight through stained gss.

  And for the first time in his young, blood-stained life…

  Kael did not dream of vengeance.

  He dreamed of peace.