Chapter 9 - The thread that led

POV: Eirian.

It began with a silence that didn’t belong.

The kind of silence that came before bad weather or worse news. Eirian was on the porch roof, perched in her usual spot beside the old chimney stack, where she could feel the wind’s threads curl around her fingers like the trailing ends of a loom. She often climbed up there when the cottage grew too full of Sera’s brewing smoke or Orlen’s restless hammering. It was where the world spoke more clearly.

But that morning, something else arrived before the sound of hoofbeats—before the rustle of travelers on the road. It pressed against her skin like cold parchment, all brittle edges and rusted nails.

Mana.

It was something old and used, ground down and honed like a whetstone scraped against bone.

She felt it long before she saw them.

A heartbeat later, two figures crested the rise that marked the edge of the village path.

They didn’t move like farmers. Or pilgrims. Or anything the village was used to seeing.

One was broad in the shoulders, the other thin but whip-taut. Both wore the travel-stained leathers of adventurers, patched at the joints, with loose rings of mail glinting beneath half-fastened cloaks. Their boots were scuffed to ruin. Their expressions were worse. Not tired in the way of honest laborers—but in the way of men who had seen blood dry on stone and hadn’t flinched.

They strode past the baker’s cart and didn’t glance twice at the smell of fresh loaves. Past the children playing near the granary well—who all suddenly found other directions to look.

Eirian’s fingers tensed on the clay shingles. The wind retreated from them. Even the bees stopped humming for a breath.

She slipped down the thatch quietly and entered the house through the attic vent, descending the ladder as lightly as she could. The moment her feet hit the floor, Sera glanced at her from across the hearth.

“I told you that you can’t climb up there until you are older,” Sera reprimanded her.

“But…”

“No buts, you are too young for that.”

“I saw some men,” Eirian said, trying to change the subject.

“You saw them? How do they look?” Sera asked.

Eirian nodded once. “Like trouble.”

Sera gave a grim smile. “I could smell them from here; the plants are reacting to them; that’s the smell of too much killing.”

The knock came a moment later. Sharp. Two raps. Then one.

A mercenary’s rhythm.

Sera wiped her hands on her apron, then moved to the door. Eirian stepped into the hallway and watched from the shadow of the beam, her mana spread just enough to touch the threads of those on the other side.

The thick one stood with arms crossed, jaw like a cracked anvil. His aura scraped at the edge of her perception—jagged, red-veined. The other was leaner, his hair tied back with what looked like gut-string, and his mana was thinner, quieter, but full of traps. Coiled tension.

C-rank, they’d claim. Adventurers passing through.

But no proper guild-ranked fighter carried that much latent hostility in their spine. It wasn’t their power that disturbed Eirian.

It was how their presence thinned the world around them—like a warning carved in breath.

“Morning,” said the lean one, smiling without warmth. “We heard there was a healer here. Is that true?”

Sera nodded politely. “That’s me.”

“We’re looking for something a little stronger than mint tea and tincture balm,” the thick one grunted. “Something with teeth.”

Sera arched an eyebrow. “I make what the land gives. What kind of ‘teeth’ are you looking for?”

The man grinned. “Stamina elixirs. The kind that don’t just wake you up but keep you swinging after three broken ribs and half a pint of blood loss.”

Sera’s hands folded calmly over her apron. Eirian noticed, though, how tight her knuckles turned.

“I’m afraid I don’t have anything that strong in stock,” Sera said gently. “You’ll find better luck in one of the border towns. Two days north if you take the river trail.”

The lean one tilted his head, eyes flicking past her shoulder into the cottage. He didn’t see Eirian, but he seemed to sense something.

“Funny,” he said. “You’re known for your quality. Heard you treated a boy’s mana sickness from another village last year with just bark and threadwork. That kind of craft usually means you’ve got reserves tucked away.”

Sera didn’t flinch. “I treat villagers. Not wandering sellswords looking for a boost they don’t need.”

The thick one’s mouth twitched—somewhere between annoyance and amusement. “You sure?” he asked. “We pay well.”

Sera smiled. “I’m sure.”

A pause.

Then the lean one shrugged. “Guess we’ll keep asking around.”

They left with the same silence they brought.

Eirian didn’t move until the breeze returned through the windows.

Sera shut the door and turned around.

“They’re not adventurers,” Sera said quietly. “At least not the kind that reports back to a guild.”

Eirian didn’t say anything.

Sera went to the counter and poured herself a cup of water, her hands steady but pale.

“They’re used to violence,” she said after a moment. “You can see it in their posture. That wide one’s stance is all shield-and-break. The tall one? Daggers behind the back.”

Eirian stepped into the room fully, bare feet silent on the woven mat. “You lied about the elixirs.”

“I did.” Sera didn’t apologize. “They’re not for people like that.”

Eirian tilted her head, wondering what Sera was saying.

“I know that they didn’t believe in my lies.” She sipped the water. “But I’d rather offend a sellsword than hand over something that could get someone killed.”

There was another silence.

Then Sera set the cup down and rubbed her temples.

“They don’t bleed like adventurers,” she murmured. “They bleed like warhounds.”

Eirian felt the phrase settle into her bones like a warning bell.

Outside, the wind stirred the chimes again.

But the sound no longer felt comforting.

It felt like a thread being pulled.

***

POV: Tomas

They left the village at dawn. Not because the road demanded it—but because his parents insisted it was better to be ahead of the heat, ahead of questions, and ahead of doubt—they had left his sisters with Sera so they could be safe while their parents made sure he arrived with the wizard.

Tomas walked a few paces behind them, his pack heavier than it should’ve been for a journey he hadn’t chosen.

The adventurers led the way.

Two of them. The broad one with the jaw like broken granite was named Rask. The leaner one, with sharp eyes and a voice like snapped twigs, introduced himself as Vey. They didn’t smile much.

When they’d first arrived that morning, Tomas had caught a look between them and Sera—just a flicker of recognition. Her mouth had tightened, and her fingers went briefly to the edge of her apron. She hadn’t spoken, only stepped back into her cottage without a word. Tomas saw that too.

He hadn’t asked his parents why these two were the ones escorting them. He already knew.

They were the only ones willing to go.

The villagers had gathered to see them off—some with blessings, others with folded arms and frowns.

Jaren’s mother had slipped Tomas a wrapped bundle of smoked bread and lentil cakes. The smith gave his father a waterskin laced with a small charm for fatigue. Someone even handed them a charm string woven from chicken feathers and river rock, “for safe footing,” they said.

But there were others who didn’t speak.

“They’re walking into a legend,” someone whispered behind Tomas’s shoulder. “And dragging the boy with them.”

“I heard the wizard eats bones. Children’s bones.”

“I heard he used to be a high mage in the royal court—banished for treason.”

“I heard he died a decade ago and his tower’s just a haunt.”

Tomas tried not to listen. But he carried every word like a stone in his gut.

He was the reason they were going. And still, he felt more like the excuse than the point.

***

The forest swallowed them by noon.

One moment the sunlight filtered through scattered birch trees and cattail marshes, and the next they passed into a dense copse where the canopy stitched itself closed above their heads.

Sound changed there. The wind quieted. Footsteps sank softer. Even the birdsong dropped to a whisper, like the leaves were muffling everything.

Tomas had walked these woods before—on the edge of them. Every child in the village knew where to stop. But this wasn’t the edge anymore.

This was the deep.

The wizard’s forest, at least that was how he was calling it now in his head.

They marched for hours, following a trail that looked like a deer path and sometimes wasn’t. Rask led with a hatchet in hand, swinging only when the brambles refused to part. Vey walked further back, constantly checking the trees as if expecting something to leap from them.

The first thing they found was a corpse flower.

It wasn’t moving. Just a hulk of tangled vine and rotted bark slumped near a stone wall half-eaten by moss. Tomas stepped too close, and Vey yanked him back by the collar.

“Breath pods,” the man muttered. “Watch the edges.”

As if on cue, one of the swollen bulbs at the base of the plant hissed and split, releasing a fine silver dust into the air. Tomas blinked. He didn’t breathe. But his father behind him coughed once and, in seconds, slumped to the ground.

Not dead. But his eyes rolled back.

“Sleep spores,” Rask said without turning around. “Give him five minutes. Or an hour.”

His mother knelt beside him, frantic, but the adventurers didn’t flinch.

Tomas sat beside his father until he stirred again, embarrassed. They said nothing. But from that moment on, Tomas kept a closer eye on every leaf they passed.

***

By the second night, the forest stopped pretending it was just trees.

They camped beneath a ridge of leaning pines, their branches heavy with hanging moss like old curtains. The fire was small—Vey insisted—and ringed with green-tinted stones he said would confuse “light-sensitive flyers.”

Tomas didn’t know what that meant until he heard the high-pitched clicking sounds above them.

“Mana-bats,” Rask said, tossing a stick toward the darkness. “Come too close, and they suck the warmth right out of your bones. You need to be really careful, especially those who had mana in them, like you, boy.”

Tomas huddled closer to his parents. He saw his mother slide a small elixir under her shirt; he recognized it as Sera’s job.

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At night, the trees creaked like they were whispering. Tomas couldn’t sleep.

He overheard Rask mutter once, while tightening a strap on his bracer, “I don’t like how the trees feel. Like they’re listening.”

Vey didn’t respond. But Tomas caught the way his eyes lingered on the branches overhead, like he agreed.

They saw goblins on the fourth day. Not close, but across a clearing—five or six, too far to smell them but close enough to count the crooked limbs. The adventurers didn’t chase them; apparently the best course of action would be to avoid them and just watch. According to them, goblins rarely traveled that deep into old forest.

“It’s the Tower,” Vey whispered later. “They know it’s near. That’s why they won’t come closer.”

Tomas’s stomach churned.

He began to wonder if he should come closer.

***

The sixth night came with no stars.

Clouds gathered without wind. The trees no longer creaked—they listened.

Camp was quiet, maybe too quiet.

Tomas sat beside the fire, watching the embers flicker like eyes. His parents were curled together under the travel blanket, whispering softly. Rask cleaned his axe again—the third time that evening. Vey stood watch beyond the firelight, like he was trying to hear something beyond the trees.

Tomas could feel it too, some sort of anticipation.

It was as if the forest itself had paused to see what would happen next.

Then it came.

A low growl—not from one throat, but many. The kind of growl that wasn’t just a warning—it was a declaration.

Rask stood instantly, and Vey raised one hand without turning.

“Don’t move,” he said, his voice like stone. “Don’t talk. Don’t breathe hard.”

Tomas froze.

The fire sputtered as if something unseen had passed over it.

Then the trees parted.

Eyes.

Six pairs. Glowing like twin moons in the underbrush. Their fur shimmered dark blue and smoke-grey, streaked with ember flickers that crawled like fire ants along their spines. Their paws made no sound.

But they had no shadows.

They stepped into camp as though they’d always belonged there.

“Magelupines,” Rask spat, raising his axe. “Shit, just when I thought that the mission was simple.”

“They are pack lords,” Vey said. “I told you that we shouldn’t take the mission!”

“Shut it! I thought it was easy money.”

“Please do something,” Tomas’s mother whispered, clutching his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, woman, we are bound to the contract, seriously, villagers,” Vey said the last part as if he was exasperated to be involved with us.

Then the largest wolf moved.

It appeared as if he blinked; one moment it was at the other side of the clearing, and the next it was just a few steps from them. The firelight dimmed a fraction.

They attacked as one.

Rask was the first to meet them—his axe swung wide in a brutal arc, catching one wolf mid-leap. Its body didn’t fall—it disintegrated, bursting into a scatter of coals and ash that burned the grass beneath.

But two more were already on him.

Vey moved with terrible grace. A flick of his wrist loosed a sigil from his belt—one Tomas had seen used to bind limbs or trap small beasts. It pulsed once, expanding into a circle of pale blue runes.

One wolf hit the edge—and vanished in a spray of white sparks.

Another tore through, undeterred.

Its fangs met Vey’s forearm. He suppressed his scream, but Tomas could hear how he hissed through clenched teeth. Vey didn’t waste time and slammed a second sigil against its skull.

The wolf yelped—actually yelped—and dropped.

But the bite had left marks; it looked really bad, and they seemed to be spreading to the rest of his body.

“Go!” Vey shouted. “Take the boy and go!”

Rask didn’t even look. He was already a whirlwind of steel and fire, his axe blazing with a short-lived enchantment. Each swing left a smear of scorched mana in the air. But the wolves were fast.

Tomas’s father grabbed him by the arm. “Run.”

They ran.

Branches slapped his face. Roots clawed his boots. He didn’t know which direction they went—only that the sounds of fighting faded behind them, muffled by distance and fear.

They found a low ravine—a hollow marked by old bones and moss-heavy logs. They crouched behind a rock and listened.

They heard snarls and roars of impact. The shriek of metal dragging across flesh. And once—a bright, unnatural sound. Like a bell made of ice shattering in slow motion.

Then silence.

His mother’s breath caught.

“Did they—?”

Footsteps.

Rask emerged first.

His right arm was limp. The side of his face was streaked with blood—his, probably. A chunk of leather was missing from his shoulder pauldron, and a faint trail of smoke rose from a gash that hadn’t stopped glowing.

Vey stumbled after. Pale. His right leg was wrapped in a makeshift bandage. The wound from the bite had spread in his arm—angry and black like bruised roots.

They didn’t look triumphant.

They looked broken.

Tomas and his parents stood slowly.

“They’re dead,” Rask said flatly. “We burned the last one. But they weren’t normal.”

“Nothing in this forest is normal,” Vey muttered. He swayed and caught himself against a tree.

Rask dropped his axe and turned on Tomas’s father.

“You didn’t say the job would bring those things.”

“You’re adventurers,” his father said. “You said you’d—”

“We said we’d escort you to the tower,” Rask snapped. “Not march through cursed territory wearing bullseyes!”

“They weren’t beasts,” Vey said hoarsely. “They were coordinated, and I’m pretty sure that someone sent them.”

“You mean the wizard?” Tomas’s mother asked quietly.

Rask didn’t answer. He pulled off his left gauntlet and hurled it into the grass.

“Stupid. Should’ve doubled the price.”

“We don’t have more,” his father said. “We gave everything—what the village could spare, what we had—”

“We should’ve turned back at the corpse flower,” Rask growled.

Vey slumped to the ground.

Tomas stood still.

“What now?” he heard his father ask the adventurers.

“We need to continue. Lucky for you, the quest doesn’t permit us to abandon you here.”

“Or kill you,” Vey was the one who muttered the last part, but Tomas heard it.

He watched them, the way they were bleeding, but more than anything—afraid.

Not of him.

Of the path ahead.

Later, they made camp again.

Not because it was safe. But because none of them could walk farther.

Tomas sat beside the dying fire. He looked at his hands; they hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t done anything.

But something inside him whispered that he was the reason this had happened.

That the wolves had been a test.

A price.

He watched the last flame curl around a piece of pine bark.

And thought, what if I’m not meant to be shaped? What if I’m meant to burn?

***

On the seventh day, the path narrowed into a maze of roots and stone. The air changed, as if they were walking uphill even when they weren’t.

There were no birds now. No sound except breath and footfall.

Twice they doubled back, only to find themselves on a loop they didn’t remember.

“I don’t like this,” Tomas’s mother whispered.

“It’s not natural,” his father agreed.

Vey pulled out a charm shaped like a cracked compass and frowned.

They walked for two more hours before Tomas noticed something odd: the same tree. Not just a similar one—but exactly the same. A birch with three claw marks low on the trunk and a strip of red thread tangled in its roots.

“I think we’re being turned around,” he said quietly.

The adventurers stopped.

Rask growled but didn’t disagree.

Vey turned to Tomas. “You’re the one the wizard’s supposed to want, right? Think he’s watching us?”

Tomas didn’t answer. But he looked at the trees again. Closed his eyes.

He reached—not with his hands, but with whatever it was that Eirian had once told him about when she was playing with his sisters; she described it as if the mana was breath, and that converted as a thread. He didn’t really know what he was doing. But he felt something; it was like a pull, sort of gentle.

He pointed in a certain direction.

“That way.”

They followed.

***

On the eighth day, the trees opened.

Just one step and they passed into a clearing so still, so untouched, it felt like the world had been holding its breath for a hundred years.

At the far end stood a tower.

Black stone, without any windows or a door visible from where they stood. Its sides were etched with strange glyphs that flickered—not with light, but with pressure. Tomas’s ears popped just looking at them.

The adventurers stopped walking. Rask let out a low whistle.

“Didn’t think we’d actually find it,” he muttered.

Vey didn’t speak. He looked unsettled for the first time.

Tomas felt no triumph or a sense of excitement, only unease. He didn’t know if the wizard would accept him, or in case he accepted him, if he would be up to the expectations.

***

The tower rose from the earth like a wound that refused to heal.

Half its spire leaned slightly, like it had grown weary mid-century and never recovered. Cracks ran down its surface like old veins, and creeping moss had taken up residence in the seams between stones. Strange metallic piping coiled up the sides like roots made of bronze and ashwood. At its base, the door stood half-sunken into the hill, with a circular plate of tarnished silver set into the stone like a lock.

The forest around it bent subtly outward, as if it too had tried once to push the tower away—and failed.

Tomas stood frozen, the pack heavy on his back. His legs ached. His throat was dry. Rask and Vey stood several paces behind, bandaged and watchful. His parents were at his side, quiet.

None of them spoke.

Suddenly, they heard a sound—soft, rhythmic, like gears trying to breathe.

The trees to their left rustled, and two figures emerged. They were tall and looked human-shaped but not human. When one looked more closely, they would notice that they were golems.

Their bodies were made of pale stone and old metal, joined by cords of silver thread. Runes glimmered faintly at their joints—elbow, neck, and knee. Their movements were precise, and each step made a ticking sound like a winding clock.

They stopped three strides from Tomas and turned their heads—just slightly.

Then one raised its arm and pointed. At him.

Just him.

“I think that means go,” said Rask under his breath.

Tomas looked to his mother. Her hand gripped his sleeve tighter than it should have.

His father nodded once.

“Go, son, don’t be afraid; this is your destiny.”

The door to the tower groaned and sank slightly inward. A seam appeared across its surface, and it rolled open with the slow hush of stone across stone.

Tomas stepped forward.

The moment he passed between the golems, he felt it.

A weight. Like he’d walked beneath a waterfall with no water.

The world shifted.

Behind him, he heard nothing.

The tower had taken him.

***

Inside was not what he expected.

No walls of floating books. No crystals hovering in shafts of golden light. No glowing runes or enchanted artifacts humming in stasis.

It was a single chamber.

The air smelled like old paper and thunderclouds. Dust spiraled lazily in places where light didn’t reach. The walls were etched with lines—unfamiliar script looping in patterns like topography, not language. The floor was smooth, and in its center sat a figure.

An old man. Wrapped in robes that had once been blue but had faded to the color of overcast skies. His beard was trimmed short. His skin was pale. His eyes—grey, clouded—but sharp.

He looked at Tomas.

Measured him the way a craftsman might study a raw piece of ore.

Tomas swallowed.

“I’ve seen children burned alive by magic they couldn’t name,” the old man said. His voice was quiet, but it carried through the room like a truth spoken in a dream. “I’ve seen prodigies beg for their minds back. I’ve seen noble sons tear their bodies apart trying to force power into shapes it never agreed to.”

He tilted his head slightly. “But you didn’t shout or run away; instead, you solved the problem using your head.”

He stood slowly—nothing dramatic, just bones obeying habit.

Tomas didn’t know if he was meant to answer.

So he didn’t.

The wizard walked a circle around him, hands folded behind his back. “They call this place a tower, but they’re wrong; it’s just a ruin with memory.”

Another pause.

“Do you want this, boy? Or are you here because others dragged you?”

Tomas stared at the floor for a long time.

He could still feel the wolves, remembered how their teeth looked, and the silence of the forest that had watched and judged.

He could feel the weight of his mother’s hope. The sweat on his father’s brow. The muttering of villagers. The coin was scraped together like a gift for something they couldn’t understand.

But deeper still…

He remembered the moment he’d felt the illusion on the path.

The way the world twitched—wrong—and how something inside him had answered.

He didn’t want power.

He wanted understanding.

“I want to know,” Tomas said quietly. “I want to understand it, all of it.”

The wizard stopped.

A long breath.

Then a nod.

“Good,” he said. “I don’t train swords. I train minds.”

He turned and walked toward the wall.

Behind Tomas, the door sealed with a hiss and a whisper.

***

Outside, the forest rustled again.

The golems stepped aside and returned to their alcoves.

Tomas’s parents watched as the silver plate rotated back into place, leaving no trace of the door at all.

They did not cry.

They only waited, but after a week they needed to depart and returned to the village, leaving behind their precious son. They had done everything they could to ensure a better future for him.

And whether their son would return the same, it would be up to him.