The journey out of Aerlan took three days.
Caedren did not sleep. He did not need to. Grief traveled faster than rest ever could.
He walked beneath a sky stained with soot and sorrow, where even the stars flickered as if through a veil of mourning. The land bore its wounds openly—blackened trees, streams choked with ash, fields where nothing would grow again. Birds no longer sang. Even the insects had fallen silent, as if the world itself held its breath.
Behind him, Aerlan smoldered. Before him, only the uncertain hush of the wild.
The boy he'd carried was left in the arms of a healer among the survivors—old hands trembling as they took his broken weight. Caedren had not spoken a farewell. He had no such gift to offer. What words could he give that wouldn't rot in the throat?
Some of the villagers remained on the hilltop, shell-shocked and hollow, clutching their silence like it might shelter them from what was to come. Others had already scattered—toward the hills, toward the rivers, toward myths of safety.
Caedren did not look back. He knew too well that looking back turned men to stone.
By the third dusk, he found them.
A fire, barely more than a flicker, nestled in the cradle of a clearing just beyond the border of the old forest. It was not made for warmth or comfort. It was made for watching. Guarding. Enduring.
Around it sat men and women wrapped in cloaks that had known too many seasons. Faces half-shadowed, shaped by hardship. Not rebels. Not yet. Survivors, yes—but sharpened into something else. Their eyes held the wary edge of people who had run out of places to run.
A woman rose to meet him as he stepped from the trees.
She moved like someone who had forgotten softness. Her limbs long and lean, her jaw set like stone. A scar ran the length of her left cheek, cutting through the remnants of beauty like a knife through silk. Black hair tangled down her back in snarled ropes, caught with bits of dried grass and time.
"Who's there?" she said, and the words cracked the silence like flint.
Caedren stepped into the firelight.
He looked like no threat. No warrior's armor. No glinting blade. Just a man in coarse linen, with a staff slung across his back and a voice tempered by years.
"I am no one," he said.
The woman tilted her head slightly, watching him the way wolves watch the wind. Her hand hovered near a sword strapped to her side—far too heavy for elegance, but worn with practice.
"You don't look like a merchant," she said. "And you don't smell like a pilgrim."
"I'm neither," Caedren answered.
"Then what are you?"
He paused. The fire crackled between them. Someone coughed behind her. One of the others—a young man with a face too old for his years—shifted where he sat.
"I came to offer a choice," Caedren said.
The woman's eyes didn't move from his. "A choice," she repeated, voice dry as dust. "What, like the one you gave Aerlan?"
Her words were a blade, casually drawn. Caedren didn't flinch.
"No," he said. "A different one."
She turned her head, spoke to the others without looking away from him. "He says he's here to offer a choice. We've had choices before. They usually come with chains."
"Or fire," someone muttered.
The woman raised a hand, silencing them. Then, to Caedren: "What kind of choice?"
"One that doesn't end with you becoming what you hate," he said.
That earned a thin smile—just a pull of the lips, bitter and small. "We've already become it. That ship sailed when they took our children. Our homes. When kings left us to die."
"I know," Caedren said.
She looked at him then, really looked—searching his face for lies, for belief, for some hidden agenda tucked behind his eyes like a dagger.
"And what would you have us do?" she asked. "Lay down our blades? Pretend we still have something left to lose?"
Caedren shook his head. "No. I wouldn't ask that. But if you're going to build something from this—" he gestured vaguely, meaning the ruin, the fire, the whole world, "—it can't be shaped from the same old bones."
She scoffed. "You speak like a priest."
"I've been worse," he replied, voice cool as river stone.
She studied him. The fire danced between them, throwing shadows across her face.
"You think you're better?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I think I remember what we were supposed to be."
The fire popped. Sparks drifted up into the darkness, chased by wind that carried the smell of pine and old wounds.
One of the younger women near the fire looked up. "Who are you, really?"
Caedren did not smile. "A man who no longer believes in kings."
"Then why are you here?" the first woman asked.
He took a slow breath. "Because I believe in people. Sometimes. When they remember how to choose."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then: "Your name?"
"Caedren."
The name settled in the air like a stone in still water.
Recognition did not spark in her eyes—but something else did. A kind of grim curiosity. As if she'd heard the name before but wasn't sure where.
"Well, Caedren," she said, "you've found the Ashen Oath."
The words landed heavy.
Caedren said nothing.
"We're not soldiers," she continued. "We don't fight for flags. We don't bend the knee. We rise from what's burned."
Caedren's gaze held hers. "And what do you become, when you rise?"
She hesitated. "We fight for freedom."
He looked down, as if considering the shape of the word. "Freedom," he echoed. "Then you'll fight for nothing."
Gasps stirred the circle. A few hands moved to weapons.
But the woman held firm. "Careful, wanderer. You're not among sheep here."
"I know," Caedren said. "You're wolves. You've had to be."
He stepped closer to the fire, his voice low.
"But a world of wolves ends in ash."
No one spoke.
The fire snapped and hissed.
Then the woman said, slowly, "You talk like someone who's seen too much."
"I've seen enough," Caedren said.
A long silence stretched.
Finally, she nodded. Just once.
"Then speak your choice, Caedren. And we'll see if it's worth the blood it'll cost."
He looked at them all—the broken, the angry, the tired.
And he saw hope.
Not the kind sung in halls, but the kind forged in ruin.