Ashes on the Wind
The air smelled of iron and old wood as Alric Vaern tightened his grip on the ship's rail.Beyond the mist, the coastline of Eryndale unfurled — broken towers, blackened fields, rivers reflecting a dying sun. His home, once a glittering jewel, now wore the colors of rot and rebellion.
"Five years," Alric murmured, voice roughened by exile and salt air. "And still the bastard sits my throne."
The ship, The Grey Wren, creaked as it drifted closer to the shallows. Men moved like ghosts around him — mercenaries, sellswords, debtors. Not the army he once commanded, but they would have to do.
Footsteps approached. Konrad Dawnhart, tall and battered in a dented breastplate, leaned against the rail beside him.
"You sure about this, Prince?" Konrad asked, a smirk pulling at his scarred face. "Eryndale eats its own these days. Might find more than you bargained for."
Alric's eyes never left the shore. "I'm not here to bargain."
Konrad shrugged. "Hope you kept that silver tongue. Steel alone won't win this."
Alric only smiled — a tight, bitter thing — and signaled to the men. Sails furled. Oars dipped. The ship moved like a whisper.
On the cliffs above, Maela Veris watched the ship through a spyglass, hidden beneath the shadow of a crumbling shrine.Her robes — deep crimson, embroidered with the Wyrm Temple's sigils — caught the dying light. She closed the spyglass and muttered a prayer to the Starborn.
"It begins," she whispered, feeling the pulse of Shardstone deep under the earth.The world was sick. She had seen it in the bones, in the fevered dreams granted by the gods sleeping beneath the shards.Only fire could cleanse it.
Her hand rested briefly on the pendant around her neck — a shard fragment, humming faintly.She had come to Eryndale not to stop Alric Vaern... but to watch him. Perhaps even guide him toward the pyre the world so desperately needed.
A rustle behind her.
Sister Elowen stepped from the brush, face half-hidden by a traveler's hood."You intend to follow him?" Elowen asked, voice calm but sharp.
"We must," Maela said. "He is a spark. Whether he burns the right things... that remains to be seen."
Elowen nodded once. "Then we watch."
The harbor town of Ravencross was little more than a carcass.Empty stalls. Burnt houses. Ragged beggars staring from the shadows.
As Alric led his men through the ruined streets, memories gnawed at him — of crowded markets, laughing minstrels, the summer tournaments. All gone, swallowed by Lord Veyric Halden's iron rule.
A dirty-faced boy darted past, clutching a loaf of bread to his chest. An old woman, toothless, spat in the dust.
"Some welcome," Konrad muttered.
Ahead, a group of armed men in black surcoats blocked the road. The largest, a captain by the look of him, sneered.
"State your business," he barked. "No travelers allowed without writ from Lord Halden."
Alric pulled back his hood, letting the sunset catch the silver-threaded emblem stitched into his cloak — a rearing gryphon, the symbol of the true royal house.
"My business," Alric said, voice sharp as drawn steel, "is taking back what is mine."
The captain stared a heartbeat too long — and in that breath, Konrad moved.A flash of sword, a shout, and the square erupted in violence.
Alric fought like a man remembering an old song.His blade sang through the air — a symphony of practiced death.When the dust cleared, five black-cloaked men lay bleeding on the stones.
Panting, Alric turned to his men."Burn the bodies," he said. "Let the smoke carry my message."
In a darkened chamber many miles away, Lady Silvara Wynne listened to the news with a cold, thoughtful expression.
"He's returned," her spymaster said, setting a bloodstained token on the table — a strip of cloth bearing the gryphon.
Silvara touched it lightly, as if it might bite.Alric Vaern. The exiled prince.She had heard the old songs, read the seditious pamphlets passed in secret through the cities.
"Trouble," her spymaster said. "Big trouble."
Silvara smiled."Or opportunity," she said softly.
Her rebellion, still a fragile thing hidden in the forests of Velmere, needed a face. A name to rally the broken people of the Shards.
Perhaps, if she moved carefully, Alric Vaern could be that name.
Or perhaps, if he proved foolish... he would burn first.
Night fell, heavy and wet.
By the smoldering ruins of the captain's outpost, Alric sat alone, sharpening his sword.
He felt the weight of eyes on him — his men, watching. Judging.They had pledged to follow him. For now.But loyalty was a currency he knew could be spent quickly in these shattered days.
A soft rustle.Konrad approached, tossing a waterskin.
"You made a statement," Konrad said, settling down across from him. "But statements won't win wars."
Alric wiped the blade clean, staring into the reflection — seeing not a prince, but a soldier, a ghost.
"No," he said. "They won't."
He slid the sword into its sheath with a final, deliberate motion.
"But a spark might."
Far above them, in the dark clouded sky, a faint glimmer pulsed — a falling star, burning bright before the black.
Unseen by Alric, Maela Veris and Sister Elowen watched from the cliffs, silent as wraiths.
The world was shifting.The old scars would bleed anew.
And the true war — the war for the Shards of Veyrith — had begun.