The fire crackled gently between us. Shadows danced along the cavern walls, flickering across faces that had long since stopped being strangers. Each of them had their own past, their own scars, their own reasons for sitting around this flame-but tonight, all eyes were on me.

I pulled my cloak tighter, the weight of the day settling deep in my bones. The mark on my arm pulsed faintly beneath the fabric, not with pain, but memory. I could feel it stirring, as if it too remembered how everything began.

Lyra sat to my left, ever silent but ever close. Her silver-blonde hair was tied back, her sharp eyes glinting with curiosity. Across from me, Kael leaned forward, his chin resting on his knuckles, waiting. To my right, Neris fiddled with her dagger but didn’t look away.

I gave them a tired smile.

“If you really want to know how it all started how i gained this mark, and my interest in overthrowing prince Corvin, then I suppose you’d better get comfortable.”

Kael grunted. “We’ve got time.”

Lyra’s voice was quiet, almost hesitant. “You’ve never told anyone the full story. Not even me.”

I glanced at her, then back at the fire. “Because it’s not a story. It’s a collection of moments. And the first one… starts in Eldermire.”

----------------------------

“Zildra! Come in, dinner’s ready!”

“Mooooom! Everyone’s watching the royal carriage!”

I must’ve been six or seven. Small, fast, always covered in dust and scrapes, my hair was a dark black just like my father, my eyes were grey as were my mothers. The other kids in the village crowded the road, eyes wide and mouths full of half-believed stories. A royal carriage in Eldermire? Unheard of. The royal crest shone like polished fire, the horses taller than anything we’d ever seen.

But when I turned to call my mother, the joy drained from her face. Her dark braid fell over one shoulder, her storm-gray eyes fixed on the procession. Not with awe. With fear.

She crossed the yard in a flash, grabbed my arm, and pulled me toward the house.

“Inside. Now.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer, not right away. Only when the door shut behind us did she kneel beside me.

“If you ever see that crest again, you run the other way. Do you understand me?”

“But it’s just-”

Her hand tightened on mine. “Promise me.”

I nodded, confused.

That night, my father didn’t say a word. His brown eyes looked stoic as he sat at the table, staring at the door. My mother served food, but her hands trembled. I remember saying something stupid.

“That lady in the carriage… she had a mark. On her face. It looked like the one on your arm. The one you always keep hidden from others.”

My father’s spoon hit the table with a dull thud. My mother froze.

She said in a worried voice "oh.. thats interesting..."

She and my father exchanged some glances at each other, as if they were communicating with their eyes.

She leaned down and whispered in my ear, “No matter what happens, remember we love you.”

She kissed my head and sent me to bed.

By morning, she was gone.

There was no note. No sign of struggle. No explanation. Just silence.

My father never answered my questions. He stopped talking altogether for a while. The house went quiet, colder somehow. And the village? They whispered louder than ever.

“She was taken by the royals.”

“She was a traitor.”

“She wasn’t from here. She didn’t carry the same name as the rest of us.”

They didn’t say it where I could hear. But their kids did.

“Your mom ran off with a noble.”

“She abandoned you. Probably because your family doesn’t even have a proper last name.”

“Maybe you’re not even her kid.”

One day, I hit back. A boy named Tomias. I split his lip with a single punch. I don’t remember deciding to do it. Only the feel of my fist and the look of surprise on his face.

That earned me a trip to Master Eron’s study.

Master Eron wasn’t just the village teacher he was the closest thing Eldermire had to a scholar. A lean, aging man with a sharp nose and sharper eyes, he carried himself with quiet precision. He wore the same gray robe every day, patched and frayed at the hem, and he always smelled faintly of ink and dried herbs. Despite his appearance, there was a calm strength in him, the kind that didn’t need to raise its voice to command a room. He had taught generations of children in Eldermire, and while most only saw a tired old man with too many books, I knew better. He noticed things. He remembered names. And he never once treated me like I was broken.

He didn’t call me Zildra. He called me “boy,” like he did with most, but never with contempt. That day, though, he used my name.

“Zildra,” he said with a sigh, setting his quill down, “what did Tomias say to you?”

I hesitated. “He said my mother ran off because of me. That my family name wasn’t worth remembering.”

Master Eron nodded slowly, as if the answer didn’t surprise him. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me, not with judgment, but with the kind of sadness that made me feel heavier than before.

“Children repeat what they hear. But you’re old enough to decide what kind of man you want to be, regardless of what they say.”

“So I’m just supposed to let them keep talking?”

“No,” he replied, his tone firm. “But learn when to use words over fists. The world won’t care who struck first. It’ll only remember who couldn’t control themselves.”

I clenched my fists but said nothing.

After a long pause, he stood and walked to a shelf behind him. He pulled out a worn book thinner than most, its cover frayed with time and handed it to me.

“This doesn’t have the answers you’re looking for,” he said. “But it has stories. Real ones. Maybe they’ll help you understand that you’re not the first to grow up with missing pieces.”

I took it without a word.

He didn’t punish me. I think he knew it wouldn’t help. Instead, he gave me something far more dangerous than detention he gave me something to think about.

Only Lyra stayed close. She never said much about it, but she never avoided me either. In a village where silence can be louder than cruelty, her presence alone felt like rebellion. We’d sit under the old tree outside town, a crooked thing with gnarled roots and one broken branch we named the ‘arm of Eldermire.’

Lyra wasn’t like the others. She didn’t ask pointless questions. She didn’t try to fix me. Instead, she brought strange things she’d find near the riverbank or deep in the woods shiny rocks, oddly shaped feathers, and mushrooms that glowed faintly at night. She’d lay them out like puzzle pieces and give each one a ridiculous name.

“This one,” she said once, holding up a twisted piece of copper wire, “is a crown. For you. Because you’re obviously you are the prince of sadness right now.”

I rolled my eyes. “A prince of sadness huh. That’s fitting.”

As she picked it up and turned it around and said “now that the crown is upside down hopefuly your frown will also turn” she said smiling a akwardly. 

I must admit, it made me chuckle.

I didn’t say it then, but she was the only reason I didn’t fall apart. She reminded me that even broken things could shine.

After that, something shifted. Not just in me, but in the way the village looked at me. I remember the day it started clearly a strange warmth building in my fingertips, a flicker of light in the air around me that danced before vanishing into nothing. I didn’t understand it at first, but Master Eron did.

When I showed him what I could do, his expression changed. Not surprise he never seemed surprised but there was a weight in his eyes, like he knew what it meant.

“It’s rare for one born in Eldermire to touch magic,” he told me. “But not impossible. It just takes the right pressure. And you, boy, have been under pressure for a long time.”

Word spread fast. A sorcerer born in Eldermire was the kind of thing that got people talking. Some looked at me differently. Some respected me more. A few were afraid. But it was the first time in years I felt like more than just the boy whose mother vanished.

Master Eron began to tutor me personally. He taught me control, structure, and how magic responded to thought, to intent. It wasn’t about power it was about understanding.

And in the evenings, my father, silent as always, would take me outside the village and place a wooden blade in my hands.

“Hold it steady,” he would say. “Again.”

He rarely said more than that. But we trained. Every day. Sword in hand, sweat in my eyes, silence between us. It was the closest we had to conversation. And maybe, in his way, he was preparing me for something he couldn’t explain.

I studied by day, trained by night. And slowly, piece by piece, I began to change. I wasn’t just Zildra, the boy with questions anymore.

I was becoming something else.

But that’s not where the story ends.

That’s just the first page.