The road wound through the dying hills like a scar, pale and cracked beneath his feet. He did not remember when he had last spoken aloud. Words felt like seeds scattered on barren soil—useless, wasted. Silence suited him better now.

He paused at the crest of a ridge. Below lay the ruins of a village, roofs collapsed, fields blackened. Another place touched by the god’s temper. Another reminder of what he had lost.

He descended slowly, boots crunching over brittle earth. The air smelled faintly of smoke, though the fires had long since died. He passed a broken well, a shattered cart, a child’s wooden toy half-buried in dust. All of it abandoned. All of it familiar.

He knelt beside a patch of soil. Dry. Lifeless. He pressed his palm into it anyway, as if some part of him still hoped it might respond. Once, the ground had answered him eagerly. Once, he had coaxed life from the earth with nothing but patience and devotion.

But that was before the god’s wrath. Before the storm that had taken his brother, his crops, his home.

He rose and continued on.

By dusk he reached the far edge of the village, where a single figure sat beside a cold fire pit. A woman, wrapped in a tattered cloak, her face hidden beneath a hood. She did not startle when he approached.

“You’re the wanderer,” she said. Her voice was rough, like someone who had cried too long. “The one who lived.”

He said nothing.

“They say you walk with death at your heels,” she continued. “That the god hunts you still.”

He met her gaze. “Let him hunt.”

A faint smile touched her lips—bitter, weary. “If you keep walking this road, you’ll reach the mountains by dawn. Beyond them lies the old kingdom. They say rebels gather there. People who want the god dead.”

He turned to leave.

“Wait,” she said. “If you find them… tell them we’re still out here. The ones who survived.”

He nodded once. Then he walked on, into the deepening night, the stars cold and sharp above him.

The legend followed him like a shadow. But so did purpose.

And purpose was heavier.

Alfric Meadon slung his rifle over his shoulder and readjusted his furs across his shoulder. Kalavia was a cold wasteland, but his hiking was laborious, and sweat had began to form a chafing layer betwixt his clothing and bare skin. He ran a finger under his chest, ghosting the scars of an altercation long forgotten and buried in myth. This was a place that long bore the contusions and cut-lines of victimhood, he thought, passing an ale-house only to be greeted by the all too familiar scent of drunks and tramps, drinking away the horrors and grief of the Wrath and slipping away into wine-dizzied stupor.

It had been nearly a decade ago now. And it had been his fault, though somewhere between rumour and written word, the legends had forgotten such a fact. He had been in no hurry to correct them.

He had been twelve, his brother eight, and they had been playing a daring game of Soldiers and Dragons in the garden, apple branches held aloft in childish imitation of swords and spears. Alfric had been dragged outside by his little brother, Riron, and was much maligned to the idea of still playing a child's game, and admist the poor harvest and drought already plaguing the region, crops frostbitten and livestock hypothermic, he was not happy about the wastage of the apple branches. When Riron advanced upon him, and prodded him with his stick, declaring himself the bravest knight in the realm for slaying such a terrible beast, Alfric had retaliated, pushing Riron to the ground in a display of might, quite forgetting that he was lean and strong from farm labour, and Riron had always been a sickly child. The smaller boy stumbled, but not enough to dissuade Alfric from his triumphant advance.

He had declared himself to be the draconic form of Gareus, God of fire and wrath, cavorting with a gleeful laugh.

Now, the real Gareus was not happy about this.

That night, fever took Riron in the night, without his mother by his bedside as it was a silent expiry, and Alfric discovered him in the morning after admonishing him for not milking the cows. Dead. Then came the fires, raging and bright across the lands, rendering lands barren, but no warmer. the deaths from starvation nearly equalled those from exposure.

Alfric came to slow after passing the alehouse. The mountains rose before him like the ribs of some ancient beast, jagged silhouettes against a bruised dawn as he climbed the narrow path with the slow, deliberate steps of a man who had long since learned to conserve strength. Frost clung to his beard and his breath came out in thin, ragged clouds.

He had walked half the world since the Wrath.

He had buried more than he remembered and forgotten less than he wished.

At the ridge’s edge he paused, leaning on his rifle. Below, the valley stretched wide and white, a frozen scar where once orchards had bloomed. He could almost see the ghosts of apple trees swaying in summer wind. He could almost hear Riron’s laughter.

He closed his eyes. The memory came unbidden: Riron’s small hands gripping the apple branch. The boy’s triumphant grin.

And then the fires.

Alfric opened his eyes again. The valley was still.

A figure approached from behind, boots crunching over frost. “You didn’t sleep,” the woman from the ruined village said. She had followed him farther than he expected. “Most men would have frozen.”

“I’m not most men,” he replied.

“No,” she said softly. “You’re the wanderer.”

He hated the title. It clung to him like soot.

She stepped beside him, pulling her cloak tighter. “Is it true, then? What they say? That you’re going to the old kingdom to find the rebels?”

“I’m going to find Gareus.”

Her breath caught. “To beg forgiveness?”

“To kill him.”

The wind shifted, carrying the faint scent of pine and distant smoke. She stared at him as though seeing him for the first time.

“You can’t kill a god.”

“I know.”

“Then why try?”

“Because he killed my brother,” Alfric said. “Because he burned the world. Because someone has to try.”

She swallowed. “And if the rebels won’t help you?”

“Then I’ll go alone.”