… The rain was cold that night. The forest was all wet black and slick bark and the soft drum of water on leaves, but Dain walked because Hugo had said the name of a fever-root, pointed to a drawing, and told him, “It grows low near stones that sweat. You’ll know it by the mint-bitter smell and the purple vein through the stem.

  “If we wait till morning, Layla’s fever might break wrong.”

  So of course it had to be him. He was the oldest in Sorowyn Carpentry. Leo had the baby to hold, and Rell couldn’t be trusted with a candle, let alone a nighttime hunt, while Lira—no, he couldn’t think of Lira now. He was the only one who could get the medicinal herb and get back quickly.

  He kept repeating it like a prayer he didn’t believe in: purple vein, mint-bitter, stones that sweat. Purple vein, mint-bitter—

  A branch snagged his ankle. He stumbled, grabbed a sapling, and slipped anyway, catching himself on his palms. Bark clawed his skin open. He hissed through his teeth and pulled his hands back to see the rain already washing the blood thin, pinking it, carrying it away into the hungry dirt.

  Sorowyn Carpentry had taught him how wood bled. Tonight he learned how hands bled like wood.

  He wanted to sit. He wanted to do a lot of things he knew he couldn’t.

  “Keep walking,” he told himself. It came out smaller than he wanted, and the rain gobbled it. “Just… keep...”

  He climbed a little hill, but when he reached the top, his legs decided they were done asking him. They folded under him like old ladders. He went down on his knees, then to his elbows, and then he was lying there on the moss under the rain, panting with his mouth open.

  His hands hurt. He turned them over and watched red ribbon out of the cuts, watched it pool, and watched the rain hammer it flat until the ground drank it. It looked like the bench at the shop when Hugo shaved a plank too fast and all the curls of wood bunched up, only here, the curls were little worms of blood and the bench was the earth and…

  “... Stop it.”

  He pressed his hands to his eyes and felt the sting.

  He couldn’t cry. Hugo said that, as the oldest, he had to hold the roof up by standing tall. Leo and Rell and Lira were watching him constantly, even if he pretended he couldn’t see them doing it. Crying would make them think it was allowed, and if it was allowed, then… then who would keep their roof up?

  But it was hard not to cry. It may have been two years since the war ended, but he still remembered that day like it was yesterday, when Auraline threw its last tantrum to the sky—a storm javelin volley that went wrong and went everywhere and went right through Corvalenne like a nail through a ripe pear. He still remembered the second sun that burned through his eyelids while he hid under his bed. He still remembered the earth trembling, the rafters groaning like old men, and his maman and papa telling him to stay down and look down.

  Then the light went away, and so did maman and papa, and his house felt bigger and emptier at the same time.

  He missed them so much he kept forgetting that missing didn’t bring them back.

  “Maman… Papa…

  "What am I supposed to—"

  Then the shallow puddle of water beneath him suddenly gleamed with a reflection of his own face, and he blinked.

  He lifted his head. The trees were men with their arms linked overhead, but between their elbows he saw the sky—and across it, a seam ripped open by a falling star.

  He’d seen falling stars before. Everyone had. You pointed and wished, and if you were Rell or any of the younger kids in Sorowyn Carpentry, you shouted and chased your wish down the street like it owed you money. But this star didn’t behave. It curved, it swerved, it corrected like a hawk pinning a mouse in tall grass, and then it came down.

  He flinched on instinct. The hill shuddered. The sound hit him after—a deep-bellied boom that rattled his teeth—and the forest shuddered as the star landed right in front of him.

  Groaning followed soon after.

  He made himself small and immediately ducked behind a wind-fallen log slick with black moss. His heartbeat hammered in his ears like Hugo’s mallet, but he peeked over the log, and curiosity must’ve gotten the better of him, because he found himself creeping forward.

  The clearing hadn’t existed five breaths ago. Now the trees around it leaned like men who’d been shoved in a crowd, their roots scraped and showing, their leaves shivering with little pieces of night sliding off them. In the center of the clearing, the earth had caved into itself. A crater like a bowl, where steam crawled out of it in white snakes.

  A lady lay in the crater.

  She was all the wrong colors in the rain. Too pale where skin showed through the shredded fur cloak, too dark where blood had spread, but her hat was wide and pointy, and tubes full of glowing things—liquid or light, he couldn’t tell—bulged out of the satchels she wore on her waist. Her hands were open at her sides, fingers twitching. One of those hands closed, slowly, like it was trying to remember how.

  Every sane thing in him said go back to the log and put the forest between him and that crater and pretend he never saw a star bleed. But the part of him that still answered to Hugo—that learned how to splint a crooked finger and sand a stubborn edge—that part told him that if he left her here, he’d have to carry her later.

  Either on his back or in his heart.

  He couldn't very well leave her here, so he slid down the edge of the crater on his backside, shoes slipping in mud, until he could walk the last few steps.

  “... Miss?” he whispered. “Miss, are you… alright?”

  She immediately twisted around on the ground, and a gnarled wooden staff leapt into her hand as if it’d been waiting for her cue.

  The world obeyed her. Soil broke its loyalty to the earth, lifting in clumps. Stones tore free from their beds. Shards of bark and whole branches shivered loose, and even the trees along the rim of the crater moaned as roots groaned upward. All of them hung in the air, suspended like beads on invisible strings, and they were pointed at him like a circle of spears ready to stab in.

  He froze. His breath stopped where it was. Every tale he’d ever heard about relics—about the kings they raised and the corpses they left—pressed in all at once. One wrong move and he’d be a bloody stain in the earth, a story Hugo would never know how to tell.

  ‘Dead’, he thought. He was already dead.

  But then he saw her shadowed face under the pointy hat. He saw her pointy ears, he saw her pointy teeth, and he saw her pointy eyes.

  Her eyes weren't pale. They were galaxies packed behind glass, and he forgot, for a moment, that she could kill him with a thought.

  'Pretty eyes,' he thought.

  … Her staff wavered as she stared at him staring.

  Then, with a weary sigh, the lady let it dip. The suspended stones and roots fell, thudding back into mud and moss.

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  “Just a kid, huh?” she muttered. Her voice was cracked, soft with exhaustion more than pity. “I’m in a little trouble, so be a good boy, won’t you? Help me get up on my feet before the one-eyes get to me.”

  Dain woke up staring at a ceiling.

  Morning sunlight burned around the curtains. Granamere’s light had that pale, hammered quality when it bounced off new stone, and for a second, he wasn’t very sure he was in a cell.

  … My bedroom?

  He lay very still and let his eyes sweep around. Study desk and mirror in front of him. Closet to his left. Window to his right. This was his room in Wenna’s inn down to the very nail—except the last he remembered, Wenna’s inn had been turned into spear pulp by a giant golem.

  His entire body groaned as he levered himself up. The blanket slid off his chest, and the ache came with it, bright and busy. Someone had taken off his shirt and bandaged him like a careful spider. Shoulder, ribs, thigh—especially the thigh. Throb, throb, throb, like a drunk mason tapping out the wrong beat, but every wound he had was stitched shut and taken care of.

  Then he blinked and realized the left half of his vision was dark.

  He froze and reached to his face, fingertips hovering over the empty eye socket. It wasn’t numb, and he shuddered when he managed to stick just the tip of his fingers past his eyelids… but it was like Belara’s hands had seared his socket when she gouged her eye out, because it didn’t hurt to feel wind from the open window flitting past his missing eye.

  So when he looked forward and saw his own reflection in the mirror on the wall, he thought it was rather strange that he had two pupils in his right eye instead of just one.

  “That’s new,” he muttered. “Title perks?”

  No time to spitball what passed for divine humor. Inventory. First he looked forward and checked: his satchel and silverplume wingcloak hung over the back of the chair, feathers neat and smug. His oreblade cane leaned against the desk. His prosthetic and his Bloodlight Eye were still attached where they belonged… and he was never going to take off his prosthetic for less attention again. He’d rather deal with having to explain his prosthetic than to risk being without it.

  Altar.

  Where?

  He turned left and saw the rectangular slab of wood propped against the closet. Relief unknotted him… which lasted exactly as long as it took him to notice the two chairs beside his bed.

  Anisa and Yasmin.

  Both of them sat with their hands folded across their laps. Anisa’s back was a rod; Yasmin’s tightened jaw was one long warning.

  They didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

  … Hm.

  He looked down at his forearm and activated his title ability. A Tag wasn’t necessary. Black letters washed into existence over his arm, and he knew he was the only one who could see them.

  ***

  Name: Dain Sorowyn

  Grade: Common-5

  Cursed Title: Collector

  Title Ability: Eye of Belara

  Acquired Skills: None

  Might: 14 (+2)

  Swiftness: 13 (+2)

  Resilience: 12 (+1)

  Clarity: 25 (+1)

  Mana: 44/44 (+2.9/hr)

  Relics: Windscar Prosthetic Arm (Common-4), Bloodlight Eye (Common-2), Oreblade Cane (Common-2), Silverplume Wingcloak (Common-4)

  ***

  Full mana. And he’d spent most of it fighting the gargoyle golem. Considering his mana regeneration per hour was two-point-nine, and he was no longer chilly inside, he had to have been out for at least…

  He lifted his eyes to Anisa. “How long?”

  “Three days,” she said, voice even. “The people of Granamere know how to build and rebuild. All border towns must. Wenna’s inn was among the first to be repaired so you could have a comfortable bed to lay in.”

  “I see,” he murmured. “Does anyone else know about that Altar leaning against my closet?”

  “No. The two of us were the first ones to pull you off the golem and into a private room. Yasmin dressed your wounds while I made sure to collect all of your possessions, and everyone else has been too… preoccupied since then to take much notice of you.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful news.”

  Then he snapped his prosthetic up and opened the palm at Anisa’s face.

  Yasmin’s swordstaff rasped free in the same breath and pressed against his neck. Enough pressure to warn. Not enough to cut.

  Anisa didn’t flinch. She simply sat straighter, hands folded in her lap like a proper lady at tea. Dain did his best to keep a flat expression.

  “I don’t want to do this,” he whispered. “But I might have no choice. A personal Altar is a family gallows in every land you can name, and you saw something you weren’t supposed to see.

  “You will not kill me,” Anisa said plainly.

  “Bold bet to place with a hand at your face.”

  “Your hand is trembling,” she continued. “For all your posturing and sweet-talking, you are inconveniently kind. You would not have risked yourself twice to save me if you were not. You would not be shaking now if you were not.”

  He scowled.

  “My lady—” Yasmin began, blade still kissing his throat.

  “Put it down.”

  “My lady, he is a man who has made a personal Altar. He—”

  “Is our benefactor.” Anisa’s eyes cut to Yasmin, and something in them made Yasmin flinch. “He is not who he is not, and I will not have a weapon pointed at an injured man under my watch.”

  Yasmin’s mouth went grim as a sealed seam. She pulled the blade back an inch—then another—and then she set the haft to the floor and held it there very reluctantly.

  Anisa returned her attention to Dain. “Well, Mister Sorowyn? Will you shoot, or will you listen to what I have to say?”

  He worked his jaw, teeth sanded together. “Talk.”

  “For starters,” Anisa touched her heart with her right palm, left hand open to the window’s light. “On stone, on soil, on the bones that bore us—I have no intention of reporting you to anyone, let alone the Curator Church.”

  “You know the punishment.”

  “I do. Death for the Altar’s maker’s entire bloodline, often extended to their friends and their neighbors for good measure, which means either you are a spectacular liar who fooled me into thinking you were not cruel, or you have nobody to lose.” Her eyes grew steady as granite. “Which leads me to the inevitable conclusion: you are a survivor of Corvalenne. When we first met in the Elderhush Forest—when you were under the guise of a wanderer, mind you—you were walking away from Corvalenne, while we were walking towards it.”

  He kept the barrel of his palm aimed at her face and felt his heart kick against his ribs.

  “Flimsy reasoning.” He shrugged. “I could simply be friendless. And I told you I was from Havers Pike, not Corvalenne.”

  “Are you?”

  He held her gaze long enough to feel it in his spine. Confidence was a tool, he told himself, and ladies made their servants carry their toolkits for them. He couldn’t mistake her poise for proof.

  He couldn’t trust her.

  He couldn’t trust anyone.

  “... Then let me help you trust me first,” she said quietly.

  “My lady,” Yasmin snapped her head at Anisa. “Don’t—”

  Anisa ignored her. She slid her fingers under her collar and tugged free a pendant Dain hadn’t noticed before—because it hadn’t wanted to be noticed.

  It was a pendant shaped like a rearing mountain goat, six horns sweeping back like twin knives. A Stoneheart Ram. Proper noun. They were the patron beasts of the Autonomous Land of Obric, found only on the mountains above the capital’s Great Argent Vein, and by Obric law, nobody could wear the crest of the Stoneheart Ram in any shape or form. No amulets, no emblems, and certainly no pendant carved in the shape of a Stoneheart Ram, even if it was only the shell encasing the real relic inside the pendant.

  ***

  Name: Amulet of the Stoneheart Dragon

  Type: Active Apotheca-Class Relic, Exquisite-9

  Attribute Addition: None

  Ability Description: The holder can revive someone once within ten minutes of their death. The revival will take ten days, and during which, the body cannot be damaged any further. The activation cost is 10,000 mana.

  ***

  … Apart from those affiliated with the crown, of course.

  At the end of the day, a revival relic such as the Amulet of the Stoneheart Dragon was something only the crowns could afford.

  “I hold the Title of Monarch, and my title ability is ‘Lineage’, which grants my direct descendents an increase to their might, swiftness, resilience, and clarity equal to my base attributes so long as I live,” Anisa said. “It is an impossible Title for commoners to obtain, for the main offerings are a Dragon’s crownscale, a Dragon’s bone-marrow pearl, and a clutch of Wyrmlight hearts. They are materials that can only be obtained from a Dragon’s carcass, and every Dragon carcass in the world is buried under a nation’s capital fortress… which means only those born in said fortress could ever hope to obtain this Title.”

  With that, Anisa crossed an arm over her chest and lifted her chin proudly.

  “I am Anisa Hallowmortar, Second Princess of the Autonomous Land of Obric, and the second daughter to the Grand Minelord of Obric,” she said. “If you kill me here, you will start yet another war between Auraline and Obric, so what about it, Mister Sorowyn? Care to join me for an early lunch?”

  really close, you'll find Corvalenne on the map of the Brastel Continent!