The air in the central square was thick with the scent of pine smoke and the unwashed wool of a hundred anxious bodies. Maida stood on the weathered wooden platform, the fire of her own speech still burning in her throat, but the crowd was not looking at her anymore. They were parting to let three figures through.

  Barre led the way, his frame a silhouette of jagged edges against the bonfire. He was a man who seemed constructed from the very limestone of the peaks, his face a map of deep, soot-stained furrows that held the dust of forty harvests. His hands were gnarled and thick, the knuckles swollen from years of wrestling life from the cold earth. Behind him stood Fuhad, clutching a heavy walking staff with a grip that betrayed his terror.

  Between them was Layal, Mahir’s sister. She was a slip of a girl with eyes like dark flint and hair pulled back in braids so tight they seemed to pull at her skin. She looked like her brother, but without the hesitation that usually clouded his face. She looked like a girl who was ready to claw the truth out of the world.

  "Maida!" Barre’s voice was a low, resonant growl that silenced the nearby whispers. "Where is he? They say he was seen at your side. They say he has taken up your madness."

  Maida stepped to the edge of the stage, her shadow stretching long over the old man. "He left, Barre. He packed his kit before the first light and headed for the pass. He did not tell me where he was going. He simply... he could not stay."

  Layal let out a sharp, jagged breath. "You drove him out," she whispered, her voice carrying in the sudden stillness. "You filled his head with ghosts and then watched him break under the weight of them. If the mountain takes him, Maida, his blood is on your hands."

  Two miles away, the ancestral home of the Sahrans was draped in an oppressive silence. Inside, Miran sat by the hearth, his hands resting on his knees. His mind was a storm of static. He was thinking of the moment he felt the sharp crack of his hand against Maida’s face, and the look in her eyes that had haunted him ever since. He was a man built for war, but he was drowning in the domesticity of a revolution he did not fully believe in.

  ?Najma and Ziyado sat at the heavy oak table. Ziyado was meticulously cleaning a weaving shuttle, her movements methodical and rhythmic, while Najma stared into the dying embers of the fire. The tension was a physical weight in the room, a cord stretched so tight it was hummed.

  The door burst open, and Yusuf stumbled inside. He was pale, his skin glistening with a thin film of sweat that made him look like a man made of wax. He ignored Miran and went straight for Najma.

  ?"Najma, you have to come now," Yusuf said, his voice high and thin. "The square is a trap. The Founders' guards have moved in on the secret meeting. Maida is surrounded. She is in danger, Najma! She is calling for you!"

  ?Najma was on her feet before he finished the sentence. "What? Where is the guard? Why are we still here?"

  ?"I have a way out," Yusuf said, his hand trembling as he gripped her arm. "I can get you to her before the perimeter closes. We have to move!"

  ?He did not look at Ziyado. He did not look at Miran. He pulled Najma out into the night, the heavy door thudding shut behind them.

  The silence that followed lasted only three seconds. Then, the windows of the house shattered simultaneously as the first wave of the Silent Tithe hit the house.

  Miran was on his feet before the glass hit the floorboards. He kicked the hidden latch beneath the rug and pulled the Aetherium sword from its grave. The blade did not just shine; it vibrated with a predatory, high-pitched hum that set his teeth on edge. It was the only piece of such metal in all of Solvara, a relic of a time when the Sahrans were kings of the mountain instead of hunted shadows.

  Six assassins flooded the room, their faces masked by iron grates. Miran met them in the center of the kitchen. He was no longer a brooding husband; he was the warrior he had been bred to be. He moved like a shadow given form. The Aetherium blade sheared through a pike staff as if it were dry straw and continued upward, catching the first assassin under the jaw.

  But it was not a fair fight. It was never meant to be.

  More men poured through the broken windows. Miran took a blade to the shoulder and a heavy mace to the ribs, the force of the blow throwing him against Ziyado’s loom. He fought with a desperate, animal ferocity, the Aetherium blade leaving trails of blue light in the smoky air, but the numbers were overwhelming. As he slumped against the stone hearth, blood masking his vision, he watched as the soldiers began to toss jars of oil against the wooden walls.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  ?"Burn it," a voice commanded from the dark. "Burn the lineage. Burn the Weaver."

  The villagers saw the glow before they heard the screams. A column of orange fire erupted from the ridge where Ziyado’s house stood, lighting up the valley like a false dawn.

  ?In their desperation and their misguided passion, the men and women of Solvara did exactly what the Founders expected. They grabbed pitchforks, heavy hammers, and kitchen knives, and they ran toward the fire to save the heart of their village.

  ?They did not know they were running into a slaughter.

  The Founders' army was waiting in the narrow gorge that led to the house. They did not use bows; they used a wall of pikes and heavy cavalry. It was a mechanical, systematic massacre. The villagers, fueled by a love for their neighbors that surpassed their common sense, threw themselves against the steel. They were cut down in rows. Passion proved to be a poor shield against a professional pike-wall. The gorge became a river of mud and viscera, and among those caught in the initial surge was Ziyado.

  ?She was found near her garden gate. She did not die a warrior's death. She was murdered with a brutal, senseless cruelty, her body left as a warning to anyone who dared to weave a story of rebellion.

  ?Najma and Yusuf were halfway to the square when they saw the ridge go up in flames. Najma stopped, her breath hitching in her chest.

  ?"The house," she whispered. "Yusuf, the house is burning. Maida isn't at the square. She’s at the house!"

  ?She turned to run back, but Yusuf caught her, his grip bruising her skin. "No! Najma, stay here! It is over. You cannot go back there!"

  ?"Let me go!" she screamed, hitting him. "Miran is there! Ziyado is there! My family is in that fire!"

  ?"It was the only way!" Yusuf roared, his voice breaking as his own facade crumbled. "I made a deal! I gave them the Sahrans! I was trying to save you, Najma! I was trying to sacrifice the family to save our lives!"

  Najma froze. The world seemed to go silent. She looked at her brother and saw a stranger, a hollowed-out coward who had traded the lives of his kin for a promise of safety from a monster.

  ?She did not argue. She did not cry. She simply lunged past him, her eyes fixed on the inferno.

  When they reached the lane, the air was so hot it scorched the back of Najma’s throat. The smell was the worst part—the smell of burning cedar mixed with the copper tang of a butcher shop.

  ?Piles of bodies lay atop one another, a grotesque carpet of the people she had known since childhood. She saw the baker, his hands still blackened by soot. She saw the blacksmith’s apprentice. And then, she saw Ziyado.

  The sight of the Weaver’s broken, desecrated body hit Najma like a physical blow to the heart. She began to panic, a high, thin keening sound escaping her lips. She scrambled through the mud, her hands reaching for the woman who had been her mother in every way that mattered.

  ?"She’s gone, Najma!" Yusuf cried, stumbling after her.

  ?The assassins returned from the shadows of the burning barn. They were dripping with the blood of the villagers, their task almost complete. They stopped when they saw the pair. Miran and Maida were nowhere to be found, but they had found the prize.

  ?Yusuf stepped in front of Najma, his hands raised in a pathetic, shaking gesture. "Wait! I am Yusuf! I spoke with Noordeen! We made a deal! I gave you the Sahrans! My sister and I are to be spared!"

  The lead soldier stepped forward, wiping his blade on a dead man’s tunic. He looked at Yusuf with a cold, detached amusement. "Noordeen’s orders were quite specific, boy. He decided that a man who would sell his own blood for a life is a man who cannot be trusted with a secret. And he decided that no one of the Sahran name will be left alive to tell the story of this night."

  ?"But I helped you!" Yusuf screamed.

  ?The soldier did not answer with words. He lunged.

  Yusuf threw himself forward, not out of bravery, but out of a final, desperate instinct to protect the only person he had left. The steel entered his chest with a wet, heavy thud. He collapsed into the mud, his life bubbling out of his mouth in a red froth.

  Najma stood frozen, her mind fracturing under the weight of the horror. She watched the steel slide into her brother’s chest. She watched the life leak out of him, a red froth bubbling at his lips as he slumped into the filth of the lane. The assassins didn't look at her; they were crowded around Yusuf, finishing their work with a brutal, mechanical focus, their blades rising and falling as they ensured the "traitor" would never speak again.

  ?In that moment of frenzied violence, Najma simply turned away.

  She did not scream. She did not fight. A cold, hollow void had opened up where her soul used to be. She began to walk, her footsteps heavy and aimless in the mud. The heat of the burning house was at her back, but she felt nothing but a biting, internal frost. She passed the piles of her neighbors, their faces twisted in the finality of the slaughter. She walked past the garden where Ziyado’s herbs were being trampled by iron boots.

  ?She had no idea if her husband had crawled from the fire or if he lay as ash beneath the beams. She did not know if her daughter was hidden in the cellar or if she had been caught in the crossfire at the square. Those thoughts didn't even reach the surface of her mind. She was a hollow shell, a living ghost moving through a graveyard of her own making.

  ?She walked out of Solvara, passing a few terrified villagers who were scrambling for the safety of the deep woods. They called out to her, their voices frantic and thin, but she did not hear them. She just kept walking into the darkness, leaving the screaming and the smell of burning hair behind, a woman wandering into the night with no destination and no memory of who she had been before the fire.