Soldiers moved with sharp, loud orders, and some of the townsfolk were helping them barricade the bridge. Broken carts were turned on their sides, sacks of grain stacked high like walls against a siege that had no form, no face. Only the trees waited beyond the bridge, still and patient.

  Brann sat with his back against the rough wall of the nearest house to the bridge. He didn’t move, his legs were splayed out, one boot untied, his arms limp at his sides. His head hung low, and the wind caught strands of his hair, brushing them across his eyes.

  The bravado was gone…it had dissolved somewhere between the screams and the sprint through the trees. Bravery hadn't helped him, it hadn’t saved Oakrin, hadn’t stopped the things that came in the night.

  His mind throbbed as if something inside were cracking under pressure, a pressure that grew heavier the more he learned, pushing him into the ground. He had been thrust into this world with no memory, and now each truth he uncovered pressed down harder, grinding him like a nail under stone.

  He didn’t have the will to stand. He barely had the breath to speak. What was the point? He had done nothing…worse than nothing. He had brought ruin. The deaths, the wounds, fear that now gnawed at this town were his doing. He had walked in from nowhere, and chaos had followed behind him like a shadow with teeth.

  Westmere had a rhythm before him, a small but steady beat of life. Now he had drowned it in silence and blood.

  He didn’t notice Riven at first.

  The boy had sat beside him, quiet. He stared at Brann, knees drawn up to his chest, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his tunic. His eyes were wide with something between guilt and confusion.

  “I’m sorry, Brann,” Riven said at last, his voice barely more than a whisper. “This is my fault. You warned me that this would happen…that first night I should not have follow you. You said the shadows can bite. I didn’t listen.”

  The words pulled Brann from the storm inside his head. He blinked slowly, turning to face the boy. Did he really think this was his doing? Whatever happened would have occurred regardless of Riven's involvement …he knew that now.

  Brann let out a breath that sounded more like a shudder.

  “No,” he said, his voice low and rough. “It’s not your fault. I brought this upon us all.”

  Brann stayed seated...there was nothing else he could do.

  Finally, after a long stretch of silence, Riven asked quietly, “So what are you going to do now?”

  Brann said nothing, he had no answer to give. His eyes were fixed on the figures gathered near the bridge, watching as they dragged carts into place and hammered boards into makeshift walls. He saw a mother clutching her child and a man arguing with a guard about where to place another barrel…Life trying desperately to hold its shape.

  Riven stayed quiet for a time, then said, a little more firmly, “I heard someone at the inn say the worst thing anyone can do is give up. If you give up, you fail for sure.”

  Brann turned to look at the boy. The words rang true but they didn’t fit Riven, they were just parroted back with hope rather than belief. Brann wondered if the boy really knew what he was saying… Odds were he didn’t, not fully. Not yet.

  But still, something in the simplicity of it caught him.

  A faint smile found its way to Brann’s lips, uninvited and fragile.

  Riven’s eyes lit up the moment he saw it, he leaned forward with a grin that stretched ear to ear, joy blooming across his face like sunlight breaking through fog.

  “See?” Riven said proudly “There’s nothing I can’t fix.”

  Brann let out a quiet breath, not quite a laugh, but close enough.

  In that small moment, he realized the pain in his chest had dulled just a little but enough to see that the world wasn’t all shadows and ash. There were still things worth protecting, sparks worth chasing…This boy, this town, maybe even himself.

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  He reached out and ruffled Riven’s hair gently, and Riven gave him a hug.

  “Come on,” Brann said. “Let’s find your father and Kett…see how they’re doing.”

  Riven nodded, that wide grin still fixed on his face. He sprang to his feet with a newfound bounce, as though his small victory had given him wings.

  Brann stood slowly, the weight still there but no longer pressing him to the ground…one step at a time, that was all he could do now. One step, and then another.

  And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough.

  Brann and Riven reached the town hall just as Torvil and Kett stepped through the front doors. The two men looked tired, their faces worn from more than just the past few days. Something deeper etched itself in their eyes…fatigue of the soul.

  “We sent the message,” Torvil said, adjusting his coat as they came closer. Brann frowned. “How did you do that so fast?”

  Kett gave him a sidelong glance. “You don’t know?”

  Brann shook his head.

  Kett scratched at the stubble on his jaw and nodded toward the town hall. “We have a magical wooden box sitting inside…It’s the artisans’ work. Each town hall is gifted one of those boxes, courtesy of the royal family. They’re enchanted, all of them, same wood, same carvings, same runes burned into the lining. From what we’ve been told, they’re linked somehow. Doesn’t matter how far apart the towns are.”

  Torvil grunted. “You inscribe the recipient town’s sigil on the envelope, drop it in, and the box handles the rest. No rider, no hawk, no delay.”

  Kett folded his arms. “The letter vanishes, and if the other town has a working box, appears there just the same. No one we’ve met knows exactly how it works, not even the scribes, but it’s been reliable for years.”

  Brann frowned faintly. “And people just… trust it?”

  “Wouldn’t say that,” Torvil muttered. “But we use it all the same.”

  “What did you tell them?” Brann asked his voice low.

  “The truth,” Kett said, then scowled and corrected himself…“Or… parts of it, enough to make sense, not enough to get us all thrown in chains.”

  Torvil folded his arms. “We left out my involvement and the grove with those iron trees…claimed there were just beasts.”

  “The army won’t care,” Kett muttered. “They’ll burn it to ash, if the grove still stands when they get there, they’ll see for themselves.”

  Torvil turned his gaze to Brann. “How do you feel?”

  Brann opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Riven cut in with an eager grin. “He was all sad, but I fixed it. Look, he’s better now.”

  There was a beat of silence, seems like Riven admired Brann and now he was defending him.

  Brann blinked then let out a breath that could’ve been a laugh or a sigh. He looked at the boy, earnest, proud, and couldn’t help but smile faintly.

  “I suppose I’m still struggling,” Brann said, turning back to the others. “Trying to make sense of it all.”

  Kett wasn’t smiling. His jaw was tight, his arms crossed.

  “At least you can struggle,” he said. “The ones who fell back there? They can’t…and why? Because you broke your word, you promised me you’d stay put, Brann. Then you went in blind, dragging chaos behind you like a curse.”

  His words hit hard. Brann didn’t flinch, but the guilt flared in his chest again like a wound reopening.

  “The stupidest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” Kett went on. “Bravery isn’t running into the dark with your eyes shut…”

  “That’s enough,” Torvil cut in, his voice sharp. “What’s done is done. Lashing out won’t help us now, we all knew the risks…now we need to focus on our next step.”

  “Yeah!” Riven added, stepping between Kett and Brann with his small fists on his hips. “Leave Brann alone, old man, you’re gonna ruin all the work I put in.”

  Even Kett couldn’t hold back a short huff of breath at that, half a scoff, half an unwilling smirk.

  Brann glanced at the boy, then at the others. The air between them was still tense, still heavy, but the worst of the storm had passed and it was all thanks to Riven. There was a kind of light in the boy’s foolishness, Brann thought, a stubborn innocence that refused to be dimmed no matter how dark the road ahead. Riven laughed too loudly, spoke when silence would have served better, and treated danger as if it were a game meant to be played…and yet, in those moments, something stirred in Brann's chest, something long buried.

  Hope.

  Not the blazing kind that led men to charge into unwinnable wars, but a quieter thing, stubborn as weeds in stone.

  It was Riven’s childish ways, his questions, his wonder, the way he still looked at the world as if it could be made whole again, that lent Brann the strength to carry on. Not for glory, not even for redemption, but for the few who might yet be spared the weight he carried, for the ones worth protecting.

  He smiled…

  One step at a time.