I used to think the world smelled like honey.
There was a time when every morning brought the scent of warm bread rising from the kitchen hearth, mingling with dew on the roses that lined the eastern path. My father's cologne, a blend of bitter oakroot and soft vanilla, always lingered on the cuff of his sleeve when he kissed my forehead before leaving for the day. The world, to me, was gentle—safe, even. Every breath was sweet, every corner of the Muller Estate a promise of comfort and constancy.
But that was before the screaming.
Before velvet halls turned to ash.
Before the honey soured into smoke.
Now I know better.
The world smells like fear.
It's the stench of unwashed sweat trapped beneath iron armor. The acrid tang of fire clinging to every scrap of fabric. The rotted breath of men who claim, "We're here for your protection," but never ask permission before breaking down a door. It's the cold, metallic taste of dread that settles on the tongue and never leaves.
I remember the exact moment everything changed.
I was holding a teacup—porcelain, delicate, white with tiny blue lilies winding around its rim. It was my mother's favorite set, and I loved it for the way it made every sip feel like a ceremony. That day, it was the last thing I held with care.
My hands trembled when the shouts began outside the window. The porcelain cracked between my fingers, a thin line running jagged across the lilies, but I didn't drop it. Not yet.
Father wasn't home. He'd been summoned to the capital weeks ago for some military matter. I never understood those things—war was always something that happened somewhere else, in someone else's land. Not here. Not in the Muller Estate.
We had walls. We had guards. We had titles.
None of it mattered.
Not when Uncle stepped in.
His name was Albrecht, my father's younger brother. I used to adore him—he'd bring candied fruits from the border towns and tell stories of distant places. I thought he was kind.
But kindness doesn't twist into greed overnight. It ferments, slow and sour.
When the news came—Father's death, a skirmish on the eastern front—Uncle wept. Or at least, he pretended to. His hand didn't shake when he signed the letters. Nor did it tremble when he marched the family steward into the courtyard and had him executed for "embezzlement."
He called it justice. He said hard choices must be made to protect the family.
But the taxes rose.
The people starved.
And Uncle feasted.
I watched from behind silk curtains as our citizens gathered with pitchforks and torches—not soldiers, but farmers, tailors, hungry mothers clutching infants to their chests. Their shouts weren't cries of rebellion.
They were cries of betrayal.
I was thirteen.
And I learned what it meant to be hated for something I never chose.
The estate fell in days.
The guards deserted. The maids vanished. The kitchens were stripped bare, the horses slaughtered for meat. I tried to stay hidden, locking myself in the old greenhouse with nothing but a cracked canteen and a journal.
It wasn't enough.
Uncle found me on the third night.
"Melissa," he said, voice thick with false sweetness, "your place isn't here anymore."
I asked where I was supposed to go.
He didn't answer. He just shoved me—hard.
I remember the scrape of my shoes on the gravel, the sharp sting as I stumbled. I remember the sound of the gate slamming shut behind me.
No carriage.
No escort.
No food.
Just a silk nightgown, stained with dirt and blood not my own, and the weight of a name no longer welcome.
You'd be amazed how quickly lace turns useless when it rains. The mud swallowed my slippers. My hands blistered from walking barefoot over stones and roots. I cried the first two days.
Then I stopped.
Because crying takes water.
And water was hard to find.
I wandered for days, following roads no one used, sleeping beneath twisted trees, stealing fruit from half-dead orchards. I didn't beg. Who would I beg to? Solmere soldiers patrolled the main routes, too busy setting up blockades to notice a girl in rags.
When I finally reached the village near Grannis, I thought I'd reached the edge of hell.
I was wrong.
Hell was still ahead.
– • –
I was starving.
Not the way noble daughters claim before supper, pouting for effect and waiting for the next course. This was the real kind—the kind that hollows your belly until it gnaws at your bones, that makes your legs tremble when you stand, that makes you dream of eating bark and wake up with blood on your tongue from chewing your own lips in the night.
I stumbled into the village like a ghost, or maybe a corpse that had forgotten how to lie down. Either way, no one stopped me. The world barely noticed.
The streets were cracked and crooked, lined with wooden homes that leaned together like old conspirators, ready to collapse. Smoke drifted from chimneys, not because people were warm, but because someone had died and they were burning the body. The air was thick with the scent of ash and old grief.
Solmere's flags fluttered above the watchposts, their colors faded but still defiant. The knights stationed there didn't even look at me twice. Just another beggar girl. Just another problem not worth solving.
I slipped into the back alleys, moving on instinct, and collapsed behind a stable whose boards were so warped they looked ready to splinter at a sigh. That's where she found me.
Her boots were scuffed, the leather cracked and dust-caked. Her robe was stained with dried herbs and ash, patched at the elbows and hem. She didn't glow or float or whisper wisdom like the storybooks promised mages would. She just crouched beside me and held out a battered flask.
"Drink it," she said, her voice matter-of-fact.
I flinched, suspicion a reflex I hadn't yet starved out. "What's in it?"
"Water," she answered, a dry smile flickering across her lips. "Don't worry. Poison's expensive."
I drank. Not because I trusted her, but because thirst makes cowards out of everyone. The water was warm, probably from sitting in her cloak too long, but it tasted like life.
"You got a name?" she asked, settling onto her heels.
"Melissa," I muttered, voice rasping like torn cloth.
She didn't give hers right away. Just nodded, as if that was enough. "Alright, Melissa. Let's get you off the piss-soaked dirt, yeah?"
I wanted to ask why she cared. Why she bothered. But when someone throws you a rope in the dark, you don't ask where it leads. You grab it.
Her name was Rose.
She was a field mage—a healer, but not the kind that court bards sing about. Her spells were rough, gritty, more bark than bloom. She wore her magic like she wore her robe: practical, patched, and a little bit tired.
She shared her bread—hard, stale, but more than I'd had in days. She shared her fire, letting me warm my hands over the embers. She shared her silence, never prying into the mess I used to call a life.
But she let me watch.
When she treated a feverish boy in the barn, I saw how she crushed dried leaves with her knuckles, whispered words that sounded too old for this age, and pressed her palm to his chest until his coughing slowed. When I asked what she said during the spell, she grinned, lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes. "Swear words in old tongues. Makes the spirits listen harder."
I smiled for the first time in weeks. It hurt.
For a while, I thought maybe—just maybe—I'd found a new path. Not back to nobility, not to silk or status. Just… something that wasn't running.
Rose let me help. Small things at first: boiling water, holding down a delirious soldier while she patched his gut, fetching herbs that smelled like burned mint and earth. Each task was a thread, stitching me back into the world.
"You've got the hands for healing," she told me once, her voice unexpectedly gentle. "Steady. Careful. Rare in this shitty world."
I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing.
But I remembered it. Every word.
Then came the sound that ruined it all.
Drums.
Low at first—so faint they might have been thunder. But thunder doesn't keep time. Thunder doesn't march. The rhythm grew, slow and relentless, echoing across the fields like the heartbeat of something monstrous. Each beat was a promise: Dusmir was moving.
The village was in the path—caught between the main road and Fort Grannis, a brittle bone about to be crushed between two jaws.
Rose didn't wait for orders. She moved with the urgency of someone who'd seen too many villages flattened, too many lives ended by the sound of those drums. She threw our packs together, muttering curses at the stars as if they'd personally betrayed her.
"Get your things. We're leaving before dusk," she snapped, voice tight with fear she refused to show.
I grabbed her sleeve, desperate for answers. "Where will we go?"
She didn't answer. She just looked west, at the smoke curling over the hills, eyes narrowed as if she could see our fate written in the sky.
We made it two miles before they found us.
Not soldiers. Not yet.
Scouts—Dusmir scouts, lean and hungry, moving through the brush with the caution of men who knew what it meant to be hunted themselves.
They weren't the worst kind of men. But desperation makes devils. Their eyes flickered over us: two figures on the trail, one older, one younger. One with a satchel of vials and silver tools—worth more than food, worth more than mercy.
Rose stepped in front of me, her body a shield. She whispered something in a tongue I didn't understand, the words rough and sharp, meant for protection or warning or both.
The scouts called out, voices hard. Demanded we halt.
Rose didn't flinch. "Go to hell," she spat, her tone flat, unafraid.
Steel flashed. They drew weapons.
Rose turned to me, fast, her eyes suddenly fierce and wild. "Run. Don't look back."
I hesitated, fear and loyalty warring inside me. "But—"
She cut me off, voice softer but no less urgent. "I'll catch up."
Liar.
But I ran anyway. Because when you've lost everything, running is the only thing you have left.
I tore through briars that shredded my legs, stumbled over dry creek beds and thorn-thick hills. My lungs burned, my breath ragged, blood streaming down my shins. I didn't stop. I didn't look back. I couldn't.
I never saw her again.
No body. No scream. No goodbye.
Just wind, cold and empty, following me through the trees.
By dusk, I was alone.
No road. No signs. Just the woods swallowing me whole.
For two days, I walked.
Then crawled.
Then collapsed.
On the second night, as the world spun and my stomach twisted with hunger, I saw him.
A boy.
He stood at the edge of the firelight, sword in hand, the blade rusted but held like it meant something. His eyes were hard—older than his face, sharp as broken glass. And behind him, in the darkness, death followed like a patient shadow.
– • –
The trees were wet with ash.
That wasn't normal. Even in a world where nothing felt normal anymore, the sight unsettled me. Each branch was dusted in gray, as if the whole forest had been dipped in the memory of fire. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of things that should never burn—old wood, flesh, hope.
I had crawled past burnt fields and broken fences, past a half-eaten mule sprawled in the mud, past a child's doll nailed to a post like some sick omen. The world was quiet, but not peaceful. It was the hush of something already dead, the silence that follows a scream.
I was done.
I hadn't eaten in two days. The water in my flask tasted like old coins and rust. My legs shook when I tried to stand. My lips were cracked, my skin stretched thin over hollow bones. My stomach didn't even bother to growl anymore; it just sat there, cold and empty, a pit carved out inside me.
When I found the river, I didn't cheer. Didn't smile. Didn't even run. I just let my body fall beside it like a broken chair, my hands dropping into the icy current. The water was so cold it made my fingers ache, but it was real. For a moment, I let myself drift—imagining I might just fade away here. Not from a sword or a scream, but quietly, like how my mother used to blow out candles after the guests had gone.
But that's when I heard the steps.
Not boots. Not the rumble of an army. Just one set of footsteps, steady and unhurried, crunching through the undergrowth.
He walked like someone who had nowhere left to be. Not slow, not fast—just moving forward because stopping wasn't an option. I tensed, every part of me suddenly awake and alert. I crouched low behind the brush, heart pounding. If it was a bandit, I was dead. If it was a Dusmir soldier, I was worse than dead.
I saw him first through a tangle of branches.
Tall. Wrapped in a worn cloak, the hem dragging through the ash. A sword was strapped across his back, but he didn't look like a knight. His clothes were patched, his boots caked with mud. He looked more like a corpse that hadn't realized it was supposed to lie down. And his eyes—gods, those eyes.
People say someone looks "haunted." That word isn't strong enough. He looked like he'd been abandoned by the world, and decided to survive just to spite it.
He saw me. I knew it. He didn't say anything at first, just stared with that hollow, unblinking gaze.
I gripped the nearest branch, ready to bolt. My body screamed—run, run, RUN—but my legs wouldn't obey.
He stepped closer. Just one step.
Then stopped.
"…You alone?" he asked.
His voice was low, rough, the kind of voice that hadn't said anything kind in years.
I nodded. Barely.
He stared a moment longer. Not like a man sizing up prey, but like someone looking in a mirror and not recognizing the face.
Then:
"Come on. Before someone worse finds you."
I didn't trust him. But I didn't trust anyone anymore. So I followed.
He didn't talk. Didn't check if I kept up. Just walked, leading me off the main trail, through the trees, until we found a hollowed-out trunk far enough from the road that the smoke didn't reach us.
He sat. I didn't.
"Sit," he muttered.
I hesitated.
"I'm not gonna kill you," he said, voice flat. "Not unless you give me a reason."
Charming.
Eventually, I sat. Not beside him—just close enough to run if I had to.
He reached into his pouch, pulled out a hunk of bread so stale it could have been wood, and tossed it my way.
I flinched. Almost ran.
"Eat," he said.
I didn't trust him. I didn't care. I ate—slowly, carefully, every bite a battle.
He nodded. "Smart choice."
We didn't talk more. Didn't need to.
He leaned back against the tree. I stayed curled near the roots, cold and sore and still ready to flee.
But something strange happened.
For the first time in days, I didn't feel hunted.
Not safe. Never safe.
But not hunted.
He didn't ask my name until much later.
And when I finally gave it—Melissa—he didn't flinch. Didn't soften. Didn't ask where my family was or why I was alone.
He just gave me silence.
And maybe… maybe that's what saved me.
Not kindness.
Not pity.
Just the simple act of not looking away.