Chapter 1

Mara

The distant clash of steel against steel carries through the thin walls of our makeshift home, each ring vibrating through the floorboards like a tuning fork struck against bone. I pause mid-stitch on Eira's torn sleeve, needle suspended in air as another wave of war-horns echoes from the valley's edge.

"Mama?" Eira looks up from her pile of scavenged buttons, arranging them into careful patterns on the cracked linoleum. "The noise sounds angry."

The understatement draws a bitter smile to my lips. Angry doesn't begin to cover the symphony of violence bleeding through our walls. Metal screams against metal. Voices roar commands in the guttural tongue I've learned to understand but never speak. The Redmoon warriors are fighting someone—and from the sound of it, they're not winning.

"Just the men being loud, sweet girl." I keep my voice steady, but my fingers betray me, pulling the thread too tight until it snaps. "Keep playing."

The lie tastes like ash. Seven years among the Redmoon clan has taught me to read the rhythms of their battles, since I was bartered from my bunker in exchange for winter rations. This isn't a raid or a hunt. This is desperation, the kind that comes when your territory is being carved away piece by piece.

Another horn blast, closer now. Close enough that I can smell the metallic tang of blood on the wind that seeps through our patched windows. The scent mingles with the ever-present smoke from the clan's forge-fires, creating something thick and choking that makes my throat constrict.

Eira abandons her buttons, those gold-flecked eyes turning toward the sound with the same curious intensity she reserves for bird songs and wind patterns. Sometimes I wonder what she hears that I don't. Her father's blood runs strong in her veins—orc mixed with the blood of this earth. Something that has given her more magic than most. 

"Mama, the metal-smell is getting thicker." She wrinkles her nose, that tiny gesture so achingly human it makes my chest tight. "Like when Gorthak sharpens his blades, but... more."

My hands still completely. Eira shouldn't be able to detect blood from this distance. Shouldn't be able to parse the difference between weapon-sharpening and battle-spill. But she can, because she's not entirely human, and because the magic that flows thin in this world still recognizes her as something worth awakening for.

The thought should comfort me. Instead, it sends ice crawling up my spine.

A crash thunders through the settlement—wood splintering, someone screaming. Not the controlled violence of sparring or discipline. This is chaos, the kind that swallows small clans whole and leaves nothing but burned-out husks in the morning light.

I drop the sewing and cross to our single window, peering through the gap between the boards we've nailed over the glass. The scene beyond makes my stomach lurch.

Redmoon warriors stream past our door, some limping, others carrying wounded. Their usually pristine armor is dented and blood-streaked. Gorthak stumbles by, clutching his shoulder where something has torn through the metal plating to the flesh beneath. His tusks are chipped, his breathing labored.

These aren't men retreating from a minor skirmish. These are survivors fleeing something that's broken their lines completely.

"Eira." My voice comes out sharper than intended. "Come here. Now."

She responds to the tone immediately, abandoning her buttons to scramble to my side. I scoop her up, feeling the familiar weight of her small body against my chest, the way her arms wind around my neck with complete trust. Her dark curls tickle my chin, and for a moment I allow myself to breathe in the scent of her—woodsmoke and something indefinably sweet, like pine sap warming in sunlight.

"Are we playing hide-and-seek?" Her whisper carries excitement rather than fear. At five, she still sees adventure where I see catastrophe.

"Something like that." I move quickly but quietly, gathering the few possessions that matter—the bag I've kept packed since her birth, the dried meat wrapped in oiled cloth, the water skin that never quite empties thanks to her unconscious magic. "We're going to take a walk."

My fingers find the small bone charm my grandmother gave me, the one I've worn since childhood. The surface is smooth from years of nervous touching, carved with symbols that predate the orcs' arrival. Protection, she'd said. For when the world grows too dark to see.

Another crash, closer now. Glass shatters somewhere nearby, followed by a sound I recognize—the wet thud of bodies hitting the ground and not getting back up.

Eira's grip tightens around my neck. "Mama, why does the air taste like coins?"

Blood. She's tasting blood on the wind, and we're still inside our house.

I don't answer, just hoist the pack onto my shoulders and move toward the back door. The settlement around us is dissolving into chaos—shouts, running footsteps, the acrid smell of something burning. Through the thin walls, I hear Mekha barking orders to the clan-mothers, telling them to gather the children and retreat to the southern caves.

But the southern caves are a day's walk, and whoever is attacking us won't give us a day. They won't give us an hour.

My hand finds the door latch just as something heavy slams into our front wall. The entire structure shudders, dust cascading from the rafters like dirty snow. Eira makes a small sound against my throat, not quite fear but recognition that something has fundamentally changed.

"Hold tight, Eira." I slip the latch and ease the door open, peering into the narrow space between our house and the next. Empty, for now. But I can hear them—heavy footsteps, voices speaking in a dialect I don't recognize. Not Redmoon. Someone else entirely.

We slip outside just as our front door explodes inward.

The cold hits steals my breath and makes Eira gasp against my shoulder. The first snow of the season has begun to fall—fat, lazy flakes that drift down like ash from some distant fire. They cling to my eyelashes, melt on my cheeks, and suddenly I'm seven years old again, listening to Grandmother's voice by lamplight.

"When the first snow falls, child, that's when the world remembers magic."

I shake off the memory and focus on the treeline beyond the settlement's edge. The black-pine forest stretches dark and deep, its branches heavy with accumulating snow. It's not safety—nothing in this world is safe—but it's cover, and cover might be enough.

Behind us, something roars. Not human, not entirely orc either. Something caught between worlds, like my daughter, but twisted with rage instead of wonder.

I run.

My boots slip on the increasingly slick ground, but I don't slow down. Can't slow down. Each step takes us further from the burning settlement and deeper into the forest's embrace. The snow falls harder now, thick enough to muffle sound and blur the world into soft gray shapes.

Eira's breathing evens out against my neck, her initial fear giving way to the drowsy contentment she always finds in motion. She's always been like this—soothed by travel, by the rhythm of my steps and the whisper of wind through trees. Another gift from her father's blood, perhaps. Orcs are wanderers by nature, even when they're trying to build permanent homes.

"Tell me the snow story, Mama." Her voice is barely a whisper, but it carries clearly in the muffled quiet of falling snow.

My throat tightens. Of all the things she could ask for, of course it's this. The ritual Grandmother taught me, the one I've never quite had the courage to perform. Too much like prayer, and I stopped believing in answered prayers the day the bunker elders handed me over to Gorthak's hunting party.

But Eira is asking, and her voice carries that particular note that means she needs this. Not wants—needs, the way she needed my voice singing her to sleep during the worst of the fever-sickness last winter.

So I tell her, my voice joining the rhythm of our footsteps through deepening snow.

"When the first snow falls on the longest night, when the world grows quiet and the stars grow bright..." My grandmother's words flow through me like muscle memory, carrying the cadence of older times. Times when humans believed in more than just survival.

I find a black-pine with branches low enough to reach, its needles dark against the accumulating white. Setting Eira down carefully, I unwrap the thin red ribbon I've carried in my pack since leaving the bunkers—a remnant from my sister's hair, saved from the before-times when such things mattered.

"Why that tree, Mama?" Eira watches with rapt attention as I tie the ribbon around a sturdy branch, the red silk bright as blood against the dark bark.

"Because it's strong." The words come easier now, mixing memory with improvisation. "Because it stays green when everything else sleeps. Because sometimes the world needs reminders that not everything beautiful has to die."

The wind picks up, setting the ribbon dancing like a tiny flame. Snow catches in Eira's dark curls, and for a moment she looks ethereal—caught between human and something else, between this harsh world and the gentler one my grandmother used to describe.

"Now we make a wish for warmth," I whisper, gathering her close again. "For protection. For the promise that winter always ends."

She closes her eyes, her small face scrunched with concentration. Her lips move silently, and I wonder what prayers a five-year-old offers to a world that's shown her mostly kindness mixed with constant threat.

The snow continues to fall around us, each flake a small benediction in the growing dark. Behind us, the sounds of battle fade into memory. Ahead, the forest stretches deep and silent, offering shelter to those brave enough to seek it.

I hoist my pack higher and lift Eira again, her warm weight reassuring against my chest. The ribbon flutters on its branch, a splash of color in the monochrome world, and I allow myself one moment to believe in my grandmother's magic.

Then I turn deeper into the trees, carrying my daughter toward whatever uncertain sanctuary the darkness might hold.