Chapter 71 – The Road South

  It was before dawn that they left the headwaters of the Blackwater River at dawn, pivoting westward as the ridges rose sharply against the sky. Morning haze clung to the trees, and their boots sank into the damp earth as they climbed. The southern way appeared and beckoned-narrow paths through the mountains that, if followed far enough, bent toward the heartland of Avalon and on to the city by the coast.

  By midmorning, sweat sheened on their brows despite the cooling air. Their hobnailed boots gripped the steep switchbacks. Sparks of stone rang occasionally as iron struck granite as they made their climb. Caelen, breathing steady but speaking little, was still having to fight to keep pace with Pit and Tiberan, cloak pulled tight against the gusts which poured over the ridge.

  At the crest, they found the marker: a lichen-crusted cairn shaped like a broken spear—one of Avalon’s dead drops. Tib dug beneath the stones, pulling forth an oilskin bundle sealed with wax. They crouched together, knives out to cut the wrappings.

  “Jerky,” Pit announced, sniffing. “Salted decent. And… oh, fresh meat cubes.” He pinched the cube between two fingers and broke off a bite.

  “Better than starving,” Tiberan muttered, taking it anyway.

  There were fruits, too—dried apples and cherries—and at the bottom, a folded letter. Caelen took it, his eyes narrowing as he read. His speech halting but clear: “Family… gone. To city. Events…”

  His brow furrowed in thought as he lowered the letter. “Strange. Why now?” The broken speech of his carrying weight, each word heavy with suspicion.

  They began dividing up the rations, balancing the weight between packs. The forest creaked around them, wind stirring the canopy. And then—

  A scream. High-pitched, shrill, unmistakably a child’s.

  The three froze, eyes meeting.

  Again—the cry, echoing through the trees.

  Weapons were in hand before words could form. They dropped their packs where they lay and sprinted down the slope. The ground pitched treacherously, slick with fallen needles and damp loam, but their hobnailed boots bit deep. Pit laughed once, half in exhilaration, half in terror, as he skidded around a boulder. “Better than bare feet, eh?” he shouted.

  Branches whipped their faces, stones rolled beneath them, but they did not slow. The scream drew them on until the trees broke open into a clearing.

  There, a wagon stood mired on the rough track. Two children clung to its top, wailing, while a young woman shielded them with outstretched arms. Three men with simple wood staves circled the ox, desperately fending off a trio of boars— feral brutes with bristling hides and eyes red with frenzy.

  “Pit, draw one!” Caelen barked, words short but commanding. He loaded his sling with practiced speed, whirling it until the leather sang. The stone struck the lead boar square on the shoulder, but the beast only squealed, hide too thick for the blow to pierce.

  Pit waved his arms wildly. “Oi! Bacon-breath! Over here!”

  The boar turned, snorting, and charged with terrifying speed. Pit’s grin dissolved. “Caelen! I hate you! Why’d you tell me—ahhh!” He bolted, boots pounding, the boar snapping at his heels.

  He dove behind a tree, breath rasping. The trunk shuddered as the boar slammed against it, tusks gouging bark. Pit flattened himself against the far side, muttering every curse he knew. “This is it. This is where I die. Crushed by ham!”

  Then—steel. Caelen dropped beside him, short sword flashing. With a brutal cry, he drove the blade down into the back of the beast’s neck. Bone cracked. The boar shrieked, staggering, thrashing in death throes that rattled the ground.

  “Not… yet dead,” Caelen said grimly, holding tight to the hilt until the beast stilled.

  Pit slumped against the tree, mud streaked on his face. “Next time,” he gasped, “you play bait.”

  The other two boars, unnerved by the sudden violence, hesitated. One stamped, snorting, then turned. The other followed, crashing back into the undergrowth.

  The clearing fell still but for the sobs of children and the harsh panting of men. The ox lowed, trembling in its harness.

  Caelen pulled his sword free, the blade slick, his eyes already sweeping the wood for further threat. Pit pushed himself upright, still swearing under his breath, while Tib strode to the wagon, voice steady.

  “You’re safe now. Avalon’s sons are here.”

  And for the first time that day, the three boys looked less like wanderers and more like what they truly were: young warriors, hardened by the wild, yet carrying the weight of something far greater than themselves.

  …

  The wagon and ox was steadied, the children were calmed with water and fruit from Tib’s supplies. Tib crouched near the family, his calm voice coaxing their tale—how they had set out from a northern hamlet with their goods, bound for kin closer to the coast. They had not expected to face a scourge of boars on the wild road.

  While Tib spoke, Caelen and Pit dragged the slain beast toward the river. Its hide caught on roots and stones, the weight of it nearly hurting their arms, but they did not pause. At the water’s edge, they drew knives and set to work, cleaning the carcass. The cold river carried away blood and offal, its current darkening as it swept the leavings downstream.

  Pit wrinkled his nose. “Never thought I’d be butchering a pig today, or even running from one,” he muttered, but he worked steadily, stripping the hide with practiced strokes.

  Caelen said little, but his eyes were not on the blade alone. He looked at the river—its flat, rounded stones filling the river, half-damming the current, the track next to it little more than a gouge of mud. The road was twisted and rough, broken by ruts and weeds, and showed signs of flooding, making it unworthy of the wagons that scraped along it.

  He frowned, the thought forming plain as words: This should not be so.

  He straightened, gaze tracing the ridge, then the stones. With these rocks pulled and laid, the track could be set firm. With the current tamed, rafts might pass from the Lake of Lanterns all the way to the southern harbor. Trade, swift and fruitful, could flow here like lifeblood.

  He shook his head, half in wonder, half in anger. Three hundred men, a year of labor—that is all. Yet it lies wasted, season after season. Why has no one done this? Why does no one act?

  A strident squeal pierced the stillness. From the edge of the forest came an echo of many boars, unseen but nearby, their rooting cries like iron on stone. Caelen's jaw clamped down.

  "To many," he said, words clipped. "Must cull. Food, yes. But danger."

  Pit looked up, wiping his knife on the grass. “Aye. Too many pigs, not enough spears.”

  But Caelen's eyes burned with more than weariness. His mind was torn back to his sickbed, the long nights of sickness when he had lain helpless, even his body failing him, terror clawing at his mind. He remembered the suffocating dark, the weight of doing nothing. He wasn't winning the game, and the dark knowledge that his fate was in hands not his own. He had sworn then, though in silence, that he would never again be still, never again wait for others to move; he would change the game.

  Now, with blood on his hands and the stink of the forest in his nose, the vow returned.

  No more hiding. No more silence. If there is a task to be done, I will do it. Now! If the world is broken, I will change it. I will never again lie in the dark, waiting for death to choose me.

  He drove his knife cleanly through a joint of bone, the cut sharp and decisive. The meat was theirs now, not the forest’s. And for the first time since his illness, Caelen felt not merely alive—but living.

  …

  By the time the carcass was dressed and quartered, dusk had settled over the ridges. Tib had cleared a space by the wagon for camp, while the family—the father, a stout man named Arlen, his wife Mara, and their two children and other men—gathered kindling and stacked stones into a rough ring. Soon flames licked upward, smoke curling into the darkening canopy.

  The smell of roasting boar rose thick and savory, the fat spitting as it dripped onto the coals. Pit turned the spits with a prideful grin. “Not bad for wild bacon that tried to eat me,” he said. The children laughed, shy at first, then freer as the warmth of the fire and the scent of meat banished their earlier terror.

  Arlen’s wife handed out bread she had packed, and Tib sliced fruit from the dead drop to share. They sat together in a circle, a hidden noble boy and a common family alike, their shadows leaping against the wagon wheels and the trees beyond.

  When their bellies were filled and the children drowsy, Arlen leaned back against a log, his face drawn with the fatigue of a man who had driven ox and wagon over roads far too poor for the burden. He looked to Caelen, who sat opposite, quiet but intent.

  “You’ve our thanks, young sirs,” Arlen said. “Another hour and the beasts would’ve gored us clean through. The road grows worse each season, and we have not even reached Gloamhollow’s border.”

  Caelen tilted his head. His voice came slow, halting, but clear enough. “The Hollow? Gloamhollow?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Arlen’s eyes narrowed, measuring The Boy's interest. “Aye, Gloamhollow. You’ve not heard its tale?”

  Pit snorted, tossing a bone into the fire. “We’ve heard Tib whisper about bad smells and crooked shadows, that’s all.”

  Arlen gave a low chuckle, though it carried no humor. “Well, Tib spoke true enough, but there’s more. Gloamhollow is a dead valley, sealed on three sides by ridges too steep for ox or horse. Only the western cut is open, and that’s no road worth the name. Within… well, the place has a curse. Waters there turn foul—stagnant, brackish, bitter as bile. Drink it, and you’ll sicken within a day. I’ve seen men doubled over with fever from a single cup.”

  Mara shivered and drew her youngest closer. “And the clouds,” she murmured.

  “Aye,” Arlen continued. “Clouds that gather when the sky is clear, fog that clings when the wind should carry it away. Strange sounds too—like voices calling from the ridges, though there’s no soul in sight. Some say the Hollow was once rich and green. Others claim a sorcerer died there, and his curse seeps into the soil even now. Whatever the truth, few linger. Merchants drive by fast as they may, never stopping till they see clean sky again.”

  Caelen frowned, his dark eyes locked on the fire. “Water… undrinkable?” he asked.

  Arlen nodded. “That’s why I tell you this. Fill your skins tomorrow, fill every flask. Once you cross south of the Gloamhollow, you won’t find a drop worth drinking till you’re well past the southern gate.”

  Tib leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “And you—why risk it? Why drive your children through such a place?”

  The man sighed, looking down at his callused hands. “Because this is the only road, and the only one an ox and wagon can manage. My kin are in Litus Solis, near the coast. They’ve got land enough to share west of the river, and if I can get clean water, I can make a home for myself and family.”

  The fire popped, sparks spiraling into the night. Pit poked at the logs, shaking his head. “This is Madness. The only road from Avalon to Litus Solis with a cursed valley, pigs the size of barrels.”

  Arlen gave a weary shrug. “Madness or not, it’s the path laid before us.”

  Caelen’s gaze did not leave the flames. In the shifting light, his face seemed older, shadow carving new lines into his youthful features. The memory of his own sickness, the long nights of helpless waiting, stirred again. He would not be still, not now, not ever again.

  “Then we… go too,” he said quietly, voice broken yet firm. “Gloamhollow. Must see.”

  Pit groaned. “Of course, we must. Because the boy with a sling wants to go sniff fog.” But there was no real fight in his tone, only resignation.

  Tib, more thoughtful, studied Caelen for a long moment. “Just warn us,” he asked softly. “If you feel like something waits for you there.”

  Caelen did not answer, but the fire reflected in his eyes said enough.

  The night deepened. The family slept huddled by the wagon, the children curled together under a patched blanket. The three companions kept watch by turns, listening to the forest. More than once, the distant squeal of boars echoed through the dark, but none came near.

  When Caelen’s watch ended, he did not sleep at once. He sat beneath the stars, the brackish tale of the Hollow circling in his thoughts. Somewhere ahead lay clouds that did not obey the wind, water that defied its own nature, and sounds that whispered from empty air.

  And for the first time since his illness, he felt not fear, but a fierce anticipation.

  Tomorrow, they would walk into Gloamhollow to do something. And he meant to meet whatever shadows lingered there head-on.

  …

  That night, as he slept. It began in his mind—in that chamber of murmurs where three voices breathed through the same lungs, pressed against the same skull, and yet belonged to beings who would never fully understand each other.

  The air grew colder as he dreamwalked. Not winter-cold, but a deeper chill, as if the world itself recoiled from the hollow beneath. The trees grew thin and gray here, sickly with branches like crooked fingers or bones pointing accusingly toward the ravine. Mist slid over the ground in tendrils that clung to Caelen’s boots, whispering of old wrongs and hungers unresolved.

  He paused at the crest of the ridge, his breath frosting before him. Gloamhollow lay below—an immense bowl carved from stone and shadow, filled with the half-fallen ruins of a hall once known throughout the southern reaches. It had been called Gloam Haven in its glory, and only in its collapse had its name curdled into Gloamhollow.

  A voice stirred within him, low and resonant, like a bell tolling beneath deep water.

  Lightbringer: ‘This is the fulcrum. The axis. The location of wound and the promise. Here, the balance quivers, young heir. Here the land remembers what men have forgotten.’

  The words were never spoken aloud.

  They thrummed through Caelen’s chest, a resonance beneath the bone, like the taut string of a bow drawn past reason. The sound was not sound at all—half a hymn, half a warning. Lightbringer always spoke that way: the meanings wrapped in radiance, his truths hidden behind the veil of beauty and danger both.

  Then came another voice— uncluttered, intelligent, determined.

  Ethan: ‘Focus. The place is broken—yes—but broken things can be rebuilt. What lies before you isn’t mystery; it’s infrastructure. A power center. A logistics heart. Resource-dense terrain waiting for a mind that knows how to use it. Think like a commander: this is a hinge point. Control Gloamhollow, and you control the southern reach of Avalon—its mines, its rivers, its trade routes, its leverage.’

  Caelen pressed a hand to his temple. His breath caught in the cold air. “Both of you,” he murmured, voice barely more than vapor, “please—give me a moment.”

  But the forest didn’t hear. Only the mist turned its pale head.

  Then, softly, the third voice rose—the one that was his own, though changed and fragile in its courage.

  It trembled between boy and man, uncertainty and resolve, the sound of youth forged too early by destiny’s hammer.

  The Boy: ‘I only know that forefathers whisper of this place as one of the pillars of Avalon. That the kings of old drew strength from it, that the land itself listened when it stood whole. If we do not fix it… we fail them. We fail all of them.’

  Three currents, pulling him in three different directions—and all of them speaking truths he could not ignore.

  He looked into the mist again, and he saw no carcass of stone or wood, no pillars or shadows of beams, burnt black everywhere, just shadow, and missed rising and falling like the breath of a sleeping beast.

  Lightbringer's voice rose again, its tone wrapped in the shimmer of memory.

  Lightbringer: ‘Once, this valley held the southern star of Veil's lattice. Its existence anchored the weave of what men call power. Ley-thoughts. Essence wells. The murmurs of Veils yet unborn. Through this place flowed the promise of balance.’

  Caelen experienced the words rather than heard them. Felt them like the rumble of thunder, flashes of images and light.

  ‘Focal point. Scales. Promise.’

  Lightbringer’s vocabulary was always so laden, shimmering with meanings that resisted being held.

  Caelen spoke at last, his question small against the echoing vastness of the hollow. “If it is so crucial… why was it left to rot?”

  Lightbringer: Because it is the failing of men to forget the things that do not scream for their attention. The words moved through him—not merely heard, but felt. The words ran through him, a current older than breath, resonant and deep. They moved through bone and blood alike, ringing in his chest like the toll of a buried bell. Each echo shimmered in the hollow places within him, as though some ancient chord of the world itself had been struck—and he, unwillingly, had answered.

  ‘This place,’ the voice went on, gentler now, ‘Chose silence instead of ruin. It tried to endure. But silence, left too long, turns sour. What was once patience becomes neglect. The land remembers what men forget, and now it asks you to mend what was broken—before that break swallows more than stone.’

  A crack of disdain split through Caelen’s mind.

  Ethan scoffed, the sound snapping through Caelen’s mind like a dry twig.

  Ethan: ‘Poetry and riddles again. Men forget because men move on. Empires rot, systems fail, resources shift—nothing mystical about entropy.. The land doesn’t bid anything. People do. And people are needed down there—they’ll follow whoever restores function. Infrastructure. Order and work.’

  He paused, his tone sharpening.

  ‘This valley can be turned into an engine. Not of magic—don’t roll your eyes—but of output. Production. Influence. You don’t need prophecy, Caelen. You need plans. A survey. Materials. Loyal workers. Guards. You fix the lines of supply and trade, you fix the south.’

  The Boy's voice shivered through Caelen like the tremor of a plucked harp string.

  The Boy: ‘But it is more than stone and tools. I can feel it—even if I cannot name it. Whatever lies broken down there, it is tied to Avalon itself. If we abandon it, the kingdom loses something. Something that belongs to us… something of ours.’

  His voice softened, tinged with a child's fear, worry, and longing.

  ‘I do not desire Avalon to decline anymore.’

  Caelen swallowed hard. “So, it falls to me to restore it? For the land, for the people, for the domain?”

  Three voices answered at once:

  Lightbringer: ‘To mend the Veil’s breath wound.’

  Ethan: ‘To secure the south’s spine and reconstruct its strength.’

  The Boy: ‘To honor what Avalon was, and could be again.’

  The cacophony of their combined voices flared like a blade of light, pain blossomed through his skull, Sharp and blinding. He staggered to catch himself against the boulder, cold and covered in Old lichen; however, its solidity anchored him.

  “I cannot hold all of this,” he gasped. The words came raw, half-breath, half-prayer. “I cannot know what any of you truly mean. You speak in riddles—one in visions, one in schemes, one in hopes—and I…” His voice faltered, trembling on the edge of tears. “I am only one me.”

  Lightbringer: ‘You are more! And you are the promise of tomorrow. The words struck through Caelen like thunder through hollow stone. ‘This is your blessing and burden… and your torment.’

  Ethan: ‘Quit the dramatic mystic blather. We need actionable direction, not mysticism. Start with Hilltop vantage: good. Structural ruin: unknown. Interior hazards—unknown, but manageable. Prioritize what you can fix.’

  The Boy: .But what if we cannot fix it? What if we break it more? Or misunderstand what it wants from us?’

  For the moment, all voices stilled. The night itself seemed to hush.

  Then Lightbringer’s tone returned—softened now, glowing faintly like dawn behind fog. ‘Child… the Veils do not demand perfection—only presence. Restoration begins with a footstep, a breath, a will to mend.’

  Ethan followed, his usual edge softened, his voice quieter—more human. ‘No one starts out certain,” he said. “You lead by moving first. That’s enough.’

  And the boy, timid but steadier than before, whispered into the waiting mist, ‘Then… we start by walking down the path, don’t we? Even if we stumble.’

  Caelen lifted his head. The fear was still there, but it had changed shape—less a chain, more a companion. The air felt lighter, the mist no longer a wall but a veil thinning before him.

  The mist shifted below, rolling and parting like a curtain being drawn aside. Beneath it lay the broken line of the fallen hall’s entrance—a path half-buried, but still there.

  A way forward.

  “Very well,” he murmured. “Gloamhollow… Haven… whatever you once were—I’m coming.”

  When morning came, Caelen woke with no clear plan, only the need to move.