Night fell unnaturally early.

  A heaviness settled across Lumina Village, pressing on rooftops, thickening the air. The kind of quiet that feels like the island is holding its breath. Kaelen walked alone toward the fields, unable to sleep. The bracelet pulsed gently, like a small heart beating against his wrist.

  He kept telling himself it was nothing. Just metal. Just an object. Just a mistake.

  But as he reached the old farming shed, he heard a low, guttural growl.

  A wounded boar. Large. Angry. Bleeding. It staggered out from behind the crops, ribs exposed from the recent raid’s fires. One eye was gone. It should have been dead.

  But it wasn’t.

  It stepped toward him—slow, limping, dangerous. Kaelen swallowed and raised his hands. “I’m not here to fight.”

  The boar snarled, breath thick with blood. The bracelet responded. A cold breath pressed against Kaelen’s mind.

  A whisper: “Let me help.”

  Kaelen felt his arm rise—without his permission—and point at the creature. A ripple of darkness pulsed outward. The boar froze. Shuddered. Collapsed dead at his feet.

  Kaelen gasped and stumbled back.His bright green eyes reflected the dim light, mirroring the sudden, chilling cold he felt inside. “I didn’t— I didn’t mean to—”

  But the corpse twitched. Its legs jerked. Its torn lungs expanded. Its ruined eye opened, glowing faint grey.

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  The boar stood again. Not alive. Not dead. Something in between.

  Kaelen stared, horrified. “What… what have I done?”

  The boar’s head turned toward him. It bowed. As though kneeling to a master.

  The voice in the bracelet purred: “Your first servant.” “More will come.”

  Kaelen’s heart raced. “No. I’m not a killer. I’m not—”

  “You are chosen.”

  The boar let out a distorted grunt and trotted behind him, following him like a shadowed guardian.

  Kaelen backed away. “What am I becoming?”

  The bracelet gleamed.

  A second whisper joined the first—deeper, older, like something speaking through a grave: “Mine.”

  Kaelen stared at his first servant, his heart hammering not with power, but with sheer terror. Dawn was less than two hours away. He couldn't go home. He certainly couldn't leave that thing near the village center.

  "Go," Kaelen whispered, frantically searching his mind for the whisper's command mechanism. "Go away. Hide. Deep in the woods."

  The boar stood frozen, its ruined grey eye staring blankly.

  The voice in the bracelet laughed—a chilling, dry sound that grated against his skull. "No. We do not hide, master. We command."

  "I am commanding you!" Kaelen yelled silently, pouring every ounce of desperate fear into the bracelet. Hide, now! Go to the swamps! Leave!

  Suddenly, the boar whined, a distorted, rattling sound. Its massive body turned slowly, reluctantly, toward the Dark Forest. It moved with a disturbing silence, avoiding the main path, slipping into the deepest shadows of the boundary.

  Kaelen watched it go, shaking uncontrollably, until the last flicker of its glowing eye vanished.

  He had controlled the power. He had saved himself from immediate discovery.

  But he was not proud. He was sickened.

  He looked at his wrist, where the black metal gleamed in the dim light. He had just commanded a monster into existence and then ordered it into hiding.

  He was a liar before the sun had even risen.