It happened eleven years ago.
Kyva could still see it– clear as shattered glass– the moment that changed her life completely.
She had lived in a village named Grayfall.
Even now, the name clung to her thoughts like damp earths to boot.
Grayfall.
Her village had survived, barely.
She recalled how the villagers worked tirelessly to rebuild their homes. Tales of how the war between humans and beasts had grown up with her, but she had never seen any of that, or laid eyes on a beast before. But she was alive to experience the aftermath of the war.
To her, Grayfall was damp mornings and crooked fences. It was the smell of wet hay and the soft tolling of the chapel Bell that no longer called to gods, but was used only for gatherings. It was her mother's hand, scarred but steady, kneading dough while fog pressed against the windows.
Some mornings, the fog was so thick it swallowed everything whole. As a child, Kyva would imagine the hills had vanished entirely, leaving Grayfall adrift in a sea of white. The thought had terrified her, until she came to understand that the fog was what kept Grayfall hidden, veiling it from bandits and even worse things.
Since the lower-class villages were unguarded and poorly supplied after the war, they suffered the most. Disease spread in its wake, leaving behind strange fevers and infections that left bodies weak, and spirits weaker. Homes were abandoned. Fields remained untilled, and graves multiplied faster than crops.
Life was never easy for anyone in Grayfall, but Kyva never felt alone. She had her mother.
Yes.
Her mother.
She struggled to remember her face clearly.
The details slipped away whenever she tried to grasp the exact curve of her mother's smile, the precise shade in her eyes. The memories blurred like when one breathed against cold glass. But she remembered how she felt.
Warmth.
Her mother had been warmth in human form. Even when they had little, her mother always found ways to make their small cottage feel full. Kyva never lacked anything essential– not food, not comfort, not love. Despite the struggle that shadowed the village, she had felt safe.
She remembered sitting on the worn wooden floor while her mother mended clothes by the firelight, softly humming a tune without words. She spoke often of Kyva's father, reminiscing his laugh, his stubbornness, the way he could make the bleakest day seem bearable, but she never said where he had gone or what had become of him.
Even as she talked, her gaze would drift to the door, lingering there as though she expected it to swing open at any moment.
Until, all of a sudden, she stopped looking.
Kyva was eight when everything unraveled the night slave traders raided their settlement.
It happened without warning.
The village had gone to sleep under a restless sky, the ominous feeling hanging thick and strangely still in the air before calamity struck. The sound of boots trampling through mud, horses snorting in the dark, and doors splintering beneath heavy blows. Her mother had barged into her room that night while the sound had just woken her up, and together, they tried to flee from the devastating chaos.
Screams echoed everywhere.
Kyva's first realization was that these intruders weren't soldiers.
They were worse.
The slave traders moved like men who feared nothing and answered to no one. Torches blazed the narrow paths of Grayfall in violent orange, turning familiar homes into grotesque silhouettes. Children were dragged forcefully from their beds, their small voices breaking the night as they cried for their parents. The traders main targets were children who looked no older than twelve. And whoever resisted or got in their way was cut down without hesitation.
"Run," her mother had whispered.
Kyva could feel her mother's grip tightening around her wrist as she pulled her into the dark. They wove between houses, avoiding the main roads where the torches burned brightest. There was no time to gather anything. No blankets. No shoes. No keepsake. The night smelled of smoke and fear. And no matter where they ran to, someone was begging. Somewhere else, someone stopped screaming.
They had almost made it to the treeline when five men stepped out of the shadows. Two were on a horse, while three advanced.
Rough hands seized her mother first, and Kyva was wrenched backward by the collar of her dress. She screamed and kicked, but her limbs were useless against iron grips.
"Let me go!" She cried, but the traders laughed at her futile attempts.
Her mother fought hard.
Kyva would never forget that part.
The way her mother clawed and struck and bit like a cornered animal. The way she shouted Kyva's name, fearing not for her life, but for her daughter.
For a moment, it seemed as though she might break free. But then one of the men brought the hilt of his blade down hard, striking her mother to the ground.
What followed next blurred in Kyva's memories. Not because it was unimportant, but because her young mind could not fully comprehend the horror unfolding before her. She remembered her mother's cries. She remembered the men laughing as they taunted her. She had tried to crawl to her mother, only to be yanked back by the hair.
And then–
Her mother was shoved.
She was pushed down the sloping embankment beyond the village boundary. The ground, slick with mud from the recent rain, gave way beneath her. She tumbled, rolling helplessly down the incline until her head collided with stone.
The world went white.
Kyva had covered her eyes so she wouldn't see. But when she finally lowered her hands, something felt… wrong.
The trader holding her suddenly released her, and all five of them watched as she stumbled to the top of the slope. Torches seemed to have been moved far away now, and the screams had faded into distant, fractured echoes. Kyva's head throbbed as she got closer.
And below the slope lay her mother.
She wasn't moving.
Kyva didn't understand death fully at that age. But she understood absence. She understood that no matter how loudly she cried, her mother would not rise again. She tried to scream, but the sound that tore from her throat was anguished and broken.
The traders seized her again and took her with them. Afterall, she was small, valuable, and fitted their target. They bound her wrists and tossed her into the cart already filled with sobbing children.
Then the wheels began to turn.
Grayfall receded into darkness as the cart creaked down the road. Kyva cried until her throat burned raw. At some point, the men grew tired of her noise and withheld food from her until she learned to swallow her sobs.
That was the day she stopped being a child.
—--
"Is she dead?"
The words floated through the darkness, muffled and distant.
A second voice, much closer than the first, answered, "She's still breathing. Barely, but she is. Looks like she washed up on this side of the forest. It's a miracle she survived the current. Hey–hey. Can you hear us?"
Sound returned to Kyva before her sight did.
At first there was only the roar of water, constant and thunderous, filling the hollow of her skull. Beneath it came the hiss of wind threading through leaves overhead, the soft soft clatter of branches shifting, and the low murmur of unfamiliar voices surrounding her.
What was happening?
Her body felt impossibly heavy.
When she tried to move her fingers, they responded sluggishly, tingling as if they no longer belonged to her.
Slowly, but painfully, her eyelids fluttered.
Two dark silhouettes leaned over her, blocking the brightness with their frames. Her eyes squinted slightly until their faces began to form, but the features remained blurred just beyond recognition.
"Oh, she's awake!" the first voice breathed, sounding relieved.
Kyva tried to speak, to plead for their assistance, but her throat rebelled. Only a faint rasp escaped her lips. Even that small effort sent a spike of pain through her chest, and her tongue felt thick.
Where– where was she?
Was she even alive?
Where was the warden and his men?
Were they still chasing her?
She needed to get up.
The two men simply watched her expression shift, but before they could ask her anything, or act, she lost consciousness again.
When Kyva woke up, her body no longer felt as impossibly heavy, but it did not feel whole either.
Instinct took over, and she lurched upright with a sharp gasp. The world pitched violently as her vision swam, and a small, broken "ow" slipped from her lips as pain lanced through her back, shoulders and legs. Every joint screamed, and the ache was so raw she felt tears prick at the corner of her eyes.
"Easy there," a voice called, breaking through her haze.
Startled, Kyva whipped her head toward the sound to see two men standing a short distance away. "Don't try to sit up too fast," the older one warned gently.
He had a thick beard streaked heavily with gray, framing a face etched with deep lines and tanned from years in the sun.
Beside him stood a younger man, barely older than Kyva herself. His hair was pulled back in a hasty knot, strands falling loose against his forehead. His brows were furrowed in worry, and his thin mouth pressed into a tense line as he studied her.
Kyva blinked, her heart pounding as confusion and panic clawed through her chest. She tried to speak, but her voice refused to form.
Who were these men?
And where was she?
"Liam," the old man said, directing the younger one standing beside him. "Get the girl something to cover herself with."
Liam nodded quickly before turning toward a nearby tent. Moments later, he emerged, holding a spare shirt. It looked worn but clean, the fabric soft and slightly faded from repeated washes.
The sight of him approaching made Kyva's chest seize. She scrambled back instinctively, ignoring the sharp flare of pain in her knee.
"S-stay away," she croaked, her voice brittle with fear as her eyes darted between them, wide and guarded.
Her reaction made Liam freeze immediately, and he stopped, keeping several paces between them.
"It's okay," he said gently, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "We're just trying to help."
He crouched slightly, keeping his distance, and without stepping closer, tossed the shirt toward her softly. It landed within reach, and she grabbed it.
"You're safe now," the old man added without moving from his spot. "The river carried you clear down from the upper cliffs. You are fortunate to be alive. Most would have been crushed by the current before making it this far. Where did you come from? And what… exactly happened to you?"
River?
Cliffs?
Kyva forced her brain to work.
His words didn't register until fragments of memory stirred.
Her escape from the whorehouse.
The warden and his men cornering her at the cliff.
The leap of fate she had taken.
Yet here she was.
Alive.
Her hands trembled as she looked down at herself. She was bruised, scraped.
How was that even possible?
Her head snapped from side to side to confirm her environment. She was resting under a tree, with a worn blanket draped on her body. There was no sight of the warden or his muscled men.
A strange, hollow feeling opened inside her chest. It wasn't relief, as she didn't know how to feel that yet. It was something more disbelieving.
How did she survive… again?
Looking up at the men she assumed were the ones who probably found her, she asked, "Who are you?"