The whistle stopped right at my doorstep, leaving a single, sharp note hanging in the air. In that moment, the world went silent; neither the wind nor the rustle of snow on the pine boughs could be heard. I held my breath, feeling the sweat on my palm make the handle of the axe slick. I cracked the wooden latch of the door open, millimeter by millimeter.
Outside, through the mist and the tangled branches, I saw a sliver of silver light.
A lean, agile figure emerged from the darkness. They wore the recognizable, though stripped and weathered, leather armor of the Aethelgard army. In their hand, they held a bow with a silver string that shimmered like a ghost in the moonlight. This was a soldier. Or at least, they used to be.
"Lower your axe, boy," the voice said. It was thin but sharp as a blade, carrying a natural authority. "If my intent was to kill you, you would have collapsed with an arrow in your heart the moment you heard that whistle."
I opened the door slowly, but I didn't lower the axe. The woman standing before me—Eliz—was staring at my shelter, her eyes wide with disbelief at the notched logs locked together. Her gaze shifted to the cage in the center of the hut, fixed on the intense heat radiating from the Red Slime.
"I've never seen a madman build a place like this in the middle of this hell with nothing but an axe and raw stubbornness," Eliz said, relaxing her bow. "That whistle... it was to mark the locations of the traps I set. But your smoke and heat are drawing more attention than my traps ever could."
I invited her inside. I had no choice; if I let her go, she could give away my position, but the exhausted look in her eyes was familiar. She was a runaway, just like me. She had deserted the Aethelgard archer corps and was trying to evade the "Carrion Crows"—the deserter hunters—who were scouring the border.
We sat by the fire. Essence, the Green Slime, approached the silver bow with curiosity. Eliz gave a faint smile when she saw how the slime had sealed the walls. "The Kingdom only carves these creatures up for the cores inside," she said, her voice laced with bitterness. "Yet they are the only honest things holding this world together."
We remained silent for a while. As the snowstorm intensified outside, Eliz leaned her head against the pine wall of the shelter. "Things are getting messy out there. The Kingdom is closing the border. You won't survive alone. You have an axe and this fortress; I have eyes and arrows."
She turned her gaze to me. "Since Aethelgard has declared us dead, we might as well build our own world. I'm staying. Try to kick me out if you want, but my arrows are faster than your axe."
I laughed. It was the first genuine laugh I'd had in days. I stood up and struck the sharp edge of my axe into a flat piece of bark near the entrance. This was no longer just a hiding spot. This was a beginning.
ESSENCE HAVEN
KINGDOM POPULATION: 2