Endless fog swallowed the ground, leaving only small patches of green pushing through the grey like torn cloth.

  In every direction, the land stretched out the same. A flat, waterlogged plain with no edge, no rise, and no break in the colourless haze.

  The stench of the marsh clung to the air and coated the back of my throat. I had to force each breath in, slow and shallow, as if the air resisted me.

  Where is the gate? And why do I feel so… heavy?

  I turned in a slow circle.

  There was nothing. No gate. No sun. No shadows. Just endless fog.

  “Test my ass,” I grumbled, picked a direction, and started walking.

  The soft ground sagged under each step and tugged at my boots as I pulled them free.

  “Where do you think we are?” I whispered, slowing as I waited for Lumi’s reply.

  No hum answered me.

  I stopped.

  The fog brushed against my shins as it drifted past.

  “Hello?”

  My voice thinned and disappeared into the grey.

  “Lumi?”

  A hollow sound carried through the fog, distant and wrong, and my body locked in place.

  The stillness pressed in until I could hear my own blood in my ears.

  Then I heard it again, soft and wet against the mud.

  Footsteps.

  This time, there was no mistaking it.

  I turned back the way I had come, eyes cutting through the grey, searching for movement, for a break in the fog, for anything out of place. It all looked the same.

  My hand slid to my hip out of habit.

  The sheath felt wrong.

  Empty.

  I held my breath and waited for the familiar twist in my chest. For the tug in my blood. For the sharp, unbearable pain that came when Lumi slipped too far from me.

  Nothing.

  The fog ahead of me shifted.

  It did not drift.

  It drew inward.

  I watched the mist tighten and bunch, its edges folding as if caught on something I could not see.

  I stepped back. My heel skidded on the wet ground.

  The fog swelled in front of me, lifting from the marsh as though something were pushing up through the mud, and a shape began to rise.

  Dark hair.

  A bruised face, split by familiar scars.

  My stomach dropped.

  It was me.

  I staggered back another step, my boots sliding and my breath turning shallow and fast.

  Lumi hung in his hand.

  The light along the blade collapsed inward, dragged into the black steel as though it were being swallowed by it.

  “Stay back,” I said, and barely recognised how thin my voice sounded.

  The other me did not answer. He tilted his head and looked me over slowly, his eyes moving from my hands to my feet and then to the empty sheath at my hip, weighing distance and weakness with calm, practiced precision.

  He studied me in silence, a brief flicker of curiosity crossing his face.

  Then his jaw set.

  Disgust tightened his mouth. Anger followed.

  He charged.

  The flat of the blade cracked into my shin before I could even think. Pain tore up my leg and I went down hard, my pack slamming into the muck.

  He loomed over me and reached for my face with bare fingers.

  I lunged on instinct and caught the bracer at his wrist.

  My fingers closed on cold metal.

  It did not slow him.

  His arm forced its way through my grip and his scarred finger touched my bare skin.

  My forehead.

  The pain hit all at once. White. Sharp. Deep enough to make my vision buckle.

  The curse.

  Not from me.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  From him.

  He smiled as he pulled his hand back and let the sting hang in my head for one slow breath.

  Not enough to break me.

  Enough to make the point.

  He straightened and drove Lumi’s pommel into my ribs.

  The impact crushed the air from my lungs in a raw, broken gasp.

  By the time I hauled myself onto one knee, shaking and coughing mud, he was already backing into the fog.

  He looked at me once.

  Only once.

  His thumb brushed the blade.

  The fog closed around him.

  And he vanished.

  “Hey,” I called, my voice breaking. “Come back.”

  I stumbled after him, but the fog swallowed the space where he had been.

  “Wait,” I called.

  I shouted after him again and again, demanding to know why, but the fog swallowed every word. Nothing came back to me not even an echo.

  He had taken my sword.

  And with it, the strength I had so desperately gained.

  And still, my curse had not reacted.

  I slowed, breath scraping in my chest, ribs aching where he had hit me, and the image of his face forced its way back into my mind.

  The scars.

  I dropped my gaze to my hands, then to my arms, turning them slowly in the thin light.

  My skin looked wrong. Too clean.

  I tugged my sleeve higher and traced the places where old scars should have broken the surface, where dull pain usually waited beneath my touch.

  “What?”

  My hands moved without thinking. Along my forearms. Up my throat. Across my jaw and cheeks.

  Nothing reacted.

  No sting.

  No tightening in my chest.

  My head swam and my weight shifted with it.

  A short, broken laugh slipped out before I could stop it.

  Free.

  The word landed hard.

  My legs gave way. I dropped into the wet mud and caught myself on my palms, water soaking through my sleeves as my chest hitched and my breathing refused to steady.

  Was this just another trick? Another test meant to grind at my head until something broke?

  “Doyle?” I called into the fog.

  My voice barely carried.

  “Hello? Anyone?”

  The sound vanished into the grey.

  Nothing answered.

  Cold water soaked through my trousers as the ground sagged under my weight. The fog crept back in and closed around me.

  After a while, it began to thin.

  The haze lifted in slow strips and the marsh came into focus. Far across the flat ground, the pale outline of a stone arch rose from the grey.

  The gate.

  I locked onto it. The clean curve of stone cut sharp against the dull sky.

  The thought came before I could stop it.

  If I went back now, would it let me pass like this?

  Without the sword.

  Without the curse.

  If that was true, then this was a way out.

  A real one.

  I could walk away from gates and blessings. Walk away from the pull of other people’s battles. I could build something that did not depend on surviving the next enemy.

  I could live without the curse.

  I turned slowly and forced myself to look away from the arch.

  Across the marsh, in the opposite direction, a massive shape rose out of the thinning fog.

  Dark and twisted against the pale land, its outline pressed into my chest and stole a breath I had not realised I was holding.

  I knew that shape. A tree. A memory.

  My gaze shifted back to the distant arch, then to the looming shape on the horizon.

  Two paths.

  “Seriously?” I muttered, the word scraping out of me as I let out a slow breath.

  One way out. Freedom stripped clean of responsibility.

  The other, a climb lined with pain.

  I ground my teeth and shifted my jaw, staring between the gate and the twisted tree. A dream and a nightmare.

  “Fucking test.”

  I folded my arms and dropped to the wet ground, the cold biting straight through my clothes. I needed to think long and hard.

  I had spent my life on the edge of things, watching instead of belonging. Trond Cottage was the first place that felt different. People who waited for me. People who noticed when I was gone. Something close to family.

  Walking back through the gate meant leaving them to carry the consequences for me.

  Celeste came to mind. Then Jerald, who stayed when it would have been easier to walk away. Doyle. Rob and Amelia. Even Brent.

  They would tell me to go. They would mean it.

  The thought tightened in my chest.

  I looked toward the distant tree.

  My resentment was still there, settled deep under my ribs. The pain that came with it set my teeth on edge, but the steadiness of it was worse. Part of me leaned toward that anger, toward the brutal comfort of believing I had every right to be furious.

  I drove my fist into the mud.

  Then I pushed myself up.

  There had to be another way.

  I turned my back on both the gate and the twisted shape and started walking away.

  “Fuck this place,” I muttered.

  I kept going.

  I had no idea how far I walked.

  Or how long. I knew, from the stories Jerald had given me, tough choices were always given to the heroes. To defeat a great enemy, they had to think outside the realms of possibilities and become who they meant to be.

  I saw myself in those stories. I hated the idea of being forced to choose. I didn’t want pain, yet I didn’t want emptiness. I wanted more.

  The massive tree and the distant gate shrank behind me, slipping into the haze of the marsh, but never quite leaving my sight.

  The light never shifted. There was no sun to mark the hours, no shadow to measure distance. After a while, the weight finally caught up with me and I slowed, then stopped.

  I sat and dug into my pack for the food Doyle had given us.

  A Cornish-style pasty, wrapped in a few layers of brown paper.

  I smiled.

  It was still slightly warm. I tore into it without ceremony, the rich, familiar flavour feeling almost wrong in a place like this. I forced myself to stop after a few bites. I had no idea how long I would be here.

  I folded the paper back around it, tucked it away, and stood.

  Then I kept walking.

  Into nothing.

  Step after step, the ground never changing, my vision starting to blur at the edges as my thoughts ran in tight, useless circles.

  It took longer than I liked to realise something had changed.

  A thin line of smoke smudged the horizon.

  My heart kicked hard against my ribs as I moved toward it.

  The smoke was faint, fragile. Sometimes it vanished completely. When it did, I stopped and waited, standing still in the fog until it bled back into view, then set off again.

  Time slipped.

  Eventually, the shape beneath the smoke began to settle.

  A low rise in the land.

  A wide mound, tucked into the marsh like a hidden corner of the world.

  As I closed in, the smoke I had been following thickened, rolling up from the centre of the mound.

  Then sound reached me.

  Hard, sharp clanks, striking metal against metal in a steady, relentless rhythm.

  I didn’t slow.

  I picked up my pace.

  When I reached the mound, I saw that one entire side had been cut away, far wider than I had first judged from a distance. The earth had been carved back to bare stone and tightly packed soil, forming a broad opening that sank deep into the mound and opened out into a vast chamber.

  Heat rolled out to meet me, thick and dry against my face. Light from the forge flickered across the cut stone walls and spilled out onto the marsh, catching drifting smoke and turning it copper and gold.

  The space felt used, not abandoned. Worn paths marked the floor. Tools lay within easy reach of the anvil. A low table and a rough sleeping pallet sat against the far wall.

  This was not just a workshop.

  Someone lived here.

  At the heart of the chamber, beside an ancient forge, a tall figure worked the coals.

  Long silver hair fell down his back. Heat darkened his skin. His arms stood thick and corded, shaped by years of labour. Yet the simple robes he wore set him apart from every smith I had ever known. He was nothing like Roy. Nothing like Kent.

  He stepped to the anvil and brought the hammer down.

  The bar of red-hot iron rang out across the chamber.

  Sparks burst upward and struck his robes.

  They slid away without smoke or scorch, as if the cloth refused to burn.

  My eyes widened as he turned toward me.

  He was holding the glowing iron in his bare hand.

  “Um… hello?” I said, my voice coming out thin.

  He didn’t smile or frown.

  He studied me the way a craftsman studies a half-finished project, slow and exact, as if deciding where the next piece should fall.

  I shifted my weight, suddenly aware of how small I felt in the open mouth of the chamber.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  His eyes moved over me again, lingering just long enough to make my skin prickle.

  Then he smiled.

  Not with warmth.

  With courtesy.

  “I am the smith,” he said. “The keeper of the first flame.”