The atmosphere in the Longhouse of Hearthstone, usually one of hearty warmth and controlled chaos, had become a pressure cooker of dread.
The arrival of the eight children, delivered by a tight-lipped carter from Finn's Haul along with a heavy purse of silver and Arrion's cryptic note, had been a seismic event. Borryn, upon reading the scrawled words—"These are mine, as Arrion is yours. Keep them safe. Their sister guides me east."—had simply nodded, his face a mask of grim understanding. The children, Talen with his hatchet-scar and watchful eyes, little Mirri clutching her headless doll, the others gaunt and silent, were ushered inside. Elara and Lyra, with a practicality born of frontier life, set about the immense task without question: hot baths, clean (if oversized) clothes, and a vast pot of stew that seemed to magically refill itself.
The children were survivors. They recognized safety when they saw it. They didn't speak of their past, but they watched. They helped. Talen took to shadowing Orryn, learning the village defenses with a frightening intensity. Mirri attached herself to Maren, who was now fully recovered and radiating a serene strength, teaching the girl the names of herbs in the garden.
But the safe harbor they provided was an island in a rising sea of bad news.
First came the rumor, carried by a mud-spattered Imperial courier changing horses at The Stubborn Stag. He spoke in clipped tones to the new garrison sergeant (a younger, less perceptive man than Evander) of "disturbances" on the Sorrowflow. A barge, the River Mule, had been subjected to an "unscheduled contraband sweep." There had been an "incident." Fugitives had fled into the fens. Descriptions were vague, but one detail stuck: a man of "exceptional size." The courier didn't know names, but Borryn, pouring the man an ale with a steady hand, felt the floor drop away. Arrion's planned, quiet passage had blown up in his face.
Then, the silence. No word from Evander. No message from Oakhaven. The planned timeline for Arrion's river journey came and went. He should have been at Blackwater Landing days ago. He was not just delayed; he was missing, hunted, and had possibly drawn blood against imperial troops. Every day that passed without news was a heavier stone on the family's chest.
The greatest, most insidious threat, however, was not from men, but from the land itself.
It began at the edges. Farmer Hobb, whose fields bordered the Weald, noticed the first signs. His early spring wheat, usually a vibrant green, showed patches of sickly yellow at the outer rows. The leaves developed black, curling tips. It wasn't frost-burn. It was a blight, slow and silent. Within a week, it had spread inward, and Hobb wasn't alone. Reports trickled in from outlying crofts. The blight wasn't killing with fire or rot; it was a sapping, a draining of vitality. Plants grew stunted, their fruits small and tasteless. The game in the outer woods grew scarce and nervous.
Orryn, as headsman, rode out to see. He returned with a handful of withered stalks, his face pale. "It's the same," he told Borryn in the privacy of the Longhouse's back room. "Not as fast as what Arrion described. But it's the same black in the veins. It's in the soil, Father. It's spreading from the Weald, towards us."
They had followed Father Alden's plan. The eastern woods were forbidden. But the blight didn't respect fences. It moved through the root networks, through the groundwater. Hearthstone's lifeblood—its food—was being poisoned at the source.
And that drew the eyes they could least afford.
The Imperial Inquiry arrived not with fanfare, but with bureaucratic inevitability. A regional Assessor from the Pillar of Harvest, a fussy, pinch-faced man named Undersecretary Pell, accompanied by two junior clerks and a quartet of bored-looking guards from the Oakhaven garrison, clattered into the village square. Their mandate was "Agricultural Anomaly Assessment and Yield Verification."
Pell set up shop in The Stubborn Stag, turning Borryn's tavern into an impromptu court. He interviewed farmers, pored over (mostly non-existent) crop records, and took samples of the blighted plants. His questions were pointed, laced with the suspicion that frontier folk were exaggerating to secure tax relief or imperial aid.
Borryn played the part of the overwhelmed, concerned publican to perfection, serving Pell his best ale and offering loud, simplistic theories about "bad seed" and "late frost." But his eyes were constantly moving, watching the Undersecretary's clerks, watching the guards. These men were a shield and a probe. Their presence might deter Ralke's more blatant thugs, but they were also intelligence gatherers for the distant Pillars. Any unusual activity in Hearthstone would now be noted.
The inquiry created a brittle, double-edged reality. The village was under a microscope, but also under a thin, imperial umbrella. Orryn had to walk a razor's edge—mobilizing the militia for genuine defense against the creeping blight and whatever might come from the woods, while making it look like enthusiastic cooperation with Pell's "security assessment."
One evening, after Pell and his entourage had retired to their borrowed rooms, the family council gathered in the Longhouse kitchen, the children asleep in the loft above.
"He's not a fool," Orryn said quietly, sharpening a dagger. "He knows the blight isn't normal. He's sent a sample to the Collegium in Oakhaven for analysis. When they identify it as magical corruption…"
"He'll escalate," Borryn finished, polishing a tankard with a slow, deliberate motion. "The Pillar of Lore gets involved. Maybe the Church. A full investigation. They'll tear this village apart looking for the source. And they'll find us hiding children from a mine-factor and connected to a missing man wanted for assaulting trade guards."
Maren stirred a pot of medicinal tea, her face calm. "The Thorn in our side is also our salvation for now. The Empire's gaze is here, on the blight. It keeps the Marquis's knives in their sheaths. He cannot move openly with imperial officials in the village."
"But he doesn't need to move openly," Elara said, her voice tight. She was sharpening her own knife, the one Arrion had left her. "He just needs the blight to do its work. If the crops fail, Hearthstone starves or abandons the land. The inquiry leaves. Then he can send whatever he wants."
Lyra, who had been quietly studying a star-chart, looked up. "The blight moves from the Weald. It is an attack on the Verdant King. Arrion went to stop it at its source. Our task is to hold. To survive. To keep the children safe and the village together until he…" She trailed off, unable to voice the hope.
"Until he does the impossible," Borryn rumbled, setting the tankard down with a soft thud. "Again."
They sat in silence, the weight of their positions settling on them. Borryn, the bluff tavern-keeper hiding a family of fugitives under the nose of imperial authority. Orryn, the headsman preparing for a war against an enemy that was both a creeping sickness and a distant, cruel noble. Maren, the healer trying to fortify bodies and spirits against a despair that grew in the fields. The girls, becoming warriors and lore-keepers before their time.
And in the loft, eight children who had escaped one darkness, now sleeping in the eye of another storm.
Hearthstone was no longer just a village. It was a fortress under two sieges: one slow and green, leaching life from the soil; the other a waiting, political silence, ready to collapse into violence or scrutiny at any moment. Their safety depended on a missing giant, a forest king's resilience, and their own ability to perform a desperate, continuous act of deception for an audience of hungry children, suspicious officials, and an unseen Marquis counting the days until their food ran out. The Stubborn Stag was holding, but the foundations were trembling.