The world was burning, and the fire made no sound. There was cry of a baby that sounded so familiar.
Black flames licked the stone walls of a crumbling keep, devouring tapestries and timber alike. In the center of it stood a man clad in shattered armor. He held a sword that didn't reflect the flames but swallowed them—a jagged tear in reality that hummed with a low, bone-shaking vibration. Beside him lay a woman in white, unmoving, a crimson stain spreading across her chest like a blooming rose.
The man turned. His helmet was gone, revealing a face streaked with soot and blood. His eyes locked onto Arthur's—eyes filled with a desperate, terrifying love.
"Run," the man mouthed.
The ceiling groaned, a massive slab of stone plummeting down. Arthur tried to scream, to move, to help, but his feet were nailed to the floor. The darkness swallowed them whole.
Arthur gasped, jerking upright in his cot.
His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs, sweat drenching his tunic despite the morning chill. He gripped the rough wool blanket, his knuckles white, waiting for the smell of smoke. But there was only the scent of dried herbs and old wood.
"You're screaming again."
Arthur flinched. His uncle, Gareth, stood in the doorway, leaning heavily on a gnarled walking stick. The old man's face was a map of deep wrinkles, his eyes hidden beneath bushy gray brows. He held a wooden ladle, dripping with porridge.
"It was the nightmare, again." Arthur muttered, rubbing his face with calloused hands. "The castle. The knight with that sword."
Gareth's grip on the ladle tightened, his knuckles flashing white for a split second. He turned away sharply, hiding his face in the shadow of the doorframe. "Knights and castles. You spend too much time listening to the bards in the square. Dreams are just the mind's way of sweeping up the dust of the day. Nothing more," he said, though his voice lacked its usual conviction.
Arthur swung his legs out of bed. The floorboards creaked under his weight. At eighteen, he had grown taller than most men in the village of Oakhaven, with a lean, corded muscle structure built by years of farm labor.
"It feels real, Uncle," Arthur said, following him out. The cottage was small, cluttered with farming tools and Gareth's woodcarvings. "Every time. I feel like... like I'm supposed to be there."
"Foolishness," Gareth snapped, slapping the ladle against the side of a pot. "Unless you're a secret lord in your sleep, you're a turnip farmer like the rest of us. Now eat. The southern field won't plow itself."
Arthur sat at the rough-hewn table, staring into his bowl. Gareth was right, of course. Arthur was a nobody. An orphan left on Gareth's doorstep, parents taken by a fever when he was a babe—or so the story went.
But as he ate, his gaze drifted to the window. Outside, the Kingdom of Aethelgard was waking up.
The hours that followed were a blur of gray monotony. The rhythmic thud of the hoe hitting the earth, the ache in his shoulders, the same conversation about the weather with the neighbors—it was a cage made of open air. By the time the sun hung low over the Dragontooth Mountains, Arthur felt like he was suffocating in the safety of it all.
Arthur hefted a sack of grain onto his shoulder, the weight familiar and dull.
"Hey! Dreamer boy!"
A pebble bounced off Arthur's shoulder. He turned to see Leo perched on a wooden fence, grinning. Leo was the village troublemaker, with messy brown hair and a constant itch to be somewhere else. Beside him sat Maya, meticulously braiding a piece of straw, her sharp eyes scanning the horizon.
"Late again, Arthur?" Maya teased, though her tone was gentle.
"Uncle Gareth had a mood," Arthur grunted, leaning against the fence. "The usual."
"He's just worried you'll run off and join a circus," Leo laughed, jumping down. "Or worse, leave the village."
"Don't tempt me," Arthur muttered. He looked past the village fields, toward the distant, hazy peaks where the capital lay. "You guys hear the caravan master yesterday?"
Maya nodded, her expression tightening. "My dad was talking to him. He said he saw a ship near the northern border. A real one. Floating right over the clouds. Must have been from the Aeris kingdom. He showed me the kingdom in one of the thousand maps he owns."
"Must be nice," Leo kicked a clod of dirt. "Living up there. Gravity magic keeping your wine in the glass while you look down on us mud-crawlers."
"And the traders from the east mentioned Synthetica," Arthur added, his voice dropping. "They say the city screams with light, even at midnight. And the people... they say some of them replace their own arms with steel and iron just to work harder. Can you imagine? Living in a place where metal thinks?"
"Stories," Maya said, though she looked wistful. "Just stories to make us buy their overpriced spices."
"It's not just stories," Arthur insisted, gripping the fence rail. The wood creaked under his hand. "The world is huge, and we're stuck here watching turnips grow. The Capital's Festival of Light is in two days. The whole kingdom will be there. Knights, mages, travelers from the Shard Kingdoms..."
"And we'll be here, I will be looking after the dried meat, you will be cleaning the horses and Maya will be doing something important I guess," Leo sighed, throwing his arms up. "Because the Elders think anything beyond the river is a death sentence."
Arthur looked at his hands. Sometimes, when he held a tool or a weapon, he felt a hum beneath his skin. A vibration that didn't belong to a simple farmer. He looked back at his friends, a sudden clarity washing over him.
"We shouldn't just accept it," Arthur said, his voice steady.
The other two went silent. Maya stopped braiding. Leo's grin faded into something sharper, more serious.
"What are you saying, Arthur?" Leo whispered.
Arthur looked at the mountain road, winding its way out of the valley like a snake.
"I'm saying we ask them. Properly," Arthur turned to them. "We aren't children anymore. We plow the fields, we fix the roofs, we keep this village running just as much as they do. We deserve to see the world."
Maya bit her lip, glancing back toward the village hall where smoke was rising from the chimney. "The Council meets at sundown," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "Elder Thorne will be there."
"Thorne is a stubborn old goat," Leo muttered, kicking the fence post. "He'll never agree."
"He might," Arthur said, clutching the strap of his grain sack. "If we stand together. If we show them, we're ready."
He looked at Maya, then Leo. "Are you with me?"
Leo looked at the distant mountains, then grinned. "Better than staring at turnips."
Maya took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. We ask them."
Arthur smiled, the nightmare of the burning castle fading into the background, replaced by a spark of hope.
"Then let's go," Arthur said.