read more ahead on patreon
patreon.com/tejaschoudhary275
Dawn bled through a veil of mist as the old black carriage groaned along a winding trail. Dew clung to twisted roots and broken stones, the road coiling ever nearer to the edge of legend—the Cursed Forest, a place where time lost its way and gods no longer listened.
Its wheels creaked with the weight of history, of sorrow, and of one soul too young to bear the burden laid upon him.
Inside, bound in silence and shadow, sat Sylvanor.
His back pressed against the splintered wood. A red cloth, the Blindfold of Banishment, covered his eyes. His wrists were tied with ceremonial rope—not to restrain, but to humiliate. And his robes, once meant for princes, now hung in tatters—their gold thread dulled, their sigils torn, a mockery of the crown he was never allowed to claim.
Sixteen winters, and already the world had written his ending.
Up front, reins in hand, sat Harrik, an old man with more scars than teeth, once the charioteer of kings. The forest loomed ahead like a myth coming true. He glanced back through the wooden partition, his weathered face creased with emotion.
His hands trembled on the reins.
The silence stretched like a blade between them.
Then, Harrik spoke—soft, almost unsure, as if speaking across a great distance.
"Do you remember the day you gave me flowers for my daughter's wedding? Called me the kingdom's finest charioteer? Said I drove like a storm-bird chasing lightning?"
The boy stirred. A twitch of the bound fingers. A breath caught in his throat.
Then, a rasp.
"I remember," Sylvanor said, his voice cracked like old stone under pressure.
His head remained bowed. The blindfold hid his eyes, but not the grief in his words.
"But I wasn't crying for myself, Harrik. I cry because I made a vow. When I was ten... I promised Father I'd protect my sisters. All seven. From poison, from plots, from pain. From each other, if I had to. And now… I can't."
He exhaled slowly, as if releasing the very flame in his lungs.
"He used to laugh, you know. Call me his little flame. 'You'll be their shield, Sylvanor. Their shield of fire.'"
The wind outside howled softly, as though mourning with him.
Harrik said nothing at first. But his eyes gleamed wet with unspoken pain.
"Gods forgive them," he whispered. "You were always too kind for these halls of stone and flame."
He clutched the reins tighter, hands white-knuckled.
"If it were mine to choose, boy, I'd turn this thing around. I'd drive you home like thunder. But… I can't. The seal on this scroll bears the Emperor's bloodmark. If I disobey, my kin hang beside me."
Another silence.
Moments passed. Trees drew nearer—black silhouettes against the bleeding sky, their limbs crooked like grasping hands.
"Do they still speak my name?" Sylvanor asked, almost too quietly.
Harrik hesitated. His jaw clenched.
"In whispers," he said at last. "And only in sorrow."
The forest gates loomed ahead—stone archways swallowed by moss and rune-scars, the threshold between empire and exile.
Sylvanor raised his head toward the light beyond the blindfold, even though he could not see.
"Then let it be so," he murmured. "Let sorrow remember me, if joy will not."
And with that, the last wheel crossed the boundary.
The Seventh Flame was extinguished from Aurethia.
The Lord of the Forest was about to awaken.
The road ended without warning.
Beyond the crooked arch of two crumbling monoliths—weathered by time, clawed by age—lay the Whispering Path, the only known entrance into the Cursed Forest. Fog spilled from its mouth like the breath of a slumbering beast. Trees stood like sentinels, their trunks gnarled with scars from wars older than memory. The air here was colder, heavier, laced with the scent of damp earth and secrets never meant for mortal ears.
The Imperial Guards, clad in iron-dark plate and silence, dismounted with rigid precision. They moved like shadows with swords. Neither spoke.
Inside the carriage, Sylvanor's breath hitched. He could feel it—the shift. The forest was near. It pulsed with wild magic, old and hungry.
One of the guards climbed the wooden step. The other unsheathed a runed blade, keeping watch on the treeline.
Harrik gripped the reins tighter. His eyes fixed ahead, jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
"Forgive me, lad," he muttered, not turning. "Forgive an old man who could not change the world."
The rope around Sylvanor's wrists began to fall away.
Then—a sound that did not belong.
A guttural snarl, low and vibrating with unnatural malice, ripped through the stillness like a curse made flesh.
Before a word could be shouted, before a blade could rise—the forest attacked.
From the underbrush it came: a sleek blur of shadow, muscle, and nightmare. The Nightclaw Predator—a beast of myth, thought long extinct—leapt with terrifying speed. Its body rippled with sinew. Its eyes glowed like twin moons over a death-field.
The first guard had no time to scream. Claws slashed through steel. Blood sprayed across the carriage door like red rain.
"GODS!" cried Harrik, stumbling back.
The second guard raised his blade—but the creature was faster. It moved like smoke and shadow, striking low. The sword clattered uselessly to the ground.
Sylvanor fell back into the carriage. His blindfold slipped, just for a heartbeat, and his eyes met the forest—and the truth within it.
The trees... were watching.
As the predator snarled over its prey, and chaos turned the air to screams and steel, Sylvanor's soul recoiled.
Not from the beast.
But from the feeling—deep and ancient—that the forest had not sent the Nightclaw to kill him.
It had sent it to test him.
A scream echoed into the mist, and the chapter ended—not with words, but with a promise unspoken:
The forest had claimed its first breath.And Sylvanor's exile had truly begun.
read more ahead on patreon
patreon.com/tejaschoudhary275