Chapter One: The Howl Before the Fire

Talon dreamed of the Cu Sith again.

It came slinking through the mists of sleep like a shadow with breath. Its fur was the color of moss-drenched stone — so dark it drank the light — and its eyes glowed a sickly green, like loch-fire seen through fog. The hound did not growl. It whispered.

“He is lost...”

The voice was not bark or howl, but wind through standing stones.

Behind the hound, his brother stood in the dream, bare-chested and soaked from the loch, looking over his shoulder into a grey wall of mist. And then — gone. Swallowed by the fog. Talon tried to run to him, but the earth beneath him was heather and water, soft and sucking, dragging him down. The Cu Sith watched. Then it turned and walked calmly into the mist after his kin.

He awoke in a cold sweat, his breath catching, fists clenched as if gripping a blade.

Far From Home

The dream faded to firelight and frost.

Talon lay in a field camp deep in the Southern Marches, a muddy ring of tents and half-frozen men. The war had dragged them from the highlands, from stone homes and sacred hills, and thrown them into the mud under a false king’s banner.

He sat up, every muscle tight with dread. Around him, men snored, muttered in their sleep. But something was wrong. The wind had shifted.

Then the screaming started.

A torch went flying. A tent collapsed with a roar. Steel clashed.

They had come. Not rebels — not even proper soldiers — but scorchers, lowland firebands sent to gut and raze. No banners, no honor. Just speed and slaughter.

Talon grabbed his sword and burst from the tent into chaos. The camp burned — flame licking canvas and flesh. A horse screamed as it bolted riderless. A man Talon knew — Muir, a baker’s son — was cut down beside a cookfire. They’d been caught drunk, disarmed, sleeping. There would be no organized resistance.

From the command tent, a voice barked:

“Rally! Rally to me! You cowards! Rally!”

It was Captain Edrin, Talon’s superior, hated and vain. He stood mounted on a makeshift platform of crates, bellowing orders, sending pockets of green boys into hopeless charges — all to buy time for himself to flee.

Talon fought through the madness, sword flashing, parrying a curved axe and cutting the wielder down. He reached Edrin as the last of the company fell screaming.

“You send boys to die while you piss yourself on a box?”

Edrin turned, eyes wide.

“We hold this ground, Highlander! We die for the king!”

“You die for yourself.”

They fought.

Edrin was fast, but Talon fought like a man possessed. The Cu Sith dream still burned behind his eyes. In two strokes the captain’s blade was gone. In three, his throat opened like a torn banner, and he fell gasping into the muck.

Talon stood over him as the camp crackled, a halo of fire rising behind him.

“I served your king. I bled for him. No more.”

He turned, snatched what he could — his tartan, still pinned to the charred tentpole, a hunting knife, a pouch of dried meat, a flask — and ran into the tree line.

Smoke chased him. So did guilt. So did the hound’s whisper.

Into the Night

He ran north.

Not along roads — they’d be watched — but through woods and hollows, streams and deer-paths. He ran toward the highlands, toward Grimreach, toward home. The wind howled like the dream-hound’s voice, and the night sky opened like a wound.

He did not look back.

The Cu Sith had come. And his brother was missing.

Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3