Chapter Twenty: The Vision Beneath the Stone
Word came in the evening mist.
A raven landed at the edge of the fire pit, cawed twice, and dropped a blood-stained cloth. The oldest woman in the village picked it up in silence, nodded once, and carried it to Talon.
“It’s time, Laird,” she said, though she hadn’t called him that until now.
The cloth was wrapped around a pin—silver thistle and Cu Sith’s head, blackened by fire.
He stared at it for a long time.
No tears. No anger. Just the hollow ache of knowing. Bannock, the last houseman, had made his stand. The O’Coyle keep was no more. Its courtyard ran with blood. The bridge was ash. The roof fell under black smoke that curled into the highland sky.
The soul of the clan had been stolen.
Talon stood. Quietly, without word or farewell, he put on his green tartan once more, slung his sword over his shoulder, and descended the winding trail toward the Cu Sith’s cave.
The Descent into Shadow
He passed the boundary totems, now darker in the fading light. Even the children didn’t follow him. Not this time.
The cave yawned like a mouth in the side of the cliff—a place where the ground pulsed warm with ancient breath. Inside, the air shimmered with memory. Faint etchings lined the walls—battles, beasts, bloodlines—but one figure reappeared again and again:
The great black hound, half-shadow, half-flesh.
He knelt at the central stone slab, the same place he had taken the Fàrdach before the Trial. Now, he placed the burnt tartan fragment beside the slab, and pressed his forehead to the ground.
“I am yours,” he whispered. “I am all that’s left.”
He closed his eyes.
The Vision of the Cu Sith
At first, there was only silence.
Then came the breath—a low, steady growl that echoed from deep within the earth. Not hostile. Not warm. Just there. And in the dark, a shape emerged. Tall. Canine. Eyes like frozen fire.
“You wear my mark,” the Cu Sith said. Its voice was both hound and storm. “Do you understand now, cub of stone?”
Talon raised his head. In the vision, his body bled green light from every scar. His shadow stretched long behind him—and it had four legs.
“They burned our keep,” Talon said. “They killed our kin.”
“As they always have. But flame does not end stone. It frees it.”
“What am I?” Talon asked.
“You are the ghost in the heather. You are the scream in the mist. You are Cu Sith now. The last Laird and the first Hound.”
A pause. Then the hound stepped forward, and where it touched Talon’s chest, he saw everything—his bloodline stretching back beyond the highlands, across green seas to an ancient isle lost to time. He saw the first Cu Sith, born in moonlight beneath standing stones. He saw the isle of ancestors, ringed by black cliffs and bright fires. His people had fled not war, but destiny—and now it called again.
“You must prowl,” said the Cu Sith. “Not rule. Hunt.” “Let them feel fear in the woods and silence at the gate. The land does not bow to kings. It remembers the claw.”
Then all went dark.
The Awakening
Talon awoke at dawn. Mist hung in the cave’s mouth, curling around him like fur.
He stood, slower now, heavier. Not with grief—but with purpose.
The tartan lay across his shoulders. The silver pin, polished and placed at his collar, glinted with new light. He turned once to the darkened cave, then strode out into the valley, sword on hip, gaze ahead.
The villagers saw him pass and fell silent. They did not call him Laird. They did not need to.
They saw the way the mist moved around him. The way the air shifted. The way even the birds quieted.
He was no longer only Talon.
He was the Cu Sith's chosen. The green flame reborn. The hunter of kings.
And he would return to his lands—not to reclaim them.
But to make them howl.
Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3
Chapter Twenty One: The Last Tear
The new laird had a moment of clarity.
Beneath the withered pine behind his grandmother’s cottage, where the wind always seemed to murmur old truths, Cu-Sith came to him—not in form, but in feeling. A weight pressed on his chest, ancient and wild, and the message was clear:
Hiding had only bought the usurper time. Time to make his people bend the knee. Time to punish the innocent for his silence.
No more.
The pup, now Laird of the broken house of O'Coyle, rose with resolve sharpened by grief. He tidied the small home where his grandmother had once told stories of his kin, tucked the blanket at the foot of her bed, and locked the door behind him. He would not return until the oath was answered.
Outside, five young lads waited—barely past boyhood, but begging to fight. Sons of fishermen, crofters, and woodcutters, each of them had lost something to the Red Fist. They chose this path freely. Talon made certain of it.
And so they left the village behind, stepping past the carved totems at the edge of the trees, stepping from the safety of kin into the unforgiving embrace of the Highlands.
They moved at night—always in shadow—over scrub and scree, weaving through gulches and climbing craggy ridgelines, where the wind howled like ghosts and the stars blinked like watchful eyes.
They were a pack now. Dogs of war. Rabid. Vigilant. Seeking revenge.
For three days, they pressed forward, silent as the hawk’s shadow. On the third dawn, Talon crested a ridge. Below him lay his home.
The smoke had stopped.
What remained of the keep slouched against the lochside, half-charred timbers collapsed into black water. The towers had fallen, the stone scorched. It looked like a broken crown drowning in its own reflection.
Talon dropped to his knees. His shoulders shook. For the first time in weeks, he let himself weep—not for war or revenge, but for home. The hearth where he’d learned to speak. The hall where his people danced. The stone his ancestors laid.
He would never weep again. Not until years later— When a firstborn son came into the world, crying and whole. Hope. Renewal.
They waited a day.
Only after Talon was sure the usurper’s soldiers had moved on did they descend the last hundred yards.
The bridge still stood, though barely. Burned timber supports cobbled stones crumbled into the loch groaned beneath their steps.
He crossed it alone.
At the far end, where the courtyard had once stood, he found him—his houseman, his mentor, the one who had raised him after his father’s fall. He had made his last stand here, defending a home no longer whole.
The cold had preserved his body. The arrows had drained it. The sword wounds had ended it. But his grip on his axe still lingered, white-knuckled even in death.
Talon collapsed beside him and took him in his arms. The weight was familiar. He had carried firewood with this man, hauled stone with him, hunted deer beside him. Now he carried him once more.
Cradling his second father, Talon whispered old words. Oaths. Prayers. Promises.
Then the air changed.
Cu-Sith came again. This time closer. A low growl behind his thoughts, a presence at his back.
“Take your rage.” “Take your pain.” “Take your pack.” “Follow the scum and spill their blood.”
Talon rocked back and forth, pressing his brow to the still chest of the fallen. The lads behind him said nothing. They felt it too. The wild breath of something older than kings.
He began to chant in Gaelic—low and guttural.
“Airson dìoghaltas... airson dìoghaltas...” For revenge... for revenge...
The bog had swallowed his kin. The fire had taken his home. But Talon O'Coyle had risen in its place. And he would not rest until the Red Fist bled in the dark.
Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3
