[ đ¶ Suggested Track: Paint It, Black (Orchestral/Cello Version) ]
The Setting: A frozen mountain pass leading into Velmora.
The carriage didn't just stop; it died.
The lead horse let out a scream that was cut short by a wet, gargling sound. Then, silence. Only the wind howling through the mountain pass and the soft tink-tink-tink of the cooling carriage heater.
Inside, Prince Cassian Valcrest didn't flinch. He sat in the dark, draped in a heavy coat that cost more than the village he just passed. He was scrolling through a deck of vintage playing cards, his thumb clicking against the edges.
"Sir! Your Highness!"
The coachman's voice was frantic. He hammered on the small wooden partition. "We're under attack! They've blocked the road with a fallen pine. Sir, you need to stay down!"
Cassian didn't stay down. He leaned forward, pulled the velvet curtain back an inch, and watched a spray of blood paint the fresh white snow crimson. A guard fell, an arrow through his throat.
The carriage door was ripped open. The freezing night air rushed in.
"Highness, please!" A soldier, shaking and pale, reached for him. "We have to move! It's a slaughter out there. Your brother... Kaelor didn't send enough men for the escort. He's left us like sitting ducks!"
Cassian finally looked up. His eyes weren't filled with fear; they were filled with a bored, sharp light. He tucked the cards into his pocket and stepped out into the knee-deep snow, his polished leather boots sinking into the slush.
"Kaelor didn't forget, you idiot," Cassian said. "He calculated. He sent exactly enough men to make it look like an accident when I didn't arrive."
Another arrow hissed past his ear, thudding into the carriage door. Cassian didn't even blink. He just looked toward the dark treeline where the shadows were moving.
"Is that the best he can do?" Cassian called out, his voice echoing off the frozen cliffs. "Three years in exile, and I come home to a few pathetic bandits in the snow?"
The soldier gasped, trying to pull him behind the wheel. "Sir, you're going to get killed! Kaelor willâ"
"Kaelor can try," Cassian interrupted, a slow, dangerous smirk spreading across his face. He didn't look like a man under attack; he looked like a man who had finally found something to entertain him. "But he's going to have to do a lot better than this to keep me out of my own kingdom."
He reached into his coat, not for a sword, but for a silver flask. He took a slow, deliberate sip as a hooded man lunged at him from the dark with a rusted blade.
Without looking, Cassian stepped aside, caught the man's wrist, and twisted until the bone snapped like a dry twig. He didn't even spill a drop of his drink.
"Next," he whispered into the winter wind.
A mocking smirk plastered on his face. He was waiting for the punchline. He was waiting for Kaelor to step out of the trees and admit this was all a theatrical stunt to scare him back into exile.
But the punchline didn't come. Instead, a guard screamed.
It wasn't a soldier's scream; it was the sound of a man being unmade. Cassian's smirk faltered as he watched one of the "bandits" pounce on his lead guard. This wasn't a sword fight. The attacker sank yellowed, needle-sharp teeth directly into the guard's throat, tearing through flesh as if it were paper.
"âŠWhat manner of creature is that?" Cassian whispered, his voice losing its bored edge.
The guards panicked, firing arrows that did nothing but slow the creatures down. These weren't witchesâat least, not like any Cassian had seen. They moved with a twitching, predatory speed, their eyes glowing with a feral hunger.
"Your Highness, run!" the last surviving guard shouted, stumbling back as a creature with a disjointed jaw lunged at him.
Cassian stepped back, his boots crunching in the snow. For the first time in years, he felt a cold spike of genuine terror. He was cornered. A creature, its face smeared with the blood of his men, crouched low, preparing to spring at his throat.
Then, the air shifted.
A mist rolled over the carriage. The creature pounced, but it never reached Cassian.
A hand, small but radiating a strange heat shot out from the fog and caught the creature by its throat. A hooded figure in a heavy, dark cloak stood between Cassian and certain death.
The creature shriekedâa sound that shattered the mountain silenceâas the hooded girl's touch began to smoke. Wherever her skin met its fur, the beast began to burn. It scrambled away, its flesh charring as if it had touched the sun itself.
She didn't stay still. She moved like a shadow through the snow. She didn't use a blade; she used a touch that left the creatures howling in agony, their bodies dissolving into ash wherever she struck.
In seconds, the mountain pass returned to a haunting silence.
Cassian stood paralyzed, his breath hitching in the freezing air. The girl turned. The hood of her cloak was pulled low, shielding her face from the flickering lantern light, but she couldn't hide her eyes.
They weren't human. They were like the moon captured in glassâsilver, luminous, and impossibly deep.
"Who are you?" Cassian managed to ask, his voice a rough shadow of its usual charm. "What... what are you?"
The girl tilted her head. A small, mysterious smile played on her lips, though the rest of her face remained a mystery in the dark.
"I'm a shepherd," she said, her voice like a velvet melody. "You're safe now. Though, usually, a gentleman offers a 'thank you' before interrogation."
Cassian let out a sharp, breathless chuckle, his heart still hammering against his ribs. "Is that so? Usually, the Prince is the one doing the saving. It seems I'm the damsel in distress tonight."
"Maybe you are," she replied, her silver eyes dancing. "But be careful, Prince. In this kingdom, when a woman saves a man, they call her a witch. And we know what you Valcrests do to witches."
She turned to leave, her form already beginning to blur into the falling snow.
"Wait!" Cassian reached out, his fingers brushing the fabric of her sleeve. He felt a sharp, electric heatâa tiny burn that made him pull back, startled. "You are a witch, aren't you?"
She stopped, looking back over her shoulder. The moonlight caught the silver in her gaze one last time.
"Maybe," she whispered.
Cassian didn't care. He had spent his life surrounded by people who feared the dark, but looking at her, he felt a strange, magnetic pull. He wasn't afraid. He was captivated.
"Don't go yet," he called out as she moved further into the white void. "At least tell me your name."
The wind picked up, swirling the snow around her until she was nothing but a silhouette. She looked back at him, her voice a ghost of a sound that seemed to vibrate in the very air.
"Echo."
The name didn't just hang in the air; it vibrated, echoing off the cliffs and the frozen trees, long after she had vanished into the night.
...
One girl. A witch they couldn't burn. A ghost they couldn't catch.
She has already caught the hearts of two princes. Two men who happened to be brothers, yet were born to be enemies.
One is destined to kill her. The other is destined to use her. >
But both are about to find out that Echo doesn't belong to anyone... but the fire.