The village of Emara sat at the edge of the Veldran forest, close enough to the tree line that the oldest houses had roots growing under their foundations. Not large enough to appear on most imperial maps.

Lina had grown up in the middle of it.

Her father repaired tools. Her mother kept a small herb garden along the south wall of the house and sold what she grew at the weekly market two towns over. Her brother Fen was seven years older and had recently started an apprenticeship with the local blacksmith, which he talked about constantly.

Lina found it less interesting than he did but listened to anyway because he was her brother and the talking made him happy.

They ate dinner together every night. That was the thing she remembered most clearly later.

Those blurred and shifted over time the way memories did when they were not being tended. Particularly the presence of four people in a small room at the end of a day.

She remembered that clearly because it was the last thing she had before the night everything stopped.

***

She was ten years old.

She remembered waking up to the smell. She sat up in bed and the light coming through her window was orange and moving in like a firelight.

She went to the window.

The house across the road was burning.

Not a small fire.

"By the time anyone noticed, the flames had already consumed the house from the inside out. The orange light was everywhere.

Her mother’s voice came from the doorway, tight with panic.

"Lina. Come here. Now."

Her father was already downstairs with Fen, both of them dressed, her father holding a tool from the workshop that was not meant to be a weapon. Through the front window she could see people in the street, some running, some standing and looking at things and some not moving at all.

"Stay close," her father said. "We are going to the eastern road. Do not stop."

They went out.

The eastern road was the road that led away from the forest. The sounds came from the western side of the village and they were getting louder.

The street was full of people. Some she recognized. Some she didn’t, which made no sense in a village this size, and then she understood that the ones she didn’t recognize weren’t people.

She saw the first daemon clearly for a second before her mother’s hand closed around her arm and turned her face away.

That second was enough.

She did not remember the specific details of the next few minutes.

Those minutes came back to her later in fragments and out of order the heat of a wall of fire close enough to feel on her face, the sound of Fen’s voice saying something that got cut off before she heard what it was, the ground under her feet changing from packed dirt to something wet, her father’s hand pulling her forward.

The fire was everywhere.

She remembered running.

She did not remember when she stopped having people around her.

At some point she was alone.

The eastern road was behind her — she had been turned around somewhere in the crowd and the smoke and the light and the road she was on now were nowhere to be seen.

The village sounds were behind her. The forest was ahead.

She kept moving because stopping meant having to think about what she was moving away from.

She went into the trees.

.....

***

The knights arrived before dawn.

She heard them from inside the tree line.

Many horses, shiny armor, people moving and they came back out toward the road and stood at the edge of the trees until one of them saw her.

A young knight, barely older than Fen, still in full armor.

He got down from his horse and crouched in front of her and asked her her name and she told him and he asked where her family was and she did not answer because she did not know.

He picked her up and carried her back to where the others were gathering survivors. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

There were not many of them.

She sat on the ground wrapped in a blanket that had been handed to her by someone she didn’t remember and watched the knights move through what was left of the village. Most of it was still standing. The smoke coming off it was pale now, the orange light was gone, replaced by the grey of early morning.

She watched and waited for her family to come out of it.

Her mother did not come.

Her father did not come.

Fen did not come.

She sat with that for a long time.

Her eyes were watery as she lowered her head.