Chapter 1 The Void Left Behind
THE VOID LEFT BEHIND
“A leader does not rise from triumph, but from loss. It is grief that carves the shape of a ruler, and only those who survive the carving will stand.”
—Láda Velé?a, Goddess of Leadership and War
Noel
“Don’t touch her! I’ll burn this place to the ground!”
I thrash, but I can’t move. The two soldiers holding me by my arms refuse to let go. My boots scrape against the cold ground of Tárnov’s village square, the rough stone biting into my soles. The men don’t speak. Don’t say a word.
They are statues, void of feeling, dragging me back like I am nothing.
It’s daytime, but the world is dark. The sky above is bleak, a muted gray that swallows the sun. Cold seeps into my bones. It wraps around me like a second skin.
This isn’t real. It’s nothing but a nightmare.
“Let go of me! That’s an order!” I scream. I am an officer! I can throw them into the pit and forget their existence! My word holds weight.
But they don’t listen. They pull me back, farther away from her. “Mother!” My cry tears from my throat, but it does not stop them.
The dark wooden carriage lunges forward, wheels grinding against the hard soil as its black horses carry my mother’s lifeless body toward the main gates of the village.
She is inside. Wrapped in white. Motionless.
Her knees bounce beneath the thin shroud, and I can see their shape through the fabric.
What’s going on? They never take corpses out of the village.
“Keep your tongue behind your teeth, ársa.” My lieutenant colonel’s silhouette grows bigger as he approaches.
“Where are you taking her?” My voice breaks. My heart slams against my ribs. I can’t breathe. There is nothing left now. Nothing but the blurred spin of the wheels, the cruel trudge of the horses, the tightening of the soldiers’ grips as they keep me in place.
“Who do you think you are?” he says, stopping a few steps before me. “Got a rank and now you speak?”
My eyes narrow, and my teeth grind as my pulse pounds in my ears.
“We arrived here at the same time, ársa. You’ve seen what I’ve seen.”
I shake my head. No. “You don’t take the dead out,” I rasp. “You bury them. You burn them. But you don’t—” I gag on bile. “You don’t cross the gates.”
This is it. Sobs tear through me, leaving only emptiness, as if each one is hollowing me out from the inside. “You don’t take her. No one takes her!”
The soldiers say nothing. Remain cold fingers and locked jaws. Like they don’t hear me. Like I’m no one. I twist, trying to headbutt one. He dodges, but only barely.
It hurts too much to scream again.
“Heart failure,” he finally says.
Nonsense. My mother was always so healthy, so full of life. Everywhere in our house, there was salt and rosemary, herbs to ward off illness like magic amulets. She couldn’t just . . . die. It doesn’t make any sense.
The colonel steps forward, hands clasped behind his back. He looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. That detached gaze, the coldness in his lifeless eyes—I want to burn them.
“Release me!” I scream again, thrashing against the soldiers’ grips. The colonel slaps me across the face. It stings.
“Take her home,” he orders. “She’s unwell.”
They drag me down the narrow path toward my mother’s home, past the rows of stone houses that watch with shuttered windows and silent doors. I twist hard, once, twice, and manage to rip my arm free from the soldier on my right. My elbow shoots up to slam into his chest. He grunts and staggers back.
I almost break loose.
But the moment I think I’ve got a chance, the other lunges, and both their hands clamp around my throat.
My back slams against the wall of a nearby house. The stone is cold. Their grip is colder. I choke on air, eyes wide as they squeeze just enough to make the edges of my vision blur.
“Shut up,” one of them hisses. “You want to make a scene?”
I snarl, trying to fight, but my strength is slipping. My tears haven’t yet dried.
The second soldier leans in close. “Show the others what order looks like.”
Through the fog in my head, my chest heaving, throat burning, I glare at him. But there’s no point in fighting now. The carriage is long gone. Mother is long gone.
“Where is this house?” the first growls as they drag me against the wall.
“The colonel said it should be somewhere around here,” the other replies.
Are they blind? My home is right in front of us.
I twist, grab the front of their uniforms, and slam them both into the stone wall. Their pained grunts as they fall to the ground almost bring me a dark satisfaction. Almost.
Grabbing the sides of their heads with both hands, I shove them back again, hard. These two are nothing compared to me. I’ve sent countless men just like them to the healer over my years in the army.
“I can walk on my own.”
Without waiting for a response, I leave them there, crumpled outside my mother’s home, and walk toward the door.
I exhale deeply.
But today is not about them. It’s about her.
After all, she was the reason I joined the army in the first place.
She never yielded to those restrictive rules set by men who think themselves gods to rule over everything else in existence.
She taught me to think critically, to wield my strength, to never take anything at face value.
Defying their conventions, surpassing their expectations, I climbed the ranks.
Where women were silenced, my voice was heard.
My mother was the light of my soul. She was a strong-willed woman who always urged me to question everything around me. “Never let anyone say you can’t do something, Noel.” Her eyes used to flare with the same spark that lived in me until today.
Our home was a stronghold, where intellect and influence were nurtured.
She taught me how to read, how to be strong, and how to fight for what I believe in.
Many nights were spent out in our garden, training with wooden swords, secretly, as she commanded every step I took.
“Strength comes in many forms,” she would remind me often.
“Physical, mental, spiritual—you must master them all.”
I am a few steps away from the door when something dark catches my attention, and I move to crouch beside a stain on the soil to the left of the entrance. What is it?
I run my finger through the earth and lift it to my nose.
My heart sinks.
It smells of blood. What? Mothe— No. This can’t be it. There were no blood stains on the shroud that covered her body. This just cannot be true.
I rise to my full height and smear the dried blood on my skirt, wrinkling my nose, and turn to the door.
The handle is cold in my grip, and as the door creaks open, the sound is a twisting knife in my gut. I will walk in, and she won’t be there. Because she is gone.
Bracing for something that will never come, I step inside. No scolding. No tsk as she eyes the dirt on my gown. She’s supposed to be here, supposed to tell me not to walk around like this.
But the silence is too loud.
Every step I take feels like a violation, like I don’t belong in this space anymore.
The familiar scent of herbs lingers in the air with the cold seeping in from outside.
It’s comforting and painful all at once.
It reminds me too much of her. It feels like she’s still here, just out of reach, tending to her herbs.
But she is not.
The kitchen. It’s filled with herbs and flowers, exactly like it was a few months ago when I last visited. Tears blur my vision.
I would complain about the pain in my neck, or the smack these soldiers gave me just a few minutes ago. But who will hear my pain if not her?
My hands on the counter, my arms holding my full weight, I lean forward, and my tears fall into the sink to darken the wood with every drop. Could it be the colonel? Maybe any of the soldiers?
Impossible. They were all with me at the base. Then what happened?
But the blood outside . . .
Shaking my head, I walk into the living room. Her sanctuary, the place where she’d sit by the fire, read to me, teach me everything I know.
I can almost see her there, curled up in her chair by the hearth, her fingers tracing the pages of the book she read so often. The same book that sits there now, left open, as if she had just been reading it again.
My hands tremble as I pick it up and flip through the pages. One of them is marked with a folded piece of paper. Carefully, I pull it free and read the passage she bookmarked.
It describes an ancient ritual, one designed to undo the most binding of enchantments.
The text speaks of breaking the “chains of blood” that hold entire forces at bay, forces so strong they can only be contained by spells woven from ancient bloodlines.
The final passage hints at a great cost, a sacrifice required to unravel such powerful magic, followed by crossing a path of blood.
I swallow hard.
Why did my mother mark this?
She always spoke in riddles, said things I struggled to understand, did things I never dared to ask about. My every question was left unanswered.
After I close the book and set it back in its place, I move deeper into the house, and with every step, the air gets colder.
When I reach her bedroom, the door creaks as I push it open. My breath catches at the sight of her bed, unmade, the furs still piled where she last lay. I freeze.
Mother never left her bed like this. It was one of her rules: everything in order, always. Seeing it now, messy and abandoned, sends a shiver down my body. It’s wrong.
Swallowing hard again, I rush to make the bed. I pull the white blanket neatly into place, smoothing the plush furs on top.
My eyes move to her bedside drawer, one I never touched. My fingers brush over the wood, rough and worn from years of use. Maybe there’s something inside. A clue? A sign? Because I refuse to believe she died of heart failure.