CHAPTER FIVE
KERA
Ten years later
It was supposed to be our last night before everything changed. We had graduated that morning, and tradition said you celebrated with the others on the mountain at dusk. From the flat-topped peak, you could see all of Novil stretched out below, the forests fading into the horizon.
It was the place my school mates went with stolen bottles and shaky courage, chasing freedom or something that felt like it.
Bonfires, hookups, dares whispered behind hands.
The kind of place you weren't supposed to talk about in school, but everyone did anyway.
And once a year, it turned into something more— a rite of passage.
The night the graduates climbed the mountain and claimed it as theirs. Ours, I suppose.
I’d never been up there after dark. I’d only ever climbed the mountain with my family, or during school hikes. Always in the daylight.
Never in a pretty dress.
Never with dread coiling low in my stomach.
A week earlier, everything had fallen apart. The king of Vestance had been murdered. They said it was one of his own advisors—Lord Devore of Ashthorne. A name I’d barely known before. Just another noble, too far away to matter.
I’d never cared much about politics. It always felt like background noise. Distant arguments in places that didn’t touch us.
But then Devore took the crown.
He took it with the help of the Eredian army—mercenaries with no allegiance, no honor. People called them vultures, said that they feasted on the flesh of the fallen, and that they killed for fun.
I believed that part.
They weren’t just soldiers, they were Devore’s teeth. His reminder to the rest of us, sent across the country to “keep the peace,” but really just to make us fear the new regime.
Back in the capital, Devore was rewriting the world. New laws. A new religion. A new god.
The Eye.
I’d seen it stamped on every one of those pamphlets, slipped under doors and posted on fences, impossible to avoid. The symbol was everywhere. On flyers, on banners, painted across shop windows and embossed on the armor of the soldiers who now walked our streets like they owned them.
The capital had always felt so far away. It had always felt too far to matter, too far to reach us. But it wasn’t. What happened in Saniré affected all of us. It swept across Vestance like a tidal wave, dragging everything under, village by village. There was no escaping it.
I hadn’t planned on going to the party that night, but Will had practically begged me.
Said he needed me, that he was tired of being the third wheel to Aran and Selma’s never-ending makeout sessions.
Aran and Selma, that was a pairing I never saw coming.
And after everything Will had done for me over the years, I couldn’t say no.
I felt I owed it to him. He’d always been there when I needed him most. And somehow, through all of it, he’d become my closest friend.
And I guess part of me still wanted to believe we still had something to celebrate.
Even if the world was burning.
So I went.
Einar walked me there, he was always by my side, whether I liked it or not. He had promised that he would never leave me again when I disappeared, and done his very best to keep that promise.
We reached the clearing at the top, and I stopped for a second, just taking it all in. The bonfire was already roaring, tall flames licking the sky. Logs and old crates had been dragged into a rough circle around the fire, and the air smelled of cider, and smoke. But no one was dancing.
My classmates sat around the fire like soldiers in a camp. Quiet. Still. Even Aran wasn’t running his mouth for once, he crouched beside a crate, poking a stick into the flames. Will saw me first.
“Kera,” he said as he walked over to me. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
I didn’t answer, just stepped into his open arms and let him hold me. We pulled apart too soon.
”And your brother’s here too.” he added, glancing over my shoulder. Einar gave a short nod in greeting, I wasn’t the only one bothered by having a permanent shadow.
“Some party,” I said, forcing a half-smile.
He huffed a dry laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Yeah. No one’s really in the mood.”
Aran was already striding over. His voice was low, sharp.
“You haven’t heard?”
I blinked. “Heard what?”
“The Vultures have started enforcing the new laws. They’ve been dragging people out of their homes, anyone suspected of treason.”
”Treason?” I gasped.
”Anyone refusing to accept the new regime.” Will added.
It sounded like something they would do. No warning, no trials. Just steel and blood.
The Eye sees all.
That’s what those pamphlets had said. And mercy, they promised, would only come to the faithful.
“What laws are they enforcing?” I asked. ”I remember reading something about the Eye in that pamphlet? That’s their god, right?”
“Yeah. Their god, and their excuse for doing whatever they want,” Aran retorted. “The Eye isn’t just a symbol. It’s a threat. It’s a warning. ”
“Yeah, it’s always watching.”
Nora.
Her face was flushed from the bonfire, a streak of ash across her cheek like war paint.
I hadn’t realized our conversation had drawn them in, but they were all looking at us now.
Idalie shifted closer to the fire, hands curled tight in her lap.
She’d sat beside me in class all year. Always soft-spoken, always polite. Now her lips trembled as she spoke.
Idalie’s voice trembled. “Didn’t it say something about blessings? … for cleansing?”
“What even is that?” Nora asked. “A blessing? From who?”
“Yeah... and they’re supposed to tell us what to do. What we’re allowed to say. Even what to wear?” Idalie added, almost too quiet to hear. Her braid was coming undone. She kept twisting the end of it around her finger like it was a lifeline.
Selma tossed her fiery hair over her shoulder and snorted. “Guess those freaks would throw a fit about this, then.” She slapped her bare thigh and leaned back dramatically on the crate behind her. “It has to be modest,” she added, rolling her eyes. “Ugh.”
“And no drinking,” Eryx said, pulling at his blond hair. “No sex, no fun—and if you're not straight, you’re basically an enemy of the Eye.”
“No more cocks for you then, huh?” Aran grinned.
Eryx didn’t laugh.
His mouth twisted like he wanted to say something back, but didn’t. He looked off to the side instead, jaw working. Maybe there was some truth to the joke, and maybe it stung.
“It’s like they want us to die of boredom,” Nora muttered.
“Maybe that’s the plan,” Will said. Nora let out a laugh, but it cracked halfway through and sounded too much like a sob.
“They raided Miro’s uncle’s village,” Idalie whispered. “His cousin was shot.”
Miro didn’t look up. He was crouched by the fire, arms wrapped around his knees, his face hidden in the shadow, staring at the flames like he could disappear into them.
”He was shot?” I asked. ”What do you mean raided?”
”One of the Eredians was trying to take his sister, and he tried stop—”
”They’re monsters, Kera. If you haven’t noticed.” Aran interruped, as Idalie tried to swallow her tears.
”They’re even trying to recruit men now. They asked Aran to join, could you imagine?” Selma croaked.
”Yeah, those fuckers really thought I’d—what—throw myself at the opportunity to oppress my own people? I told them to fuck right off.”
“They give me the creeps. The way they just stare at you, like you’re a bug they’d like to crush.” Idalie added. ”And they’re instigating violence? Some peace keepers.”
“They’re not peacekeepers,” I muttered. “They’re Vultures.”
“I heard that Devore made a deal with the Eredian army,” Eryx added. “Promised them riches, land and blood.”
“Our land,” Aran muttered. “But they’re not even wearing our colors. They’re cowards. Just like their king.”
“It’s so fucked how they just killed the royals.” Nora said. ”They’ve no honor.”
I turned to her. “Wait… what? I thought only the king was assassinated.”
Aran’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “You haven’t heard the rest?”
I shook my head.
“The queen was butchered in front of her children.” he said. ”Then they made the crown prince run, as they hunted him through the gardens like a dog. And then, they scorched the castle and left all their bodies hanging at the gates as a warning.”
“You know what I think?” Selma declared. “If those bastards are coming for us, I’m not wasting my last night of freedom.”
She grabbed a bottle from the ground and chugged.
“I heard that the resistance is growing,” Will murmured. “There’s a man called the Kraken, they say he took out a whole unit of Vultures. Alone.”
Selma made a sound low in her throat. “Now that’s a man.”
Aran stiffened.
“But you’re my man,” she purred, She kissed him, then passed the bottle to him. Aran tipped his head back and drank like it was water. “Fuck it,” he rasped. “I’m not dying sober.”
He passed it to Idalie, and she passed it on to me. It smelled sour and old, like sweaty socks, but I still took a small sip, then passed it on.
“You don’t think he’s real? The Kraken?” Nora asked. “He’s probably just made up.”
“So?” Will said. “We need something to believe in.”
“Believe in this,” Aran growled. “If those bastards come here, I’ll fuck them up. Fuck them up so bad they crawl back to whatever pit they came from.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Nora muttered, raising the bottle.
“Yeah, fuck it,” Eryx added. “Might as well enjoy what’s left.”
He grabbed the fiddle he always dragged around, and scratched out a tune, rough, like he barely remembered it.
One week.
That’s all it had taken. One week to go from futures and plans, to fear, and whispers of rebellion.
Will nudged me with his shoulder. “You good?”
I wondered if he could hear how loud my heart had gotten.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just thinking.”
He smiled. “Dangerous habit.”