Aldric Emberwise's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Aldric Emberwise came through the rift with nothing but his sage-green suit and a plan to save strangers. He wanted to build a haven here, a place where every lost traveler could find a road home. But a builder needs to survive the first night, and this dimension did not want him to. The sky turned green and spat down shards of ice. They struck the ground and hissed. One caught his shoulder and burned cold through the cloth. He ran. His long reddish hair whipped his face. His yellow and teal eyes stung in the wind. The ice fell harder now, each shard the size of a fist. He had no shelter, no map, no name for anything he saw. He knew one fact only: if he stayed in the open, he would die before he built a single wall. Ahead he saw two shapes hunched against the storm. The first was a wide tavern, its windows glowing warm, a bucket swinging from a beam. Its door hung open and men crowded the light inside. The second building stood smaller and stranger. Carved eyes marked its roof, and they seemed to glow. Vines wrapped its stone porch. Two lanterns burned steady against the wind. Aldric chose the smaller one. Something in those carved eyes felt like an invitation. He climbed the steps as ice cracked the railing behind him. A woman blocked the doorway. She sat curled in the threshold, wrapped in stiff robes that smelled of salt. In her arms she clutched a slab of clay. Even now, with ice falling, she guarded it like a child. Her face was cracked brown from a sun that was not this world's sun. "Door's taken," she said. "Find your own." "The storm will kill us both," Aldric said. He smiled to calm her. It was a warm smile, but she flinched at it, as most people did. She held up the clay tablet. Carved lines marked a map of stars. "You see these?" she asked. "That's my sky. Not this one. I'm one step from home. I'm not moving." "Then move inside with me," Aldric said. "I mean to build a place that sends people like you back. But I can't build anything dead." She stared at him. Ice hammered the roof above. A shard split the railing where his hand had been. She looked at the tablet, then at the open door, then back at him. "Mira Pell," she said, and stood. "If your haven is real, I want the first way out." They pushed inside together. The door swung shut against the wind. Warmth wrapped Aldric. Glowing eyes and lantern light filled the room. The storm still raged, but stone held it out. Aldric had shelter now. He also had his first believer, and a promise he did not yet know how to keep.