Davan Kael's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Davan Kael had sworn an oath to rebuild a dead kingdom, but he had nothing left to raise above it. He knelt on the barracks floor and unrolled the old banner. The crest at its center was scratched out, gouged down to bare threads. He had done that himself, the night the kingdom fell. Now he needed a flag men could follow, and his hands held only ruined cloth. He touched the matching scar on his breastplate, where the same crest had once shone. Both wounds were his work. He would not fly a dead king's mark again. But an empty banner meant no oath at all, and no oath meant no kingdom. Something thumped against the ladder. A small creature climbed into the loft, sleek as a cat but scaled along its back, small wings folded tight. It padded across the boards and sat on the torn banner. In its mouth it carried a black feather. Davan had fed the thing scraps for a week. He never named it. He reached for the feather. The creature dropped it into his palm. A raven's feather. It pulled a memory loose. At the last battle he had watched a raven fall from the sky, two arrows through its chest, wings still spread wide as it dropped. The bird had fought the fall to the ground. It had not folded. It had not surrendered. Davan sat very still. That was the oath. Not a crown. Not a bloodline. The refusal to fold. He rose and found the sewing kit the quartermaster kept in the loft. He cut a square from a dead man's dark cloak. He worked the needle until his thick fingers ached. He was no seamsman. The stitches ran crooked. He did not stop. He sewed a raven mid-fall, wings thrown wide against the drop. He drove two red arrows through its breast. He gave it white eyes that stared forward. It was not surrender. It was a thing that fought while it died. Dawn came before he finished. He tied the new banner to a spear shaft and carried it down the ladder. Outside, near the gate, stood the war monument he knelt to each day, and beside it a willow heavy with pink blossoms that never fell, even in cold. He drove the spear into the ground below the monument. The dark cloth caught the wind and opened. The raven showed itself, crooked stitches and all. Davan dropped to one knee before it. For the first time in a year, he knelt to something living, not something lost. Boots crossed the yard behind him. A soldier had seen the banner. Then another. Word would move fast now. Men would come to the gate to see what mark Davan Kael had raised, and they would ask him to lead them under it. He had wanted a flag to kneel to. He had not counted the cost of others kneeling beside him.