Finn Korvell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Finn Korvell had lived nine hundred years, and he still could not tie his own shoes. His hands were too small. They were a child's hands, and they would stay that way until he found the name that trapped him in this body. He sat at the center of the old crossroads, where four broken roads met under a cold moon. Runes covered the worn stones. He traced them with one finger and waited for the memory to come. It never came. Somewhere, long ago, someone had spoken his true name for the first time. That first speaking had bound him. If he could find the place, he could pull the thread back to the name. But the place was gone from his mind. He remembered kingdoms rising and falling. He could not remember this one thing. "You're doing it wrong," said a voice behind him. He turned. A young woman stood at the edge of the ruins, arms crossed. She wore a faded denim jacket and dirt on her knees. She had been digging in the moss between the stones. She did not seem afraid of him, which was rare. Most people ran from a child with silver hair and tired eyes. "This is Kyla," Finn said to himself, remembering. She kept a small farm past the trees. She brought him bread sometimes and asked no questions. She was the only one who treated him like a person and not a curse. "You keep touching the same stones," Kyla said. She knelt beside him. "But you never look under them." She pried a flat stone loose from the earth. Beneath it, cut into the ground, sat a small carved figure. It was green and orange, shaped like a face, handmade and old. Finn had walked over it a thousand times. He lifted it. His hands began to shake. The moment he touched it, the runes around them glowed faint blue. A sound rose from the stones, thin and far away, like many small voices speaking at once. Pale pink shapes flickered at the edges of the light. They had large dark eyes and long thin limbs. They were not from any kingdom he knew. They had stood at this crossroads before him, before humans, before names. "They spoke it here," Finn whispered. "My name. They spoke it first." The glow died. The figures faded. Silence returned. But now Finn knew. His name had not been spoken by any king or witch. It had been spoken by these creatures, in a language no living person remembered. He had his place at last. He had his thread. And the thread led somewhere he did not want to go. He looked up at Kyla. "They live under the castle," he said. "Ironkeep. And the man who rules it kills anything that is not human."