Gorro Atome's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Gorro sat on the ancient mossy boulder and let the forest breathe around him. Rabbits darted through the brush. A fox watched from the ferns. Birds cut across the gray sky. He was twenty-four now, a mercenary in blue armor, and he had spent fifteen years hunting one thing. His parents' faces drifted up in pieces. A smile. A hand. Nothing whole. A dragon's roar rolled through the trees. The Dragon King. Gorro's fingers tightened around the small blue gem in his palm. It was the only thing he had carried out of that night. Its dark center stared back at him like an eye that remembered what he could not. He slid off the boulder and walked deeper into the forest. The path narrowed. Branches scraped his armor. He kept the gem clenched tight, trying to force the missing pieces of that night to surface. They would not come. Three royal guards stepped out from the trees ahead. Their spears lifted. "Halt," the lead one ordered. Gorro stopped. He looked at each of them in turn. Three weapons. One narrow path. His careful plan had just met something it had not accounted for.