Sylvara Shadowbark's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Sylvara Shadowbark crouched inside the green-draped hill that had hidden her for six years. From outside, her shelter looked like a mossy mound, its arched stone mouth wrapped in vines and crowded with flowers. From inside, she watched torches move between the trees. The enforcers were closer than yesterday. She had spent her whole life preparing to take back the throne her bloodline lost. Tonight, the throne-holder's men were walking straight toward the place where she slept. She slid the twin daggers from their rack by the door. Their red stones caught the low light. She had kept them there for this exact moment — small enough to carry, sharp enough to answer trouble, ready to leave with her at a breath's notice. She pulled her dark elf magic around her shoulders like a second cloak. Sound dropped away. Her shape blurred into the doorway's shadow. She stepped past the first torch close enough to smell the pitch, and the man never turned his head. She led them wrong. She broke a branch east. She scuffed a print north. By dawn the enforcers were three valleys away, beating empty brush, and her shelter sat untouched behind its curtain of vines. Sylvara walked back inside and set the daggers down. The refuge was safe. But the sweep meant they were hunting in earnest now — and the old man who carried her mother's letters was somewhere out there, slow and honest, with a target on his back.