13th August,
year 1553 of the Milliscient Calendar.
He choked out a wet cough, limping over the frail, mahogny colored oak bridge that creaked at every frantic step. His heart sank at each one of its mortifying squeals, soot tainted eyelids fluttering shut as a gush of torrid, cloudy haze blew past him. The dust managed to claw its way into his horrified, crimson orbs nonetheless.
The wind howled once more, causing the conflagrated flames clawing at a sea of Golden wheat crops to crackle and roar with a ferocity unlike the gentle breeze the little boy was used to.
'Just there...hahh;; Across the bridge.'
His wrinkled and frantic thoughts, which spewed all over the place were smoothened by the unbearable heat, conforming into a single light-headed, trepidatious worry.
'Aemmi...'
The scorching atmosphere felt utterly suffocating. Like being baked inside one of Bavona's signature tandoors and feeling the very air expand and burn your lungs. He forced his crimson eyes open against the dust, glancing at the abysmal sight unfolding behind him with a tinge of delirium.
The howl of the fire seemed to swallow everything—the cacophony of the scene unfolding bellow the indifferent, dazzling night-sky;The shrieks of innocent souls that were being snuffed out like candle wicks before bedtime; The dull thud of bodies hollowed like tree trunks, collapsing against blood soaked streets under the cruelty of an execution squad that had no intention of ceasing.
It was a massacre.
The innards of shops and humble abodes were spilled out, thatched limestone buildings crumbling as entire living quarters were leveled to ruin amidst a wake of corpses. The few buildings that were left standing upright were stained with fresh, splattered arcs of steaming crimson caused by blade kissed stone.
Raeinth's heart hammered against his chest like a war drum, his breath coming out shaky and disoriented. He could feel the oxygen being deprived from the tips of his fingers—he was losing strength rapidly. Never ever could he have imagined that such a cruel reality would manifest in the quaint 'village of serenity'. Yes, he'd heard the hushed whispers of village elders. Secerative mumbles about some 'unusual activity' across the border.
But Father had said it wasn't anything too serious—that if anything serious were to truly happen, he'd ride out with the rest of the village guard and defeat the enemies head on.
And yet, the ones who stood at the border of Bavona village—
weren't his fathers men.
Iron plated ranks poured through the haze of the village, raising banners blackened with soot and faces full of glee twisted under the dancing firelight. Their gleaming swords rose and fell relentlessly, falling utterly deaf upon pleas of the innocent as they dripped with gore that trickled down on sacred Bavonian soil.
In the village center, barely two furrows away from the oak bridge, a woman knelt amidst glowing embers, her face tainted with tears and ash as she held two charred forms up to her chest—infantile in size, their limbs twisted like discarded rags.
"My poor babies.." She sobbed, her voice fracturing as the heavy, iron-clad footsteps approached her.
"I-...I'm so sorry" Her arms tightened around them, pulling them even closer, before a cruel chuckle shattered the melancholy with cruel agency.
A shadow fell, steel glinted, and the soldier's blade whispered through her spine in a swift movement. Her head fell off with a thud against the ground as she folded forward, her breath rattling out in a final, wet sigh as she joined her children in the dirt.
"Damn Milliscients'—Vermin like you lot deserved be cleansed from this earth!" The soldier growled with a clenched, disgusted jaw, shuddering before frustratedly flicking the blood off of his blade, treating it like impurity. Then, as swiftly as he'd appeared, he melted back into the crackling flame.
Raeinth felt hot bile rise up in his suffocating throat at the sight of the woman's, slamming aggressively against his heaving chest as he retched. His house squatted right there, beyond the fields—a stubborn thatch roof house on the hill, with a neatly adorned oak door engraved with the village guard knight emblem. In that moment, more than anything else, Raeinth wished he had legs that worked, lungs that didn't betray. Fumbling at his thigh, his fingers came away slick with his own blood, the gash from a stray arrow throbbing like a second heartbeat in his tired body.
He clawed at his leather belt, his knuckles whitening around the worn slingshot, which was a gift from his father whittled from orchard branch and twine. His legs buckled then, knees kissing charred oak. The world tilted disorientingly , crimson flames rushing up to greet him. A gust howled past, smoldering and merciless, whipping his wavy black hair across eyes too heavy to hold open.
With one last cough, his grip slipped and the slingshot tumbled free, vanishing into the pyre below with a faint plink lost to the crackle. His knuckles unclenched, calloused palm empty now. The bridge, the screams, the sky's bloody weep—they blurred, dissolving into a hush deeper than death.
And in that void, golden light cracked through. Not the fire's lie, but something softer; memory's dawn. Pulling Raeinth back, back to a time before the ashes claimed Bavona. Before the boy became the flame.