Breakfast was in danger of becoming an argument.
Not a serious one.
Serious arguments in Deckard’s house usually involved broken windows, missing tools, or the time Cael had somehow managed to chew through a gate latch and Deckard blamed the weather.
This argument involved whether Deckard should spend the morning helping Garron repair the eastern fence or go into the market to see whether any outside merchants had brought stories worth hearing.
Deckard considered this an obvious choice.
Garron did not.
“The fence will not repair itself,” Garron said, tearing a piece of bread in half with the solemn weight of a man discussing matters of state.
Deckard leaned back in his chair.
“Neither will my education.”
Elena paused with a bowl in her hands.
Garron slowly looked up.
“Your education.”
“Yes.”
“By wandering through the market and pestering traders.”
“Listening to worldly accounts from experienced travelers.”
“That is a very polished way to describe bothering people.”
Deckard pointed toward him.
“See?
Education.”
Elena placed the bowl on the table and gave Deckard the kind of smile that usually meant she had already won a conversation he had not realized was happening.
“If your worldly education takes you near the baker, bring back flour.”
Deckard blinked.
“That sounds like permission.”
“It sounds like an errand,” Garron said.
“Errands can contain education.”
“Fences contain responsibility.”
“Then I am surrounded by learning opportunities.”
Garron stared at him for a long moment.
Then he looked at Elena.
“Was I like this?”
“Worse,” she said immediately.
Deckard grinned.
Garron looked wounded.
“You did not even think about it.”
“I have had many years to think about it.”
The morning outside was calm enough to make the whole exchange feel ordinary.
Light entered through the kitchen window in warm gold strips.
Somewhere beyond the house, Luminaris had already begun its daily rhythm: cart wheels over Angelstone roads, distant voices near the market, a hammer striking metal from the smithy, birds arguing in the roof beams as if they owned the place.
It was the sort of morning Deckard had known his entire life.
Safe.
Familiar.
Protected.
Then the horn sounded.
One long note rolled over Luminaris.
Low.
Rough.
Wrong.
It did not sound like the festival horns.
Those were bright, almost cheerful, blown by boys who competed to see who could make them crack first.
It did not sound like the caravan horn either, which carried a rolling pattern from the valley road whenever traders arrived.
This note was older.
Deeper.
It seemed to scrape across the stones of the village rather than pass over them.
Deckard looked toward the window.
“What was that?”
Garron did not answer.
For one breath, he only frowned.
Elena stood perfectly still beside the table, one hand still resting near the bowl she had just set down.
Her expression had not changed yet, but something had gone distant in her eyes, as though the sound had reached a memory before it reached understanding.
The horn sounded again.
This time, Garron’s face changed.
The warmth vanished.
The joking father seated at the breakfast table disappeared so completely that Deckard almost stood from surprise alone.
“Garron,” Elena whispered.
He was already moving.
The chair scraped back hard enough to strike the wall.
Garron crossed the room in three long steps, pulled the sword from its hooks above the side shelf, and was at the door before Deckard’s thoughts had caught up.
“Stay inside.”
The words were not loud.
They did not need to be.
Then Garron was gone.
Deckard stood.
Elena turned sharply.
“Deckard—”
He was already following.
“Wait!”
Her voice cracked across the room behind him.
“Deckard!
No!”
He reached the yard in time to see Garron running toward the sentry tower near the northern lane.
For a man who spent most mornings pretending his knees complained louder than they did, Garron moved with alarming speed.
Deckard ran after him.
Behind them, Elena reached the doorway.
The horn sounded a third time.
This time, she remembered fully.
“Deckard!” she shouted.
“That horn!
That horn means an Obscura is attacking!
Deckard!”
The last word followed him down the lane.
He heard it.
He did not stop.
The streets of Luminaris had begun to change.
Doors opened.
People stepped out, confused at first, then frightened as older villagers began shouting for everyone to get inside.
A woman pulled two children from the road.
A baker slammed wooden shutters over his front window.
One of the Angelstone markers along the lane glowed faintly, its pale veins shining beneath the morning dust.
Deckard had seen the markers every day of his life.
He had never seen people look at them with fear.
Garron reached the sentry tower and took the steps two at a time.
Deckard followed three steps behind.
He made it halfway up before Garron turned.
For the first time that morning, his father actually saw him.
“What are you doing here?”
Deckard stopped with one hand on the railing.
“I can help.”
“You can go home.”
“I heard the horn too.”
“Then you heard your mother shouting after you.”
“That part was unclear.”
Garron’s eyes narrowed.
Deckard realized too late that this was not one of their breakfast arguments.
A sentry leaned over the rail above them, pale-faced and gripping a short spear.
“Garron!
Outer ward line near the north pasture.
Two confirmed, maybe more beyond the markers.
Sera and Old Bran are holding the road.”
Garron’s head snapped upward.
“Any breach inside?”
“Not confirmed.”
A scream rose from somewhere far below.
Not from the north pasture.
From the market.
Everyone heard it.
Garron’s jaw tightened.
Another sentry shouted from the tower’s far side.
“Smoke near the merchant square!
Something got through!”
Deckard looked toward the market roofs.
Garron seized his shoulder.
“Listen to me.”
Deckard looked back.
“Go home.
Lock the door.
Stay with your mother.”
“But the market—”
“You do not have a weapon.”
“I can find one.”
“Deckard.”
The way Garron said his name stopped him more completely than a shout would have.
“You are sixteen, stubborn, and currently unarmed.
That is not a battle plan.”
The sentry above called again.
“Garron!”
For one terrible moment, Garron looked torn.
North pasture.
Market.
His son.
Then another horn note rolled over the village, shorter this time, urgent and uneven.
Garron’s hand tightened once on Deckard’s shoulder.
“Home.
Now.”
Then he released him and ran down the tower steps toward the north road.
Deckard stood there, heart hammering.
He should have gone home.
He knew that.
He even turned toward the lane that would take him there.
Then the scream from the market came again.
Closer.
More voices joined it.
Deckard looked toward home.
Then toward the market.
Then he ran toward the screaming.
The market square had become chaos.
Only an hour earlier, it would have been full of ordinary noise: traders arguing over prices, villagers inspecting goods, children weaving between carts, merchants calling out the usefulness of objects nobody had needed until that exact moment.
Now crates lay broken across the road.
A bolt of blue cloth dragged through dirt.
A wagon had overturned near the fountain, spilling copper pots and sacks of dried beans across the stones.
Villagers fled into side streets while outside merchants scrambled beneath their carts, behind stalls, anywhere that looked briefly more promising than open air.
At the center of it all moved the Obscura.
It was smaller than Deckard expected.
That made it worse somehow.
It had the rough shape of a hound, or something that might once have been one.
Four limbs.
A narrow body.
A head that bent too low.
But its edges did not hold.
Black mist spilled constantly from its back and shoulders, curling around it like smoke trapped in water.
Where eyes should have been, two dim violet lights burned through the haze.
A merchant tripped near an overturned crate.
The Obscura turned toward him.
Deckard did not think.
He saw the nearest thing with a handle, snatched it from beside a produce stall, and charged.
It was a pitchfork.
Not a good one.
The wooden shaft was old, the metal tines slightly bent, and the whole thing felt too light in his hands.
Garron would have had something to say about that.
Several things, probably.
Most of them unpleasant and accurate.
Deckard drove it forward anyway.
The tines struck the Obscura’s side.
For half a second, he thought he had done it.
The creature shrieked.
Not like an animal.
Like wind passing through a corpse’s teeth.
The pitchfork sank into the black haze and met something inside that felt wrong beneath his hands, not flesh, not bone, but resistance.
The Obscura twisted away from the merchant and toward Deckard.
That was when Deckard realized the flaw in his plan.
He had made it notice him.
The merchant crawled backward, eyes wide.
Deckard tightened his grip on the pitchfork.
“Go!”
The merchant went.
The Obscura lunged.
Deckard yanked the pitchfork sideways, trying to keep the creature away with the reach of the tool.
The tines caught in the mist.
The shaft shuddered.
Something inside the Obscura pulled against it.
Then the wood cracked.
Deckard stared for the smallest, stupidest instant.
“Oh.”
The shaft broke in half.
The Obscura came through.
Deckard threw himself backward before thought could catch up with his feet.
The broken pitchfork shaft came up between them, more reflex than defense, and the creature’s claw tore across it with a sound like wet wood splitting.
The force drove him off balance.
Something caught at his neck.
For one brief instant, he felt the cord of his pendant pull tight beneath his shirt.
Then the Obscura’s claw grazed across the chain, and the old fastening gave way.
The pendant tore free.
Deckard barely noticed.
He hit the ground hard, one shoulder striking the packed dirt as the broken pitchfork spun from his hands.
A small flash of silver skipped across the market stones and landed near the overturned crate where the merchant had crawled.
The merchant glanced at it only because it nearly struck his boot.
A trinket.
A boy’s charm, perhaps.
Nothing worth thinking about while death stood three paces away.
The Obscura bent low over Deckard, black haze spilling from its jaws as if the thing were breathing smoke instead of air.
Deckard tried to push himself up, but his hand slipped against scattered grain.
The creature sprang.
Crimson flashed across the market.
Estellise landed between them.
She did not shout.
She did not hesitate.
One dagger appeared in her right hand, then another in her left, drawn from somewhere Deckard had never thought to look.
Her first blade cut through the Obscura’s foreleg.
Her second passed beneath its jaw where the mist gathered thickest.
The creature twisted toward her.
Estellise was already inside its reach.
She moved with a precision so calm it felt out of place in the panic of the square.
One step carried her past the claws.
One turn brought both daggers across the center of its chest.
The blades flashed silver-white through black haze.
The Obscura came apart.
Its body unraveled into smoke, scattering across the stones in thin ribbons before the morning air swallowed it.
A small dark mana core struck the ground where the creature had stood, bounced once, then settled with a dull click.
For several heartbeats, no one moved.
Then the market remembered how to breathe.
Someone sobbed.
Someone else cursed.
A child began crying from behind a barrel.
Deckard stared at the spot where the Obscura had vanished.
Estellise turned toward him.
“Are you hurt?”
He blinked up at her.
Then shook his head.
“No.
I mean, I don’t think so.”
She looked him over anyway.
That was somehow worse than the Obscura.
Deckard pushed himself upright and dusted off his sleeves with hands that were only shaking slightly.
“That was under control.”
Estellise stared at him.
“It was not.”
“It was briefly under control.”
“It was never under control.”
“You arrived after the controlled part.”
“There was no controlled part.”
Deckard opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then looked at the broken pitchfork in his hand.
“That may be fair.”
Before Estellise could respond, the merchant scrambled forward from beside the overturned crate.
“Boy!
Here.”
He held out the silver pendant on its broken chain.
Deckard looked down.
“My pendant.”
Only then did he realize the familiar weight was gone from his neck.
The merchant placed it into his hand, then paused.
For the first time, he actually looked at what he was holding.
The silver face had turned upward in his palm.
A winged star.
Old lines.
An old crest.
The merchant’s fingers tightened around it before he could stop himself.
No.
That was impossible.
Deckard reached for it.
The merchant forced his hand to relax and gave the pendant back before anyone noticed the delay.
“There,” he said, his voice only slightly thinner than before.
“Wouldn’t want to lose something important.”
Deckard gave an awkward smile and slipped the broken chain into his pocket.
“Yeah.
Thanks.”
The merchant nodded.
His name was Jast, though no one in Luminaris had asked and he preferred it that way.
Road merchants survived by being memorable only when profit required it.
Most days, Jast worked hard to be helpful, forgettable, and several steps away from whatever trouble had just become expensive.
Today, trouble had found him anyway.
His eyes returned once to Deckard’s chest, where the pendant no longer hung.
A winged star.
He knew old crests.
Not all of them.
No merchant did.
But enough.
Enough to flatter minor nobles.
Enough to avoid insulting ruined houses whose names still carried knives beneath the table.
Enough to recognize the symbol the Eloran Royal Family had spent sixteen years burying beneath ash, law, and silence.
House Lightfall.
Dead.
Purged.
Erased.
Everyone knew that.
A voice boomed from the far street before the thought could finish forming.
“Whose servant is this?”
The market turned.
Garron entered the square with two sentries behind him.
Between them stumbled a thin man in a torn brown coat, wrists bound, face bloodless with terror.
One sentry carried a canvas sack that sagged heavily in his grip.
Pale white stone showed through a gap in the fabric.
Angelstone.
The glow beneath the market road seemed to sharpen at the sight of it.
Garron’s expression was not one Deckard knew well.
He had seen his father annoyed.
Stern.
Tired.
Even angry.
This was colder.
“Whose servant?” Garron shouted again.
No one answered at first.
The bound man looked desperately toward the cluster of outside merchants gathered near their wagons.
A heavyset merchant with a trimmed beard and too many rings took one reluctant step forward.
“He is mine,” the man said.
“But there must be some mistake.”
Garron turned on him.
“This servant was found at the outer ward line prying Angelstone markers from their posts and loading them into your wagon.”
The merchant’s face drained of color.
A murmur spread through the square.
Deckard looked at the sack.
Then at the dead mana core on the stones.
Then at the direction the Obscura had come from.
Even he understood.
The heavyset merchant lifted both hands.
“I told him to obtain samples!
Samples!
I intended to purchase loose stone, broken fragments, anything your village legally permitted.
I never ordered him to touch ward markers.”
The bound servant made a small sound.
Garron’s eyes did not leave the merchant.
“Your wagon was waiting beyond the marker line.”
“My driver may have—”
“Your driver ran.”
The merchant stopped.
One of the sentries spat into the dirt.
“We caught this one because he tripped over a marker he had already pried loose.”
The servant began shaking his head.
“Please.
I was told they were just stones.
Just stones.
He said the village had more than enough.
He said nobody would miss a few.”
“I said no such thing!” the merchant snapped.
The servant looked at him, betrayed and terrified.
“You said nobles outside the crater would pay a fortune for them!”
The murmur became louder.
Deckard felt Estellise shift beside him.
Not much.
Enough.
Garron took one step toward the merchant.
Every ring on the man’s hands suddenly looked very small.
“Your greed opened a gap in a ward line that has held longer than you have been alive.”
“I did not know that would happen.”
“That is not a defense.”
From the street behind him, Elena pushed through the gathering crowd.
Her face was pale.
Her eyes found Deckard immediately.
Then the broken pitchfork.
Then Estellise’s drawn daggers.
Then the small dark mana core on the ground.
“Deckard.”
He winced.
That one word contained more danger than the Obscura had.
“I was helping.”
Elena crossed the distance and seized his face between both hands, turning it left and right.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
“No.”
Estellise said, “He fell.”
Deckard looked at her.
“Why would you report that?”
Elena’s hands tightened.
“You followed your father after I told you that horn meant Obscura.”
“You told me after I had already left.”
“Deckard.”
He stopped talking.
Garron heard Elena’s voice and turned.
For one heartbeat, father and son looked at each other across the market.
Garron’s eyes dropped to the broken pitchfork.
Then to the mana core.
Then to Estellise.
A dozen emotions crossed his face too quickly for Deckard to name.
Relief came first.
Anger followed.
Fear lingered longest.
But Garron did not come to him yet.
The bound servant tried to kneel.
The sentries held him upright.
The heavyset merchant was still talking, his voice rising too fast.
“I will pay for damages.
I will compensate the village.
Whatever fine your chief requires—”
“Fine?” Garron said.
The word fell hard.
“This was not a broken fence.
This was not a cart accident.
You tampered with the ward line and an Obscura reached the market.”
“I did not touch the stones myself.”
“No.
You paid someone poorer than you to risk his hands first.”
That silenced him.
More sentries arrived at the edge of the square.
One lifted the small mana core with tongs and dropped it into a sealed metal case.
Another began moving villagers away from the broken stalls.
Older residents whispered to one another, their eyes returning again and again to the Angelstone sack.
The horn had not sounded in twenty years.
Now everyone knew why.
Garron pointed toward the servant.
“Take him to the holding room.”
The servant sagged.
Then Garron pointed to the heavyset merchant.
“And him.”
The merchant jerked back.
“You cannot be serious.”
Garron smiled without warmth.
“You are welcome to explain that to Chief Halven.”
That ended the argument more effectively than shouting.
The sentries moved.
The market slowly split around them, half frightened, half furious, all of it loud enough to cover the smaller silences beneath.
No one watched Jast step back.
No one saw him lower his eyes again to the pocket where Deckard had placed the broken chain.
A winged star.
Golden hair.
Blue eyes.
Sixteen, perhaps.
He had saved Jast’s life with more courage than sense, which was exactly the sort of detail that made a rumor sound believable when sold to the right ears.
Coincidence, surely.
That was the safe thought.
A boy could wear an old pendant without knowing what it meant.
A family could keep a trinket because it was pretty.
A crest could be copied badly by craftsmen who did not understand the blood attached to its lines.
But Jast had looked closely.
It had not been a bad copy.
And House Lightfall had not been a family people copied by accident.
He moved behind his wagon, hands steady despite the cold crawling beneath his collar.
Most requests died when the dead stayed dead.
This one had not.
That man still had an active information request for anything—anything at all—related to the Lightfall family.