Harmstone’s southern boundary was marked by a dying oak tree.
Old Cole remembered it well.
It stood at the crossroads south of town, its crown split in half by lightning years ago.
Every spring, the surviving branches still managed to produce a handful of fresh shoots.
Whenever a child was born, families would carry the newborn beneath the old oak to pray for blessings.
It had never been an official religious ceremony.
It was simply a tradition started by the old priest while he was still alive.
Now the priest was gone.
The tree remained.
But there were fewer and fewer children left in Harmstone.
Cole stood beneath the oak, staring into the distance at a field where bundles of wheat straw were burning.
The field lay in the town’s southwest corner beside a dried irrigation canal.
The canal had run dry the previous autumn.
An upstream village had diverted the water to irrigate military farmland.
The cracked mud at the canal bottom had split into countless jagged plates, with withered reeds growing from the gaps.
Three people stood in the field.
One elderly man.
Two young women.
The old man slowly carried a bundle of straw toward a pile of ash in the centre of the field.
Every time he bent down, he had to brace himself against his knees before he could straighten again.
One side of his face had collapsed inward where an eye used to be.
The eyelid had long since scarred shut.
One woman tied bundles of straw with grass rope near the edge of the field.
The other crouched beside the ash pile, watching the glowing embers.
Cole remained beneath the oak for a long time.
Eventually, the woman beside the ashes looked up.
She noticed him.
She slowly stood, placed the bundle of straw in her hands onto the ground, dusted the ash from her skirt, and cautiously walked several steps toward the oak.
She wasn’t frightened.
Only wary.
In times like these, anyone would become cautious when a stranger wearing leather appeared outside town.
Then recognition spread across her face.
“…Old Cole?”
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Cole stepped away from the oak and walked into the field.
The cut stalks crunched beneath his boots.
He stopped beside the ash pile just as the one-eyed old man painfully straightened his back.
“You’re alive.”
“Barely.”
Cole looked down at the half-burned straw.
Several thick stalks remained beneath the ashes.
Tiny embers slowly crawled through their hollow centres, blinking softly in the wind.
The old blacksmith led him home.
Not to his old home.
That house had stood on the western side of town beside the smithy.
It had once had a small courtyard with a jujube tree planted by the blacksmith’s father.
For forty years the tree had produced fruit.
Then, during last autumn’s grain requisition, the army tore down the woodshed searching for hidden food.
The collapsing wall shattered one of the tree’s main branches.
This year, it never bloomed.
Now the old blacksmith lived inside an abandoned granary near the threshing grounds.
It stood close to the wheat fields.
Half its roof had collapsed.
He had patched it together using scraps of rusted iron sheets and bundles of thatch.
He sat down outside the granary, pulled a dented iron flask from his belt, drank a mouthful of water, then handed it to Cole.
“What happened to the others?”
“They’re in New Tlalanx.”
Cole accepted the flask but didn’t drink.
Even saying the city’s name still felt strange.
A month ago, after being rescued, New Tlalanx had simply been a city with a serpent emblem carved into its walls, a coiling snake carrying a star in its mouth.
Now he lived there.
He carried stones for the Skink craftsmen.
He ate roasted meat cooked in enormous Lizardmen cauldrons.
At night he slept in stone shelters whose walls were carved with purification runes that glowed with soft blue light after sunset.
“New Tlalanx?”
The blacksmith frowned.
“What kind of place is that?”
“A city inside the rainforest.”
Cole hesitated.
“It doesn’t belong to…
our people.”
“It belongs to…
someone else.”
The blacksmith studied him for a long time.
He had always been a sharp man.
A smith trusted his eyes more than his tongue.
He noticed immediately that the stitching on Cole’s leather coat wasn’t done using any human technique.
The hide itself came from some creature he’d never seen.
The short knife at Cole’s waist was wrapped with woven vine fibre unlike anything made by human hands.
But he asked nothing.
Not because he wasn’t curious.
Because war had taught him an important lesson.
Some questions should never be asked.
Once spoken aloud, everyone involved became responsible for the answer.
He didn’t ask what “someone else’s city” meant.
Instead he simply said,
“So…
the others survived too.”
Cole nodded.
The old blacksmith pressed his lips together.
“More than half the town is gone.”
“Some starved during the winter.”
“Some fled in the spring.”
“Some were taken by the draft.”
“There are fewer than fifty people left.”
“More than half are women and children.”
“A few days ago another group arrived from the north.”
“They escaped from Clermont.”
“The Elves have surrounded Clermont.”
“They haven’t taken it yet.”
“But it won’t hold much longer.”
“Elves…”
Cole tightened his grip on the flask.
“You’ve seen them?”
“No.”
“But the refugees have.”
“They arrived last month.”
“They burned every grain store outside the city before surrounding it.”
“No one could get in.”
“No one could get out.”
“The people who escaped climbed over the walls during a shift change.”
“They abandoned everything.”
“They escaped with nothing except their lives.”
The blacksmith looked back toward the fields.
His daughter and daughter-in-law still worked there.
One bundled straw.
The other turned over the ash pile.
“They’re staying at the abandoned mill outside town.”
“Around thirty people.”
“No food.”
“No medicine.”
“One woman is pregnant.”
“The journey caused complications.”
“She’s been lying inside the mill for three days.”
“I don’t know how much longer she’ll survive.”
Cole set down the flask.
“Take me there.”
The old blacksmith rose.
His knees cracked loudly.
Even in old age his shoulders remained broad.
A blacksmith’s body never truly forgot years spent swinging a hammer.
He glanced at the short knife hanging from Cole’s waist.
Then at the leather armour.
“Your equipment.”
“That city.”
“The one you mentioned.”
“Can it help us?”
Cole fell silent.
He remembered Kroq-Gar.
The three-and-a-half-meter-tall Lizardmen Lord was waiting in the oak grove outside town with a Skink escort.
He couldn’t tell the truth.
Not because he didn’t want to.
Because he couldn’t.
If he told the blacksmith a giant reptilian warlord was waiting just outside Harmstone, panic would spread through the refugees.
They would flee into the rainforest.
And Chaos would find them.
He hadn’t come here to reveal everything.
He had come to guide them toward safety.
He would tell them where to go.
Who to trust.
What not to fear.
But some truths had to remain hidden.
Only then could they safely reach their destination.
So he simply nodded.
“It can.”
The blacksmith asked nothing more.
He turned toward the field and shouted,
“I’m heading out.”
His daughter-in-law stood and brushed straw from her skirt before nodding.
His daughter remained beside the ashes, quietly watching the final thread of smoke rise from the smouldering straw.
The abandoned mill wasn’t far away.
An old wagon road stretched west of town, overgrown with knee-high weeds.
The blacksmith walked ahead.
Slowly.
Steadily.
As they walked, he spoke in a low voice.
“The old priest is dead.”
“He died during the winter.”
“He gave away his own food to the town’s children.”
“The children survived.”
“He didn’t.”
Cole said nothing.
The small silver coin still hung around his neck.
The priest had given it to him years ago.
Back then he’d worn it only because it was harmless enough.
He had never even bothered praying.
Later, when Chaos captured him, everything had been taken away.
Everything except that silver coin.
The creatures of Chaos hadn’t dared touch it.
During those days spent inside the cage, waiting to become a sacrifice and host for Chaos corruption, that tiny silver coin had protected a hunter who had barely set foot inside a church his entire life. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
Now the children had survived.
The priest hadn’t.
After walking for a while, Cole quietly brushed a piece of windblown straw ash from his eye.
“We’re here.”
The abandoned mill stood beside a dried streambed.
It had been built from stone long ago.
Dead vines crawled across its walls.
Half the roof had collapsed.
The remaining half had been patched together with worn cloth and bundles of straw.
Outside, patched blankets lay spread across the ground.
Threadbare clothes hung from tree branches.
Someone had built a crude cooking stove beside the old millstone.
A chipped iron pot rested above the fire.
Inside, a thin porridge simmered.
Calling it porridge was generous.
Only a few wild vegetable leaves floated on the surface.
Every grain of rice had sunk to the bottom.
You could count them with your fingers.
Thirty-five people.
Exactly as the blacksmith had said.
Some leaned against the stone walls.
Some lay quietly on patched blankets.
Others crouched beside the fire, staring into the pot.
A young pregnant woman rested against the mill wall.
Her swollen belly rose beneath a worn blanket.
Her eyes remained closed.
Her breathing was shallow.
An older woman knelt beside her, gently holding her hand.
When the refugees noticed visitors approaching, several men beside the cooking fire immediately stood.
Instinctive caution filled their faces.
Anyone who had survived a month of war learned to distrust strangers.
Then they recognized the old blacksmith.
Cole remained at the entrance to the mill, counting everyone before him.
Thirty-five.
The same number that had once shared his Chaos cage.
Thirty-five prisoners waiting to become sacrifices.
If Kroq-Gar had arrived even a few days later, none of them would still be human.
The only thing separating these refugees from that same fate was a single river and a stretch of grassland.
Chaos still waited inside the rainforest.
These people simply didn’t know it yet.
The old blacksmith quietly pulled Cole aside.
“The refugees say the Elves have completely sealed Clermont’s northern and eastern gates.”
“Forty thousand Elven soldiers.”
“They’re led by a powerful mage.”
“The city’s defenders won’t survive another month.”
“If Clermont falls, the soldiers and civilians will flee south.”
“There’s only one road.”
“Through Harmstone.”
“Across the Whitewater River.”
“Into the rainforest.”
He stared directly into Cole’s eyes.
His single remaining eye held no panic.
“You said your city can help.”
“How?”
Cole looked toward the pregnant woman beneath the worn blanket.
Then at the pot of watery porridge.
Beyond the nearby ridgeline stood a three-and-a-half-meter-tall Lizardmen Lord carrying the sacred spear that had pierced Chaos Spawn.
He also knew that if he revealed that truth now, at least half these refugees would panic and flee into the rainforest, where Chaos would claim them.
“Anyone who comes with me,” he said quietly, “will find people waiting inside the rainforest.”
“There will be food.”
“Shelter.”
“Medicine.”
“But you must listen to me.”
“Don’t wander away.”
“If you lose the route, those waiting for you won’t be able to find you.”
He paused.
Then carefully added,
“The ones coming to meet us aren’t ordinary people.”
“They don’t look like us.”
“But they won’t hurt us.”
“I’ve lived with them for a month.”
“I’ve lived inside their city.”
“I’ve had food.”
“A home.”
“Work.”
“If you trust me…”
“Then come with me.”
The blacksmith studied him for a long time.
Sunlight filtered through the broken roof, reflecting in his lone eye.
Finally, he stood.
He walked to the centre of the mill and raised his voice.
“Pack your things.”
“We leave at dawn.”
The men beside the cooking fire turned toward him.
The thin porridge continued bubbling softly.
The pregnant woman slowly opened her eyes.
She looked at the old blacksmith.
Then quietly closed them again.