The shriek split the sky like glass breaking.
Kaelen dropped the water bucket, ice-cold slurry splashing his boots. Around him, the sheep lifted their heads from the sparse grass, ears pricked toward a sound that made their eyes roll white.
Not a bird. Nothing with honest feathers made that noise—metal dragged across stone, glass ground to powder, the last breath squeezed from something that should have stayed buried.
He craned his neck upward. Gray clouds peeled apart like old skin, revealing patches of dying light. There—a shadow moving against the pale sky. Wings spread wide, but wrong. Torn. Like parchment held too close to flame.
The creature hung motionless above the village, neither rising nor falling. Not flying—*suspended*. As if invisible strings held it aloft while it studied the ground below.
Kaelen's breath caught. The thing's head swiveled downward, and for one endless moment he felt its attention fix on him like a weight pressing against his skull.
Then it was gone, melting back into the gray.
"Kaelen!" Gerun's voice cracked across the field. "What happened? You screamed."
*Did I?* The sound still echoed in his throat—raw, desperate. He touched his neck, feeling heat beneath his fingers.
Gerun reached him, bow already in hand, arrow nocked. His eyes swept the sky, finding nothing but clouds and gathering dusk.
"What'd you see?"
"Wings." The word came out hoarse. "Broken ones. It looked down."
"At what?"
"At me."
Gerun's grip tightened on his bow. He turned slowly, scanning the tree line, the empty fields, the darkening sky. But the shadow was gone, leaving only the memory of torn membrane and the certainty that it would return.
"Inside." Gerun's voice carried the flat authority of older brothers everywhere. "Now."
---
Kaelen found himself drawing before he remembered picking up the charcoal.
He crouched behind the house where the stone steps caught ash from the chimney, his fingers moving without conscious direction. The creature took shape beneath his touch—wings like shredded cloth, body too long and too thin, joints bent at impossible angles.
Details emerged that he shouldn't have been able to see from such distance. Veins running through the wing membrane, pulsing with dark fluid. Scales that reflected no light. A neck that curved like a serpent's, ending in a head that belonged on no earthly creature.
Eyes. Burning coals set deep in a skull too narrow for them. Fixed on him with predatory patience.
"That's no bird."
Kaelen jerked upright. Gerun stood beside him, studying the drawing with the same intensity he'd use to examine tracks in the snow.
"I know." Kaelen's voice came out smaller than he intended.
Gerun knelt beside the image, close enough that his breath fogged in the cold air. He touched the wing with one finger, tracing the torn edges.
"This thing—you saw it clear enough to draw all this?"
"I saw it watching me."
Gerun spat into the snow. For luck, or maybe just to get the taste of fear out of his mouth. When he looked up, his face had gone hard.
"We're not waiting for this thing to knock."
---
By full dark, half the village had gathered at the crumbling shrine.
Elder Marec clutched his rusted iron pendant, the symbol of Melitele worn smooth by decades of desperate prayers. Around him, other villagers huddled close, sharing heat and whispered fears.
"A sky-curse," Marec wheezed, his voice carrying the authority of age and accumulated superstition. "Old blood waking. You mark it—fire follows wing."
Henwick nodded gravely. "My youngest saw it too. Said it had bones for teeth."
The crowd murmured agreement, fear spreading like plague between them. Kaelen pressed closer to his mother, feeling her hand tremble on his shoulder.
Vern stepped forward, firelight carving harsh shadows across his weathered face. When he spoke, his eyes fixed on Kaelen with laser intensity.
"If there's a storm coming, it's because someone lit the smoke."
The words hit like physical blows. Conversations died. Every face turned toward Kaelen, searching for signs of guilt or otherness. He tried to shrink into his threadbare cloak, but there was nowhere to hide.
"Vern." Edira's voice carried warning, but it was thin as winter ice.
"Boy draws things that shouldn't exist." Vern's voice rose, carrying across the gathered crowd. "Hears voices from empty wells. Makes snow steam with his bare hands."
*He knows. He knows everything.*
The crowd shifted restlessly. Someone crossed themselves. Another spat into the snow—not for luck, but to ward off curse.
Beside him, his mother began to hum. Not a lullaby this time, but something older. Sadder. The sound mothers make when they know their children are lost.
---
Silver sparked against whetstone, metal ringing in the cold air.
Gerun worked by candlelight in his small shed, grinding two old coins into crude arrowheads. The silver came from his childhood hoard—pieces he'd saved and hidden like a magpie collecting bright things.
Kaelen watched from the doorway, mesmerized by the methodical scraping. Each stroke sent tiny fragments spiraling to the floor like falling stars.
"You think it'll bleed?" he asked.
Gerun paused, testing the point against his thumb. A drop of red welled up, dark in the flickering light.
"Everything bleeds. If you cut deep enough."
He wrapped the finished arrowheads in oiled leather, then tossed Kaelen a small piece of silver scrap—no bigger than a coin, but sharp-edged.
"Tie it around your wrist. Just in case."
Kaelen turned the metal over in his palm. It was cold, heavier than it looked, and somehow *clean* in a way that made his skin tingle.
"In case what?"
Gerun's eyes met his across the candlelit space. In them, Kaelen saw something that hadn't been there before—not just fear, but readiness. The look of a hunter who'd accepted that the hunt might go badly.
"In case it speaks your name."
---
The dream came like a fever breaking.
Kaelen stood on the rim of the Bonewell, arms spread for balance. Below him, the empty shaft yawned like a throat. Above, the sky had become a mouth—gaping wide, filled with teeth made of bone and starlight.
Wings unfolded around the moon. Vast, tattered things that blotted out the light. The creature from his drawing hung there, magnified beyond reason, watching him with eyes like burning coals.
When it spoke, its voice was the sound of glass breaking inside his skull.
*"Child of coals. You burn beneath your name."*
The words hit him like physical force. He staggered backward, lost his footing—
And fell.
But instead of hitting stone, he fell through layers of heat and shadow, deeper and deeper, until the well became a chimney and the chimney became a throat and the throat became—
Fire.
He woke gasping, sheets twisted around his legs like bonds. Smoke curled from the fabric where his hands had clenched it. Actual smoke, gray and acrid, carrying the scent of burnt dreams.
Kaelen threw off the smoldering blanket and pressed his face to the window. Outside, Veldermere lay wrapped in snow and silence. The well sat empty at the village center, just stone and shadow.
But the feeling of being watched remained. Something circled in the darkness above, patient as winter, hungry as flame.
*I didn't dream that. I remembered it. From something I've never lived.*
He touched the silver scrap tied around his wrist. The metal was warm now, almost hot, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat.
Outside, wings whispered against the wind, and somewhere in the darkness, something that had never been born began to laugh.