A Banner Torn (Book 1 Complete)

Doran:
The cane's rhythmic thump against frozen earth kept time with Marek's voice. "Easy, brother. The path's slick as a widow's smile." Doran gritted his teeth, refusing to glance left where his friend's shadow should've fallen. Five years since Redfork Pass. Five years of this.

Maerwen's cottage chimney smoked ahead, a wrapped knife carefully wrapped in his pouch, Daelin's knife, Kept safe and cleaned fulfilling a promise to his brother that Kaelid would have it. Nine winters old today. Old enough for truth. Old enough for blades.

"He's not us," Marek murmured, breathless as he'd been in those final minutes. "Let the boy keep his forest games."

Doran's bad leg spasmed, ice seeping through the knee that never healed right. He'd stood watch three nights this week, staring at the tree line. Not for scouts (the war was done, the war was always done), but because sleep brought Marek's face, not the bloodied ruin of the pass, but the before: grinning over campfire dice, elbowing Doran about some village girl. The ghost never accused. That was the cruelty of it.

Wool socks bulged in Doran's pocket, a pitiful nameday offering.

"You're getting soft," Marek chuckled. "Used to be half a flask would shut me up." Doran's hand drifted to the empty whiskey pouch. The phantom scent of pine resin and blood filled his nostrils. Redfork's rocks, slick underfoot. Marek's laughter cutting off mid joke. "Go! I'll hold them!" A different soldiers voice echoed in his ear, the last words the man had sad to him.

At the cottage door, Doran hesitated. Marek's voice faded, leaving only the wind's mockery. He adjusted the socks, thick spun, no holes. Let Kaelid think of him as a grudging uncle. Let the boy never know how Doran's hands shook each dawn, preparing for enemies that wouldn't come.

Inside, laughter spilled, Maerwen's, a rare thing coming more as time moved on. His knuckles cracked against wood, three sharp reports that silenced the warmth within.

The door swung wide, and Kaelid stood framed against firelight, nine years of gangly limbs and unearned optimism. Eyes bright with recognition, with trust, with everything Doran had forsaken in blood-soaked ravines.

"Uncle Doran!" The boy launched himself forward, arms encircling Doran's waist.

Doran's hand hovered, uncertain, before settling awkwardly on the child's shoulder. Contact without purpose, still felt alien against his calloused palm. He extracted the socks with his free hand, thrusting them forward like surrendering a weapon.

"Happy nameday."

Kaelid unfolded the offering with reverence wholly disproportionate to its value. "They're perfect! How did you know mine were getting holes?"

Doran hadn't known. Had simply grabbed what wouldn't shatter if he fumbled it. "A soldier's feet are his foundation, they must…" he managed before stumbling over the words wooden, rehearsed. "Warm and dry boy, warm and dry."

Maerwen appeared in the doorway, her knowing eyes seeing through his facade. "Come in for stew, Doran."

His throat constricted. Warmth. Companionship. Things that belonged to another life. To men who hadn't abandoned comrades on blood-slick mountainsides.

"Can't. Need to patrol." The lie came reflexively.

The scar tissue around his knee tightened as if protesting the excuse. Shadows shimmered at the edge of his vision, phantom figures moving among the trees. His fingers trembled, seeking the flask that wasn't there.

From his left, Marek's voice, soft as falling snow: "Stay. One meal won't kill you."

But it might. Walls pressing closer. Air growing too thick. Memory surging like a tide, men screaming as arrows found flesh, Marek's hand on his chest shoving him backward down the ravine, sacrificing everything so Doran might live.

"Another time." He withdrew the wrapped blad from his pouch offering it handle-first to the boy. "This was your father's. Daelin carried it through three campaigns."

Kaelid accepted it with unexpected solemnity. Not a child's grasping eagerness, but something that echoed Daelin's own measured respect for steel.

"Thank you," the boy whispered.

A response lodged in Doran's throat. Something genuine. Something true. His lips parted, but panic surged through his veins, clanging like warning bells. The walls of the cottage seemed to contract. His breath came shallow, quick.

"I should go." He turned abruptly, nearly losing balance on his bad leg.

"Stay for supper at least," Maerwen called after him.

Doran didn't turn, couldn't bear to see disappointment solidify in her eyes. His cane punched divots in the frozen earth as he retreated, pace quickening until his leg screamed protest.

At the tree line, he paused. From his tunic, he withdrew the empty flask, fingers tracing the dents where it had once deflected a blade meant for his throat. The tavern was north. The forest south. One offered oblivion, the other solitude.

"You're running again," Marek observed, his phantom keeping pace despite Doran's frantic stride.

"Shut up."

"The boy needs you."

"He needs someone whole."

The forest waited, dark and forgiving. Marek's shadow lengthened beside him, silent now. Always silent when it mattered. Doran felt the handle if his own knife in its sheath, identical to the one Kaelid now had, and plunged into the trees. Where memories echoed, and a man could hide from everything except himself.

Julid

The fire popped, scattering embers like lost stars. Julid's fingers moved through Rannek's hair, part, twist, tie, a ritual older than her grief. Seven winters since the pyre smoke had stained the eastern sky. Seven winters of braiding her son's hair too tight, as if the tension could bind them both to this fragile present.

"You gave him the carving?" she asked, though she'd watched Rannek sand the hawk's wings raw for weeks.

His reflection nodded in the copper washbasin, already taller than the boy who'd clung to her skirts at five. "Elder said wood holds memories better than stone."

Julid's throat tightened. She remembered her husband's hands shaping a crib from ashwood, his laugh booming as Rannek kicked at the mobile. "Sturdy as oak, this one," he'd said. The crib burned with him.

Maerwen's laughter seeped through the wall, a sound Julid hadn't heard since the levy horns last blew. It loosened something in her chest, brittle as dried reeds. She tucked lavender into the bread basket, its purple blooms trembling. Let the boys think it mere garnish. Let them not see how she'd clipped it from the grave garden at dawn, where seven winters' frost had yet to claim the flowers.

Rannek shifted, impatient as always. "Can I go? Kaelid's waiting by the, "

"Go." She released him, her palms lingering at his shoulders. 10 winters now, his name day this time last year. Nearly a man.

Alone, Julid traced the wall's cracks, following Maerwen's muffled joy. They'd built these cottages side by side after the pyres, thin walls a promise: We will hear each other weep. Now, Julid pressed her forehead to the plaster, breathing in the scent of rosemary and burnt sugar from next door. Let the boys have their secrets. Let them carve hawks and whisper in shadows. She'd guard their innocence like the lavender guarded memory, silent, persistent, rooted deep where the frost couldn't reach.

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Outside, the wind carried the sharp cry of a hawk. Julid didn't look up.

Marta
The K sank into the dough like a brand, flour blooming in the lantern light. Marta wiped her cheek, leaving a streak of white across freckles. Two honeycombs vanished into her apron, stolen from father's prized stash, while his back was turned. "Temperamental oven, my left foot," she thought, smirking as he cursed the hearth. Men always blamed tools for their own impatience.

Forest mud crusted Kaelid's boots when he'd passed earlier, not field clay. Marta pressed her thumb into the loaf's center, imagining the clearing where he and Rannek whispered. She'd followed them once, weeks ago, curiosity outweighing sense. What she'd seen, glistening, shifting, alive, had sent her sprinting home, heart rabbiting. But she'd kept their secret. Not for their sake, but because some mysteries tasted sweeter when left unspoiled.

Father's lecture droned on. Marta tucked a thistle into Hewitt's roll, its spines hidden beneath crust. Let the tannery brute choke on his spite. Balance, her mother had taught her, was the baker's true craft, sweet and bitter, soft and sharp.

Her own ninth winter flashed in memory: her father's hands guiding hers to shape her first loaf, the village elder's dry "congratulations" as if surviving childhood deserved applause. She'd burned the bread black that night, furious at the weight of expectation. Kaelid didn't know yet, how nine winters meant the village stopped holding its breath. How every chore, every glance, now whispered "Stay. We've invested in you."

The honeycomb's gold gleamed in her palm. Marta hesitated, then split it, one piece for Kaelid's forest friend, one pressed into Rannek's gift loaf. Let them have magic a while longer.

"Marta!" he barked. "Stop daydreaming! The cider won't pour itself."

She rolled her eyes, hoisting the jug. Through the bakery window, she watched Kaelid accept a wool cap from Old Nessa, his smile too bright for a boy shouldering two worlds. Marta's chest tightened. She'd protect his secrets like yeast, warm, quiet, essential. But come dawn, she'd salt Hewitt's breakfast porridge. Balance.

Brannic
Brannic's tail twitched as he tested the whetstone's edge against his claw. The boy's knife would need proper care, that blade deserved better than field dirt and childish pride. Across the square, Kaelid hefted a basket of turnips, his new weapon bouncing awkwardly at his hip. Brannic's nostrils flared. He'd seen that same coltish swagger in recruits before their first march.

"Too light," he grumbled to the forge, though the lie tasted bitter. The blade's balance was flawless, a relic from a time when men still knew steel. Brannic pressed an obsidian flake into the whetstone's leather wrap. Let the boy learn patience. Let him feel the stone bite before the steel sang.

Karethin's laughter drifted from the tannery, sharp as her bone needles. His mate would chide him later for fussing. "Let the fledgling test his wings," she'd say, her serpentine scales rippling with amusement. But Brannic's plates still bore the scars of his own ninth winter, the clumsy forge burns, the cracked knuckles, the old smith's barked warnings.

He watched Kaelid pause at the forest's edge, shoulders tensed like a hare scenting wolves. Brannic's claws flexed. The eastern woods held no real danger (he'd patrolled them himself at first frost), but instinct coiled in his gut. Youthful recklessness needed boundaries. Steel needed tempering.

The whetstone joined the other gifts by dusk. Brannic lingered in the shadows as Kaelid unwrapped it, the boy's fingers tracing the obsidian's volcanic glass. Good. Let him wonder why a dragonkin blacksmith cared about sharpening trivial human tools.

Tomorrow, Brannic will start leaving the forge door ajar. Let the boy's curiosity lead him to the anvil's heat. Some lessons couldn't be gifted, only earned.

Karethin

Karethin's claws snipped wolfsbane stems. "Tonight's lesson I will teach them of mild poisons and plants to avoid" she said to her husband green scales glinting in the forge light. Karethin's tongue flicked, tasting the honey sweat on Kaelid's skin as he walked pazt. He would play in the forest still, no reason to make him fear it yet. She'd advance him and Rannek both to the deadlier venoms and plants come spring. If they were still spending so much time in the forest.

"A nameday sheath for Maerwens youngling. Simple. No clan markings." As she worked the hide claw trimming the edges, she watched through the forge doors, she watched Kaelid stride toward the fields, the new knife gleaming at hip. Her practiced hands remembering skills learned in her youth, claw tips punching neat holes for the lacing. Let the elders call it charity. She would line the sheath with rabbit fur anyway, hidden beneath plain leather.

Nine winters were an accomplishment. Kinlings would be molting their egg scales and gaining their first adult colorations around then. The humans she had grown to care for didn't change like her kin would, but they grew just the same. That was a thing to celebrate still.

The Slime (Curious-Teaching)

The cold bit at its edges, draining life into the soil. It squeezed tighter between the oak's roots to stay warm. The small warm one's growing up. Nine years since the boy's first trembles had shaken the forest floor, just weak pulses back then, hardly different from a rabbit's hop. Now his footsteps had their own signature: his heartbeat rhythm, that uneven left boot, and the new metal clinking at his hip.

The air shifted. Two people were coming, Kaelid's quick steps and Rannek's heavier trudge. It stretched out part of itself, tasting the changed air. Sweat. Honey. Excitement.

They bring gifts.

The smaller one (Kaelid) made happy sounds as they entered the clearing. It sent a greeting through underground threads, making moss ripple in waves. Humans always thought this was just wind.

"Whoa, it's... dimmer?" Rannek's words stirred the fallen leaves.

Kaelid's hand, whose calluses it had memorized all summer, unwrapped something shiny. Honeycomb. It rippled with recognition: Bee honey. Sweet stuff. A tendril reached out, connecting with the honeycomb's perfect pattern. The boy's feelings spiked, excitement? Fear?

"Can you taste it?"

Silly question. It didn't just taste the honey, it became the honey's essence, golden patterns singing of clover fields, invisible flower paths, buzzing wings. A memory not its own, but important. Waves of pleasure spread, making it glow despite the energy cost.

The taller one (Rannek) laughed. "Good enough, huh?"

It pulled back, saving its light. Good enough described most human gifts. No need to pretend otherwise.

Kaelid's voice got tight. "Will you be here tomorrow?"

A whisper vibrated from its surface, soft like rustling leaves. "Here always. Different form."

Kaelid kicked at a stone. "I'm nine now, but nothing feels different. Father says I should act more grown up."

"Nine cycles," it hummed. "Important time." Its surface rippled with blue light. "Each day builds on the last. Like rings in tree. All connected."

"But I'm still just me," Kaelid argued.

"Not just," it whispered. "More. Your mass expands." A tendril gestured to Kaelid's longer limbs. "Growth brings challenge. Challenge brings strength."

Rannek chuckled. "You mean his clumsy growth spurt?"

"Body chemistry changes," it continued, ignoring Rannek. "New mixture forming. Adult mixture."

Kaelid's face reddened. "Mother says I smell different."

"Different not bad," its voice vibrated against a nearby leaf. "The difference is... growth. Be proud of different. Like caterpillar to butterfly. Same being, new form."

Such simple thinking. It existed here, in roots, fungal networks, the black oak's flowing sap. Winter sleep meant spreading out, not leaving. How could you explain being a river to creatures who only knew ponds?

I remain. Not quite the whole truth. Let them carry hope through winter.

As they walked away, silence returned. It sank deeper, recording Kaelid's ninth year pattern, stronger energy, stress signs (new duties), and underneath... the faintest hint of something new. A girl's scent clung to his boots. Smart little bee.

The cold deepened. It began breaking down its walls, getting ready for the long drift into soil dreams. Nine years. Maybe the boy would feel different when spring came."

Elder Myra

The ledger's spine cracked like a frost struck branch as Myra opened it. Nine winters. She inked the date beside Kaelid's name, her quill lingering on the smudged entry above, Daelin, b. 23rd Frostmelt. Levy called 9th Blackthorn.The boy's birth had been a threadbare thing, dawn lit and bloody, the midwife's hands trembling as they swaddled him.

Myra had counted each breath those first nights, certain the pale slip of a child would join the ledger's earlier pages: "Faldrich infant boy - two moons." The most recent entry in those cold pages, just last week "Millers infant girl - stillborn"Her heart ached she could still feel the young lifeless body in her hands as she tried to get it to take a breath, or wakeup. He had been so strong the whole pregnancy, until the last few days.

She took a moment of silence for the life not lived.

But despite his weak start Kaelid clung.

She studied him now through the council hall's warped glass, hauling turnips with Rannek. Same stubborn tilt to his chin as Daelin at that age, though the father had been all fire where the son was ember glow. Myra's knuckles whitened around her cane. Nine winters. The village exhaled when children crossed this threshold, shoulders loosening as if to say You might live now. You might stay.

Her fingers brushed the names of those who hadn't, faded ink ghosts haunting the margins. The ledger didn't record causes, but Myra remembered: fever, falls, the cruel whims of a world that culled the young like blighted wheat. She'd sung the dirges herself, clay heavy soil thudding on tiny coffins.

Kaelid paused, wiping sweat with a sleeve. Myra's throat tightened. She'd handed Daelin his first blade here too, watched his eyes kindle with the recklessness that would later lead thirty men to Redfork. The knife now hung at his son's belt, its edge untested.

A gust rattled the shutters. Myra closed the ledger, its weight familiar as a grave marker. Outside, laughter spilled from the square, Marta's honey loaf unveiled, Rannek's boastful crowing. Myra's joints ached as she stood. Let them feast. Let them forget, for this night, how the world sharpened its teeth on the young.

She lit a beeswax candle at the ancestors' shrine, its flame steady in the draft. Nine winters. The village would claim him fully now: fieldwork, militia drills, the slow erosion of forest daydreams. Myra's breath fogged the glass as Kaelid vanished into the crowd, a boy becoming a thread in the tapestry, whether he willed it or not.