Hills of Aventia

Nestled in the misted hills of southeastern Tenebria, Aventia was a land both overlooked and impossible to forget.

Born from famine, forged in rebellion, it was no kingdom—no, not anymore. The old blood had dried up with the blight. What remained was a republic of stubborn farmers, thinkers, and outcasts who’d tasted the Crown’s mercy and found it bitter.

They built their villages into the hillstone, where moss crept through shutters and wind chimes of copper and shell whispered secrets through the night. Every home was a forge. Every heart, a protest.

Their systems were simple, but their minds were not. Aventians mostly worshipped the old gods, if anything at all—gods of harvest, of moonlight, of fire tempered by mercy. Their prayers were seeds planted in salt-soaked soil, and their faith was quiet but unshakable. There were no nobles here, only elected elders. No palaces, only council halls ringed in carved totems and lamp-glow.

Most in Tenebria called them quaint. Others called them dangerous.

They were neither.

They were free.

And at the center of that freedom stood one family—House Vehrun. The last Blightborn blood in Aventia, peaceful and private. Their name once meant innovation: alchemy, healing salves, soundless gears, and quiet machines. Their blood, though thick with Pleromic essence, had never hungered for thrones.

But thrones had a way of hungering for them.

Now, as shadows stretched from Greystone and checkpoints crept ever closer, Aventia stood at a crossroads. The Order whispered promises. The Crown looked away. And in the hills where no war had yet touched, another war—quieter, colder—had already begun.

One that would start not with banners or steel—

But with a stolen journal.

And a girl named Prym.

The air was still, stretched taut across the early morning hills like the breath before a scream.

Prym Vehrun lay flat on her stomach across a sun-warmed boulder, her rifle braced against her shoulder, eyes tracking the glade below through its hand-ground scope. Just ahead, a single Blightwolf grazed at the edge of the brush—twitchy, lean, snarling at a rabbit in the brush.

“You’re favoring the right,” Cyan Hollyreed murmured beside her, his voice all smoke and his beard salt and peppered.

She didn’t respond. Her breath stayed level.

She shifted her weight and ran a hand along the length of the rifle—Soulshot, she’d named it. Forged from forbidden ore and sleepless nights, the weapon was slim but deadly, wrapped in blackened leather and stitched with her own blood. Her father had designed the mastercraft years ago, for her brother Revik.

No one else in Aventia had a rifle, and certainly not like this—silent as a breath, patient as a god, precise as judgment. The stock still held the carved initials of her long-vanished brother, half-buried beneath the etchings she’d added herself: tallies for each ruined checkpoint, each bastard Son who’d fallen without a scream.

It wasn’t just a weapon. It was a secret—one the Crown would burn her for, and the Order would gut her over. But it was hers. Hers to aim. Hers to fire. Hers to keep hidden beneath the cellar floor like a relic from a faith no longer spoken. And tonight, Soulshot hungered.

Then his hand slid under her belt.

Not rough. Not gentle. Just… entitled.

“You must be able to focus,” he whispered, hot against her ear, “Under pressure. And through any distraction.”

She stiffened, but her finger stayed poised on the trigger.

His fingers found her slit, already damp from the ride and the hunt and maybe from this—the ritual of it. He rubbed slow at first, teasing, then firmer, circling until her breath caught, just once.

The wolf’s nostrils flared as its ears stiffened.

“Don’t lose her,” Cyan breathed, his hand moving faster. “Now hit the bitch. Show me you're ready.”

Her body trembled—not from fear, but fury held tight like a bowstring.

She exhaled.

Fired.

The crack of the shot echoed across the glade like a vow broken in church. The beast dropped in a single clean collapse.

Prym shuddered, half in release, half in pride.

Cyan grinned beside her, chest pressed to her back. “Perfect,” he whispered. “Told you. Focus is everything.”

She rolled off the boulder without a word, pulling her belt back into place.

His grin faltered.

“You’re not going to thank me?” he asked.

“I thanked you with the kill,” she said, slinging the rifle over her shoulder. “That’s all you get.”

And she walked away, leaving the dead thing in the glade—and the still-lingering warmth of his hand—as her final punctuation.

They descended the ridge, hooves crunching dry earth and pinefall. Prym rode ahead, her rifle strapped across her back, blood still cooling on her knuckles from field-dressing the doe. Cyan trailed behind, reins slack in one hand, the other adjusting his waistband where her dismissal had left him unsatisfied.

She glanced over her shoulder, eyes glittering beneath sweat-damp hair. “You ride that slow everywhere, old man, or just when your balls are aching?”

Cyan smirked. “You wound me.”

“I aim to.”

He urged his horse forward, drawing up beside her. “You know what your problem is?”

“Only one?”

“You like being in control too much. You’d enjoy things more if you let go.”

She leaned toward him in the saddle, voice low and sweet as venom. “I did let go. You were just too busy whispering in my ear to notice.”

Cyan barked a laugh, the sound echoing off the valley walls. “Gods, you’re wicked.”

“And you like it,” she said, spurring her mare into a light trot, making him chase her through the orchard path like a dog behind a rabbit.

They passed wind-chimes strung from iron hooks—old warnings to any Sons of Dominion who might stumble too close to Aventia’s forgotten corners. Prym raised her fingers to one and let it sing as she passed. The note was hollow, low.

She looked back again. “Still behind me?”

“Always.”

She let that sit. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“Tell me again about the Inquisitor,” she said, voice casual, but her knuckles whitened on the reins. “You were what—nineteen when he vanished?”

Cyan’s face changed—amusement curdling into something tighter.

He drew close again. “Your parents weren’t always so… reasonable. There was a time your mother carried a blade in her boot and your father was the leading alchemist in the weapons industry. But they turned their backs on everything. On everyone. Thats all that really matters in that old tale.”

Prym’s brows lifted. “For what?”

“Grief will do that to some folks, I suppose. I have a feeling once you find his journal, you will have your answers.”

The wind shifted. The orchard stilled.

She said nothing, but Cyan could feel the gears behind her eyes turning—fast, precise.

He smiled again. “You’ve got their fire, Prym.”

“I’ve got their secrets,” she said, more to herself. “They just don’t know it yet.”

And without waiting, she kicked her mare into a full gallop—blood on her boots, the future blazing in her wake.

The kitchen smelled of boiled broth and wet stone. Steam drifted from a dented tin pot on the woodburner, but the warmth never reached the corners of the room. Stone walls, stone floor, a single long table scarred by decades of knife work and scorched edges. It wasn’t a place for comfort—it was a place for duty.

Prym slipped in through the rear door, boots caked in mud, windburn across her cheeks. She’d scrubbed the blood off her hands at the creek. The rifle—her rifle—was already stashed in the cellar crawlspace beneath the south-facing window. One of a few rotating hiding places.

Her father sat at the head of the table, leafing through a journal of schematic drawings and war reports. His gray-streaked hair was neatly tied back, jaw tense. Her mother stood at the hearth stirring porridge with one hand, the other wrapped tight around her own wrist like she might shatter if she let go.

Neither looked up.

“You’re late,” her father said.

Prym dropped into her usual chair and helped herself to a crust of bread. “Sun was nice. Went for a walk.”

Her mother’s eyes flicked toward the window, as if confirming it. “The orchard path?”

“Sure,” Prym said, chewing. “Lots of birds out.”

“You were gone three hours.”

“Had to think.”

Her father turned a page. “You’re always thinking.”

“Someone’s got to.”

The silence that followed was taut as wire. The only sounds were the scrape of a spoon, the snap of firewood, and the soft whine of wind through the cracked windowpanes.

Her mother set a bowl in front of her. “Eat it before it spoils.”

Prym spooned at it without interest. “Any word on Revik?” she asked, casual.

Her mother’s lips thinned. Her father froze mid-scribble.

“No,” he said flatly.

“No one’s seen him in years,” her mother added. “You know that.”

“Just asking,” Prym muttered, stabbing at a lump in her porridge. “Maybe he finally found that higher purpose.”

“Don’t be cruel,” her mother snapped, harsher than she intended.

Prym looked up slowly. “It’s cruel to want to know if he’s alive?”

“It’s cruel to pretend he’d still come back if he was.”

Her father shut the notebook with a heavy thunk. “That’s enough.”

Prym stood. “I agree.”

She grabbed her crust and left without another word, footsteps loud down the hall, the door slamming shut behind her.

Neither parent followed.

The orchard needed pruning.

That’s what her mother said, anyway—right after the door slammed and neither of them had moved for what felt like ten full breaths.

By the time Prym came back in, her mother was already sweeping the ash around the hearth, muttering to herself, hair pinned too tight. She didn’t look up when she said, “Take the shears. Start with the ones near the southern wall. Watch for rot.”

She could’ve said no. She thought about it. The word was already blooming on her tongue like blood.

But she didn’t. She just nodded and took the rust-flecked shears from the hook by the door.

The southern wall faced the valley, where the sun hit hardest in the late hours of morning. Prym moved through rows of twisted trees—old things with gnarled bark and thick scars along the limbs where time or storms had stripped them raw. She clipped in rhythm: dead twig, blighted branch, anything split or too greedy for light.

She knew how to kill things that overstayed.

When she was younger, she’d imagined the trees whispered. Now they just listened.

She paused at one of the older trunks and let her hand rest against it. The rifle was once buried beneath the roots of a cherry tree not far from here. She’d oiled the metal herself. Reinforced the bracing. Her father would’ve recognized the sound of the discharge instantly—if he wasn’t too buried in regrets and old formulas to still hear the world outside.

A voice echoed from the house.

“Don’t forget the laundry,” her mother called. “And the goat still needs milking!”

Prym rolled her eyes and tossed a branch aside. What girls are for, she could almost hear her mother say. Clean hands and quiet mouths.

The wash line had blown sideways in the wind, tangled in itself. She spent fifteen minutes wrestling linen from splinters. A sheet tore—she pretended not to notice. She dunked it in the basin, slapped it with her knuckles, hung it again.

There were bloodstains on her sleeve, almost invisible now. From Cyan’s last gift—a fresh Dominion throat slit under the western bridge. They’d buried the body deep in the dry streambed, beneath a pile of limestone slabs.

“You’re not just a killer,” he always whispered afterward. “You’re a symbol.”

She hated how much she liked it.

The goat was worse than usual. Short-tempered and jittery, like it knew something she didn’t. She hissed at it, let it buck once, and then yanked the pail into position.

By mid-afternoon her hair was matted with sweat and her forearms ached.

She found herself staring toward the treeline where the dirt path curved north, out of view. The path she’d take again tonight. Out to the chapel ruins, where Cyan would be waiting with two others and too much whiskey. They’d talk resistance. Tactics. Blood.

She wasn’t Prym Vehrun out there.

She was something harder. Something heavier.

Something free.

Dinner at home was barley stew again.

Her mother stirred it too long, so it clung to the bowl like paste. Her father didn’t seem to notice. He sat hunched, fingers ink-stained, chewing slow like the food was interrupting something better.

No one spoke. The only sounds were the occasional clink of spoon against ceramic and the soft creak of the house settling into night.

Prym barely touched her bowl. Her stomach turned with anticipation, not hunger.

Her mother finally broke the silence.

“You forgot the porch basin.”

“I’ll get it tomorrow,” Prym muttered.

Her father didn’t even glance up. “No. You’ll do it at first light.”

There it is, she thought.

Always a correction. Always control. But never the truth. Never the things they wouldn’t name—like how their son had vanished into a cult of death and blood. Or how the only living child they had left spent most days pretending to be something else.

She pushed her bowl aside.

“I’m tired.”

“Then pray early,” her mother said without looking at her.

Prym rose and walked out before the weight in her chest could crack her ribs. Upstairs, she sat in silence until the house went still. Until her father’s cough turned to snores and her mother’s footsteps creaked once—twice—and then no more.

Then she slipped from her bed.

She wore dark leathers beneath her cloak, the kind no one in Aventia approved of. Her boots were worn smooth in the soles. She left the window unlatched as always, dropped to the ground with the soundless ease of repetition.

She didn’t take the road. She took the ravine, where thorns bent away like they feared her name.

+

The chapel ruins sat half-swallowed by ivy, tucked between two dead trees that had never borne fruit. Moss slicked the stones. Candlelight flickered inside.

Cyan was already there.

So were the others.

Myla, the smith’s widow turned bomb-maker. And Tellen, the glass-eyed archer who never spoke above a whisper.

They nodded when she arrived. No greetings. Just shared purpose.

The meeting was short. A checkpoint west of Greystone. Two Sons. A new transport cart they’d intercepted news of. It was agreed: intercept and destroy. Leave no bodies behind this time.

“We leave tomorrow night,” Cyan said, rolling up the map. “Same rotation. Same fallback point.”

He didn’t look at Prym once during the planning. But the heat in his voice told her he’d been waiting.

As soon as the meeting ended, Myla stood, shouldering her crossbow.

That’s when Prym crossed the chapel floor, eyes locked on Cyan’s. He stepped toward her like gravity pulled him there. His hand cupped the back of her neck. Her lips met his like it was a secret too urgent to keep.

Myla made a sound. Not a word—just a sound—low in her throat.

“Disgusting,” she muttered. “She’s a child.”

Prym broke the kiss, not out of shame—but defiance. She turned to Myla, eyes narrow.

“I’m the best shot you’ve got.”

Myla’s jaw clenched. “You’re also eighteen. And he’s—”

“A survivor,” Cyan cut in, his tone flat. “Like all of us.”

Myla didn’t speak again. She just walked out, slow, deliberate, her boots loud on the chapel stone.

Cyan’s hands found Prym’s hips again.

“Ignore her.”

Prym didn’t answer. She just pulled him closer, their shadows folding together beneath the broken dome.

Cyan’s mouth crashed against hers with a hunger that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with power—shared, stolen, hungered for. Prym’s hands tangled in the coarse edge of his jacket as he pushed her back against the ivy-covered wall, breath ragged.

She bit his lip. He grinned through it.

His hand slid up her side, callused fingers grazing the bare skin beneath her cloak, until they curled around her throat. Just enough pressure to make her breath hitch. Her eyes darkened with the thrill of it.

She liked when he got like this—when the mission and the rage boiled over into something physical, something she could feel instead of fear.

“Look at you,” he growled into her mouth. “Covered in sweat and soot and secrets, and still you shine like a fucking godlight.”

She smirked, rubbing her hand against the hard bulge beneath his trousers, slow, deliberate.

He groaned low in his chest. “Fuck, Prym—”

“Shhh,” she whispered, biting at his jawline.

His grip on her throat tightened—just a pulse, just a warning.

But her hand didn’t stop.

And then, suddenly, his forehead pressed against hers. Both of them panting. His hand fell away. Hers stilled, lingering.

They stayed like that for a long moment. Tension thick as the night air.

“I want to tear you apart,” he whispered, almost reverently.

She smiled, breathless. “Then wait your turn.”

Outside, the trees whispered like gossips. Inside the ruins, the fire burned low, casting long shadows behind them.

They didn’t speak again. Just parted in silence, like two blades pulled from the same scabbard.

Prym slipped through the garden gate like a shadow born from dew. Her boots left no trace on the stone path. The rifle—wrapped in cloth and lashed tight to her back—made no sound as she ducked beneath the low windowsill and crept toward the rear servants’ entrance.

Inside, the Vehrun house was dark, save for the dying coals in the hearth and the faint tick of the wall-clock her father had crafted from brass and boneglass. Midnight’s silence settled over everything.

But voices stirred in the study.

She paused, body tense, slipping closer, letting the shadows claim her.

“—don’t tell me this is normal,” her mother’s voice snapped, sharp as glass.

“She’s eighteen, Adra. She’s headstrong, yes, but that doesn’t mean she’s—”

“She’s never home. She lies. She sneaks out. And gods know what she’s doing out there! Drinking? Gambling? Fucking someone?”

Prym’s jaw tightened.

“She’s not gambling,” her father said. His voice was lower, wearier. “And if she were drinking, we’d know. It’s not that.”

“Then what?” Adra hissed. “Because I know that look in her eye, Brevin. It’s the same one Revik had. That pull—that sense that something out there is more important than here. Than family. Than safety.”

A long pause.

Then her father, quietly: “She misses him too.”

“She didn’t even know him.”

“She remembers enough.”

Adra’s voice cracked—just a flicker. “Do you think he’s dead?”

Prym pressed her fingers to the doorframe. Her breath caught.

“I think,” Brevin said slowly, “that if he were alive, we’d have heard by now. And I think that the Dominion doesn’t just recruit boys like him. They disappear them.”

Silence.

Then her mother again, softer now, like a flame dying to an ember. “I can’t lose another one. Not like that. Not without knowing.”

“You won’t lose her.”

“You don’t know that.”

“She’s stubborn,” Brevin said. “And brilliant. Like you used to be.”

A sharp inhale. Then a bitter laugh from Adra. “Used to be. Gods, Brevin, what have we become? We used to fight. Do you remember that? The Inquisitor. The shackles. The nights we dreamed of burning down the O.”

“We have a roof now. And food. And quiet.”

“Quiet isn’t peace. It’s just silence with better manners.”

Prym backed away slowly, heart pounding like a war drum. Her parents’ voices faded into the walls behind her, muffled now, as if they, too, were ashamed.

She slipped up the stairs like a thief.

In her room, she leaned the rifle beneath her bed and pulled her boots off by the heels. Her hands trembled as she unpinned her hair.

Outside, the first hint of dawn brushed the windowpane in bruised lavender.

Prym hadn’t slept. The words from the night before had coiled in her mind like snakes—venomous, restless. Her father’s voice, hollow and cold: “We never should’ve taken him.” Her mother, shaking with fury and grief: “They took our son because of what we did.”

What they did…

What did they do?

She needed the journal.

But there was blood to spill first.