A Solitary Cabin

Ashes and Echoes

The smoke in Mattick's longhouse clung low, a bitter incense crawling like forgotten ghosts through the skeletal beams of the rafters. It carried with it the scent of tallow, pine resin, and long-dead conversations. The hearth sulked in the center of the room, emitting a flame as reluctant as memory, its light casting writhing shadows across the uneven stones like the limbs of charred specters. The very air seemed thick with the weight of old vows and older sins, as if the room itself were holding its breath for what would come next. Drakken stood at attention, his hand resting on the hilt of Vowkeeper, the kin-blade forged with his grandfather's blood. Grimm, his hound, dozed beside the door, twitching in sleep.

Mattick said nothing for a long time. His eyes were on the fire, on something deeper than flame. Joa leaned against the wall, arms folded, eyes sharp. She hadn’t spoken since entering. Jihan paced like a wolf denied a hunt.

"Say it," Jihan growled. "Or are we waiting for the stars to fall?"

Mattick's voice, when it came, was low and brittle, like wind rasping through a crypt. Drakken felt a shiver of foreboding stir beneath his ribs—not from the cold, but from the weight of something unspoken finally given voice. There was no ceremony in Mattick's tone, no grandeur. Just truth, scraped clean of pride. For a moment, Drakken felt the ghosts of old oaths stir around him, whispers crowding the firelight, as if the very act of speaking the name of the Ember Path had awakened ancient consequences. "The Nine Steps begin with the Ember Path. Your grandfather crossed it once. Not in glory. In defiance."

Drakken frowned. "I thought he conquered the pass."

Mattick shook his head. "He crossed it to rescue a forsaken ally, Kaelen, exiled by our kin. Jorund defied the elders to bring him back. Hid him until the chieftain's death."

Joa blinked. "Mother never spoke of this."

"She wouldn't." Mattick turned, withdrawing a flat black stone from the hearth. Runes curled across its surface like the edge of a smothered flame. "Kaelen left writings. Wisdom, or regret. They're lost in that pass. Your task is to recover them."

Drakken stepped forward and took the stone.

"I dreamt last night," he said. "I saw Jorund's hands in the snow, pulling Kaelen from the ice. I saw the fire in his eyes."

Mattick met his gaze. "Vowkeeper remembers. Now so do you."

Joa spoke, finally. "So we send him to dig up the shame of a traitor. Is this wisdom, or penance?"

"Sometimes," Mattick said, "they are the same."

Drakken turned to leave. Jihan clapped a hand on his shoulder. "The path ahead is flame, but you're forged for it."

Campfire and Vow

Outside the village, beneath a sky suffocated by a thousand uncaring stars, Drakken knelt beside a fire no larger than a child’s cupped hands. The flames licked the edge of darkness without pushing it back, casting dancing shadows over the etched runes of Kaelen's stone which he traced, slowly, as if memorizing the language of ghosts. Grimm watched in stillness, his eyes reflecting more than firelight—reflections of a companion who knew the weight his master carried.

Snow settled like dust from the bones of the gods. The silence was not empty, but filled with the echoes of ancient deeds and the unsaid prayers of kin long dead.

Drakken drew Vowkeeper and laid it across his knees, the steel humming faintly as if remembering battles of blood and betrayal.

"By the steel in my hand and the name I carry, I swear this vow: I will cross the Ember Path and seek the forgotten words of Kaelen the Forsaken, whom my grandfather once pulled from exile's grip. Through ice, through silence, through memory and ruin, I will restore what wisdom remains, and bind his tale to my own. This I swear upon Vowkeeper, forged in blood and sorrow, That the path before me shall burn, and not break."

The wind stirred, not as a whisper but a challenge. It carried with it the scent of pine, yes—but buried beneath was something older: the brittle tang of charred vellum, the dry reek of dust long trapped in sealed tombs, and the electric sting of a promise not yet broken.

Drakken looked to the blade.

What if I’m not ready?

But the blade offered no counsel.

Only Grimm moved, nudging his hand with quiet insistence. No words were needed.

They rose as one, and vanished into the dark before the world woke to witness their going.

Waypoint One: The Old Watchfire

The first leg of the journey was grueling. The narrow trail clung to the side of a cliff, snowdrifts hiding loose stone and treacherous ice. By the time they reached the ruined waystation, Drakken's supplies were already lightened.

He found the remains of a fire circle, long-dead, and a sigil carved into the wall: a broken crown above a wolf's head.

Not in any known clan.

A fragment of a crimson banner was buried beneath the ice. Grimm growled when Drakken touched it.

Then he found the mark beneath the stitching.

The symbol of the Old Blades.

Kaelen's.

The Stalkers of the Crown

They came in silence, woven from the wind and the white. Drakken had slipped into the shadow of a broken ledge, Vowkeeper drawn and his breath shallow, when he saw the first—a figure in a cloak of furs, porcelain mask gleaming like a death moon in the twilight. The air around them shivered, as if the presence of the masked one disturbed even the snow.

There were more. Shapes at the edge of vision, indistinct and patient. Grimm gave a low growl—not of warning, but of recognition, as if the hound sensed something older than flesh in their scent.

Drakken crept for position, his pulse a slow thunder in his ears. He meant to strike, but the ambush came first.

Arrows hissed from above like whispered curses. One struck stone, another found flesh—his ankle twisting sharply as he dove into the drift. Pain sang through him. The cold clutched at his lungs as he rolled to his feet, Vowkeeper ready.

From the trees emerged two of them—gliding more than walking, as if they remembered how to be men but had long since moved beyond it.

The clash was brief, brutal. Steel shrieked against old mail. Vowkeeper drank deep. One fell.

The other paused—mask tilting as if tasting the air.

"You bear his weapon," the voice rasped, neither young nor old. "Jorund's echo lingers in the blade."

And then, without warning, they vanished. Not in retreat. In release, like smoke leaving the mouth of a dying god.

Drakken stood alone, the snow steaming with blood, the wind thick with meaning.

They had not come to kill him.

Not yet.

The Trial of Ashes

The stalkers led him to a ruin hidden within the pass. Runes etched in the black walls spoke in flame-script:

"The Trial does not seek strength of body, but strength of memory."

"To walk in Kaelen's path is to face what he chose to forget."

He swore a second vow:

"I will face the Trial of Ashes, as Kaelen's followers once did, and earn the right to bear his lost wisdom."

The Ash-Walker

Within the mountain, Drakken descended into tunnels lit by emberlight. There he met the guardian: a masked figure cloaked in ash and carrying a torch that burned with memory instead of flame.

"Kaelen burned the truth," it said. "Would you walk into his fire? Then bleed for it."

They fought.

Vowkeeper carved through memory and shadow. The torch was shattered. The truth laid bare:

Kaelen had left Jorund behind once. Jorund forgave him. The Trial was not about proving strength. It was about accepting shame.

Drakken finished the fight.

The Ash-Walker crumbled to dust. The seal behind him opened.

Kaelen's Codex

Beyond was a chamber of obsidian and firelight, its vaulted ceiling lost in smoke. The walls pulsed faintly, veins of molten stone flickering like the dying heart of some buried titan. At its center stood a pedestal not carved, but grown—a smooth, organic shape of black glass whose surface danced with the shimmer of unseen heat.

Upon it rested the codex, not merely a tome but a reliquary of will, wrapped in crimson cloth the color of old blood and bound with iron wire etched with sigils that writhed when seen from the corner of the eye. The rune-script burned faintly across its cover—not with fire, but memory rendered in light.

When Drakken placed his hand upon it, the world fell away.

He stood in a place that was not a place: a dream of ash and judgment. Kaelen knelt in the ruins of a battlefield, his face streaked with soot and sorrow. Before him, Jorund stood like a blade given breath, Vowkeeper balanced across his palms like an offering or a sentence.

"You broke your oath," Jorund said, his voice the thunder that follows fire. "But oaths can be reforged. If the soul survives the burning."

The vision faded like coals into mist. Drakken returned to the stone chamber, the codex warm beneath his fingers, a new weight in his pack and in his chest.

He did not look back as he left.

The walls did not weep.

But the fire, faintly, sighed.

Return to Whitecairn

The sky over Whitecairn was a smear of slate and silver, the wind descending from the peaks with a chill that carried stories. Clouds hunched low over the village, casting a pallid gloom that dulled every stone and timber. The storm that had trailed Drakken down from the mountains arrived just after him, spitting flurries that coiled like restless spirits.

He stepped into the village cloaked in ash-stained wool and silence, the codex swaddled in crimson and bound tight against his back. Grimm paced beside him, fur dusted with snow, eyes sharp and wary.

Jihan looked up from sharpening a spear, the rhythm of his whetstone faltering. Mattick emerged from the shrine like an old crow, his breath fogging the air. Joa stood on the longhouse steps, arms folded, a shadow across her face.

Drakken walked to the old stone circle—the heart of the village, where law was once spoken and blood once spilled—and unwrapped the codex. The runes on its surface glimmered faintly, pulsing like a hidden heartbeat.

"The Trial is done," he said, his voice louder than the wind. "Kaelen's truth is no longer hidden."

No cheers. No shouts.

Only the wind, and the creak of wood, and the way people looked at him now—not as the boy who had left, but as something tempered. Something returned.

Mattick bowed his head. Jihan gave a single, solemn nod. Joa's expression did not change.

Vowkeeper, once a blade of legacy, was now a blade of truth.

And Drakken's path had only just begun.