Chapter 4 - THE ASHES OF OAK HAVEN
Sir Harold stepped into the cottage, his broadsword raised, followed by four heavily armored guards whose breastplates gleamed with the harsh, flickering light of their torches.
"Well, well, well," Harold sneered, his small eyes darting around the small, disordered room. He spotted the blood-stained rags on the floor near the hearth and the surgical shears lying beside the washbasin. His smile widened into something cruel and predatory. "It seems our little healer has been busy. Where is he, girl?"
"There is no one here," Rosalind said, stepping squarely in front of the trapdoor on the floor, her hands clasped tightly behind her back to hide their trembling. "I was tending to my own wounds. I slipped while chopping firewood."
"Liar," Harold spat. He gestured with his sword. "Search the place. Tear up the floorboards if you have to. I want every inch of this rat hole turned inside out."
The soldiers moved with brutal efficiency. Clay jars containing dried herbs were smashed against the stone hearth; wooden shelves were ripped from the walls, sending glass bottles and medical texts crashing to the floor in a cascade of shards. One soldier kicked over the table, splintering the oak legs, while another stomped heavily across the braided wool rug near the center of the room.
THUMP.
The soldier paused. He looked down, scuffed his heavy iron-plated boot against the wool again, and stamped harder.
THUMP. THUMP.
Hollow. Unmistakably hollow.
Harold’s face lit up with malicious triumph. He strode across the room, shoving Rosalind aside with such force that she stumbled and hit her shoulder hard against the stone fireplace.
"Well, now," Harold whispered, dropping to his knees right in front of the rug. He reached down and yanked the braided wool away, revealing the square wooden trapdoor and the rusted iron ring set into its grain. "What have we here?"
His thick fingers closed around the iron ring.
Beneath the floorboards, from the pitch-black depths of the root cellar, came a sound that made the torches flicker and die down to blue embers.
It was a low, subterranean growl—not of an animal, but of a starving god waking from a thousand-year sleep.
Rosalind’s breath caught in her throat. She saw the iron ring begin to vibrate in Harold’s grip as something massive and furious slammed its weight against the underside of the door.
Akira was about to tear his way out.
"Wait!" Rosalind shouted, throwing herself forward and grabbing Harold’s arm before he could lift the latch. "If you open that, you'll unleash something you can't put back!"
Harold laughed, a harsh, grating sound, and raised his free hand to backhand her across the face. "Step aside, girl—"
He never finished the sentence.
With a deafening explosion of splintered oak and iron nails, the trapdoor blew upward into the room like a bursting dam. A shockwave of pure, freezing kinetic energy blasted through the cottage, shattering every windowpane into a million glittering diamonds of ice.
Harold flew backward, his heavy armor crashing into the stone hearth with a sickening crunch.
Standing in the open maw of the cellar, framed by billowing wisps of frost and shadow, was a man who no longer looked entirely human. His shoulders were broad as a mountain boulder, his hair wild and black as midnight, and his eyes burned with a terrifying, dual fire—molten gold consuming the silver.
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The remaining guards raised their halberds, screaming in blind terror as they charged.
Akira didn't draw a weapon. He moved with a speed that defied the laws of physics, a blur of shadow and silver that crossed the room in a single heartbeat.
