The air on the Winter Solstice morning should have tasted of spiced wine and sweet honey cakes, of excited whispers and the crackle of a warm hearth. Alice had woken early, her heart light with the joy of Elara’s fifth birthday. She'd pictured her daughter’s delighted squeals over the new wooden lamb, already humming a lullaby as she’d moved through the quiet castle halls.

​But silence had greeted her. An unnatural, heavy silence that pressed in on her ears, replacing the usual morning bustle of the castle. Then came the smell. A coppery tang, faint at first, then growing sharper, denser with every step she took towards the great hall. Fear, cold and insidious, began to coil in her stomach, making her breath catch. Her fingers, already habitually picking at her nails, began to tear at them with frantic energy.

​She rounded the corner into the main corridor, and the silence shattered. Not with sound, but with sight. Blood. Great smears of it across the stone, dark and glistening. Bodies lay twisted, still, where they had fallen. Her father's guards, brave and loyal, slaughtered. Her stomach churned, threatening to spill the easy comfort of her privileged life onto the grisly floor. This wasn’t a skirmish. This was an annihilation. 

Then she saw them. A flash of her father’s crimson surcoat, mangled and torn, beneath a pile of corpses near the grand staircase. Her breath hitched. Further on, a familiar tangle of auburn hair, stark against the grey stone, unmistakably her eldest brother, Lyam, his sword lay shattered beside him. Her eyes darted, desperate, pleading with the shadows. Another form, slumped against the wall, one hand still gripping a broken spear. The distinct, interwoven pattern of green and gold on the sleeve, the one her second brother, Torvin, had insisted on for his armor.

​And then, just beyond them, sprawled near the arched doorway to the private chambers, was him. Too still. Too pale. The familiar breadth of his shoulders, the dark tunic he favored, stained beyond recognition. Her husband. She kneeled beside him, the man who had seen beyond her childhood infatuation, who had loved her fiercely for who she was, even her weight. The man who was her rock, her confidante, her forbidden love. His beautiful, gold flecked eyes were open, fixed on nothing. She reached from his hand, sliding his gold wedding band off his finger and clutching it to her chest. Terror propelled her forward, a desperate, clumsy sprint born of instinct. Not Elara. Please, not Elara. She burst through the door to the nursery, breath tearing in her throat.

​And found... nothing.

​No chaos. No destruction. The room was perfectly, horrifyingly, untouched. The soft lamplight from the night before still glowed, casting a warm, deceptive light on the carefully placed toys, on the tiny shoes by the bed. But the bed itself, the small, familiar bundle within it, was gone.

​The crib stood empty, a gaping void in the center of her world. They hadn't come to destroy. They hadn't come to steal gold or burn the castle. They had bypassed the carnage, leaving it as a grim testament, and taken the one thing that mattered.

​Elara. Gone.

​Alice crumpled to her knees, the realization a physical blow. Her daughter, her sweet, five-year-old girl, was stolen from the safest place she knew. And Alice, who had lost everything in one horrifying night, knew with chilling certainty that she would fight for this. With every breath in her body.

Alice Hyght nee Ashworth, was now completely and utterly alone in this world.

​The realisation echoed in the desolate silence of the castle, a stark, brutal truth. Alice knelt by the empty crib, her fingers tracing the delicate carving on its wooden rail. The scent of Elara, faint and sweet, was still there on the little blanket she clutched, a cruel reminder of the warmth that had been brutally ripped away. Her mind, reeling from the carnage outside, began to pull her back, back to a time when these walls hummed with life, with laughter, with the secure, predictable rhythm of a lord's household.

​She closed her eyes, and the horror of the present began to blur, replaced by vivid, painful flashes of a world that no longer existed.

​Alice had grown up enveloped in the cushioned reality of Ashworth Keep, a fortress of comfort and privilege. As the only daughter and the youngest of three, she was often showered with a gentle affection. Her mother, she had been told, died when she was all but five, a vague, shadowy memory that sometimes manifested as a faint, floral scent or a whisper of a forgotten song and her daughter’s nickname "Lys" was all that was left of her. 

Though her mother's physical presence was absent from most of her childhood, the love of her father, Lord Ashworth, and her two older brothers, Lyam and Torvin, formed her world. Her days weren't filled with the strictures typical for a noble daughter, but with the quiet pursuit of her passions. She remembered long afternoons in the sunlit drawing room, charcoal smudging her fingers as she sketched the rolling hills beyond the castle walls, or the mischievous grins of the stable boys. Her father, a man of stern countenance but soft eyes when they met hers, had always indulged her artistic inclinations. "A fine hand, little Lys," he'd rumbled once, admiring a portrait. 

He valued beauty, he'd often said, and in her, he saw it expressed. And then there was the singing. A natural talent, clear and true, that filled the keep with melodies. She'd sing ancient ballads, and often, just for herself, the melodies weaving through the quiet moments of her comfortable life.

​It was into this cherished, artistic existence that he had steadily, irrevocably woven himself. Lord Kaelen Hyght, her father's best friend, twenty years her senior, and the man who had stolen her fifteen-year-old heart. He had often felt like a steady, comforting presence in her life, perhaps filling a quiet void she hadn't even realized existed since her mother's passing. The world had seen him as a man of solid repute, a steadfast ally to her father, with kind eyes and a laugh that always made her smile. Alice, however, knew the thrill of whispered conversations in moonlit gardens, the illicit touches, the electric current of a love so forbidden it felt like fire.

​Her father had been, as was his right, absolutely furious. Three years he'd tried to keep them apart, a silent war of wills that had only cemented Alice's devotion. She was, beneath her soft exterior, fiercely stubborn when it came to matters of the heart. Kaelen, for his part, had been unwavering, his quiet strength matching her youthful defiance. She remembered the day her father finally conceded, a grudging nod of approval that sealed their fate. Their wedding had been a mix of relief and triumph, marking the beginning of a bond built on genuine affection and a shared history of quiet rebellion. He had loved her without reservation, celebrating her curves, her laughter, her quiet nature. "My ample rose," he'd called her, his hand warm on her waist, and in his eyes, she'd never once felt anything less than beautiful. Their daughter, Elara, was the culmination of that love, a bright, bubbly child who inherited her father's calm demeanor and her mother's stormy blue eyes. A perfect life, or so it had seemed.

​Alice gasped, the memories shattering as the cold reality of the empty crib, the chilling scent of blood, rushed back in. The warmth was gone. The music was silent. The comfort was ashes. All of it, ripped away in one horrific night. She was no longer Alice Ashworth, the cherished daughter. She was no longer Kaelen's beloved wife. 

She was just Lys. Alone. And she had to find her daughter.

​A cold, hard resolve, sharper than any blade she'd ever seen, settled in her gut. She had to move. Stumbling to her feet, her legs stiff from kneeling, she forced herself back out into the ruined corridor. The metallic tang of blood was thick, nauseating. She moved past the twisted forms of guards she’d known her whole life, their faces frozen in expressions of final, futile resistance. Her father’s mangled crimson surcoat, Lyam’s auburn hair stark against the stone, Torvin’s distinctive green and gold sleeve—each a fresh stab of agony. Her husband, Kaelen, lay sprawled near the arched doorway, too still, too pale, his eyes fixed on nothing. The sheer scale of the massacre was overwhelming. Who could have done this? And why?

​"Lady Alice?" ​The voice, hoarse and trembling, pierced through her fog of grief. It was Finn. Sixteen years old, a scullery boy usually found covered in flour or ash, now streaked with dirt and fear. He stood at the entrance to the corridor, gripping a heavy iron pot like a shield, his eyes wide but clear, fixed on her. He'd obviously been trying to make sense of the carnage, too, or perhaps, hiding and then venturing out.

​"Finn!" Lys breathed, a desperate surge of hope mixed with dread. "Are you hurt? What happened?"

​He stepped closer, his gaze sweeping over the devastation, his jaw tight. "I… I was in the cellar, My Lady. Stocking the wine. I heard the screams, heard the fighting. They were… blade-wielders, Lady Alice. Hard men. From the south, maybe, by their accents. But then… then there was a different sound." He swallowed hard. "A whisper, almost. Like the air itself sighed. From the nursery wing. And then the fighting stopped, just like that." His eyes, still terrified, met hers. "I think… I think they just left. Quickly."

​Lys's gaze snapped back to the empty nursery doorway, then to Finn's face. "Elara," she whispered, the name a raw plea. "Did you see Elara?"

​Finn shook his head, looking down. "No, My Lady. After the whisper, I heard nothing. I only just came up. I was… looking for anyone. For you." He offered the pot, his knuckles white. "We should go, My Lady. Before they come back. Or before someone else comes."

​His pragmatism, even in his terror, was a jolt. He wasn't simply scared; he was thinking, trying to survive. He, a scullery boy, was thinking of escape, while she, a lady, still processed the incomprehensible. ​This was not her life. This bloody ruin, this cold dread, this utter lack of safety—it was not her life. Her life had been soft fabrics and warm meals, gentle hands and familiar faces, the security of thick stone walls. Now, the castle was a tomb, its walls breached, its comforts vanished. The woman who had sketched wildflowers and sung lullabies, who had argued with her father and loved her husband with fierce, quiet defiance, that woman felt utterly useless in this new, terrifying reality. But somewhere, out there, Elara needed her. And that needed, that raw, primal ache, was a fire in her gut that burned hotter than any fear.

​"We have to leave," Lys declared, her voice rough, the command a desperate reflex. Her eyes darted towards a broken window, seeing only the dark, unforgiving expanse of the pre-dawn winter outside. "Now."

​Finn's brow furrowed, his gaze sweeping over her blood-soaked silk gown, then to his own meager clothes. "We can't just go, My Lady," he said, his voice surprisingly firm despite its tremor. "Not like this. We'd freeze. Or starve. Or be caught within the first league. We need... supplies. Clothes for the road. Food. Water. Anything to help us last more than a few hours."

​The words hit Lys like a cold wave, cutting through the last vestiges of her shock. Supplies. Clothes for the road. She looked down at her own attire – a fine silk, shimmering emerald green, chosen for Elara's birthday feast. Now it was soaked with the blood of her family, torn and heavy, a grotesque mockery of the life she'd just lost. This dress, this symbol of her vanished world, had to be shed. The idea of food, of thirst, of the biting winter air, were alien concepts that now pressed down on her with chilling clarity.

​"Where?" she managed, the single word a testament to her dawning, terrifying vulnerability. She who had never known hunger or cold, felt a sudden, profound emptiness in her stomach that wasn't just grief, but the chilling whisper of a very real, very physical need.

​Finn nodded, his eyes scanning the corridor. "The kitchens, My Lady. The servants' quarters. They might not have been as thoroughly ransacked. And the storerooms in the cellar. I know a way, hidden from the main passages."

​A flicker of desperate, fragile hope sparked in Lys’s chest. A path. A direction.

​She didn't wait for him to respond, turning instead back towards Elara's empty nursery. She couldn't leave without it. Not without a piece of her, a piece of Elara. Her fingers found the soft, embroidered blanket, the one that still held the faintest scent of her child, a whisper of warmth and innocence in this landscape of horror. She clutched it to her chest, pressing it against her heart. It was a small, tangible anchor in the swirling chaos, a sacred promise to herself that she would never forget what she was fighting for.

​With the blanket held tight, Lys followed Finn, his hurried footsteps echoing in the desecrated silence. She left behind the bloody remnants of her former life, the grand hall filled with the fallen, the memories of laughter and love now choked by screams. She stepped into a world utterly unknown, armed only with raw grief, a burning purpose, and a terrified scullery boy. The journey to find Elara, to find out why, had truly begun.