His orders were clear: loose the arrow into the heart of the invaders’ siege engine, the great iron beetle vomiting fire onto the lower terraces. But as he drew, the arrow’s hunger spoke to him. Not the machine, it whispered in a voice like his own mother’s. The man commanding it. The warlord on the black horse. End him, and the rest scatter.
He thought not of the warlord’s face. He thought of the child’s silence—the quiet of a full belly, of a mother’s lullaby, of a morning without smoke. He poured that wish into the arrow. arrow erome
He stood on the chalk-white cliff overlooking the Cinder Sea. Below, the city of Veridias burned for the third time this decade. The invaders—hollow men with furnace hearts—did not want land or gold. They wanted the silence Erome protected. They wanted the echo of the world’s final scream. His orders were clear: loose the arrow into