First light broke cold over the Ashen Settlement.First light broke cold over the Ashen Settlement.
Three horn blasts echoed from the watchtower—low, resonant, carrying across frozen ground. Then a shout: "Hunters returning!"
Doors opened from all quarters: north walls, central square, even the southern edge. Voices called to one another. The sound of people gathering, moving toward the gates.
The bone gates rose ahead, a dragon skull massive and bleached, its eye sockets empty. Frost gathered in the hollows like a grave mouth waiting to swallow them.
He lagged twenty paces behind the others.
It had been that way since they left the clearing, the space between them widening like a crack in ice.
The baby was warm against his chest. Too warm—like fever, but the child's skin was dry. It still hadn't cried.
Varn led the hunters through the gates, still captain, still protocol. His crossbow gripped tight, the other hand clenching and releasing.
Behind him walked Ferne, then Grey-beard. Renn stumbled along, face ash-pale. The others followed, exhausted.
Seven of them trudged together, empty-handed and scorched.
Torven trailed behind, alone at the back, arms raw and tight from wrist to elbow where dragon fire had caught, cloak smoke-stained and singed. Grey-beard's blanket wrapped around the baby, Ferne's water skin at his belt.
The baby shifted beneath the blanket. Heat radiated from the child when everything else chilled to frost.
Ahead, the settlement stirred.
Bone arches formed the doorways: ribs pulled from long-dead dragons, bleached and cracked. People emerged from them, leaning from windows, clustering at corners. Eyes tracking the hunters' approach.
Questions started immediately.
"They're back."
"Did they—"
The hunters passed the storage houses where dragon spines formed the walls, doors sagging on their hinges. Iron cisterns in the doorways, bellies dark with years of staining. Supplies dwindled.
The air tasted of cook smoke and old wool.
Nothing but ash bread and bitter root. And not enough of that.
"Where are the dragons?"
More people flooding toward them now. Looking for bundles of meat. For scales strapped to backs. For triumph.
The hunters offered only scorched cloaks, exhaustion, empty hands.
The voices grew louder:
"We saw the lights last night—the sky—"
In the central square, children waited—too quiet, too still.
"You tracked them, didn't you?"
"The blood—there had to be—"
Torven's boots hit stone. Left. Right. Stone dark in the cracks, worn to glass. The rhythm steady even as his arms throbbed, cold air sharp against the burns.
They passed Old Kerra's workshop. The woman stood in her doorway, eighty winters if she was a day, skin like worn leather. Her eyes met Torven's. Held.
Varn kept moving, silent and stone-faced.
The rest said nothing.
The central square opened ahead. A dragon skeleton stood at its heart, a full articulated thing with wings spread wide, bleached white. The skull pointed north, jaw open, screaming at nothing.
The crowd filled the square. Fifty people, a hundred, more coming. Edge-dwellers and Boneholders pressed together; no divide now, not for this. Thin faces turned toward them, worn clothes patched and re-patched, scale-sewn coats with missing plates, jewelry with empty sockets where blood gems used to sit. Everyone shuffled slow, careful—conserving what little strength remained.
Questions multiplied, voices rising and overlapping. Two hundred people now, maybe more.
"What happened?" someone shouted. "Where are they? The lights fell north—we all saw—"
"Why aren't you carrying anything?"
"Captain! Varn! What did you find?"
The voices swelled, building toward panic.
Torven waded through, hemmed by bodies, each step deliberate. A mother pulled her child closer, knuckles white, not breathing. The crowd pressed tighter, the noise rising.
"Did you find them?"
"Answer us!"
"We need to know—the settlement—we can't—"
Someone near the front stopped mid-word. Eyes locked on Torven, on the bundle in his arms.
"What's he carrying?"
Others turned.
Torven pushed forward, didn't slow, didn't stop.
The bundle stirred, the blanket shifting.
"It's... small."
"Too small for meat."
"What is that?"
People craning to see, pushing forward, the noise shifting to confusion.
A woman stepped into Torven's path. Couldn't have been more than thirty, but worn like fifty winters. Her gaze fixed on the bundle.
"That's not—"
The shape stopped her—the size of it.
She froze.
"It's a baby."
Her voice barely carried. But everyone heard.
The noise died—sudden as a held breath.
Torven walked, his boots on stone the only sound, left foot then right. Heat pulsed from the baby against his chest. His own breath ragged from the walk and the pain and the exhaustion.
The crowd stood silent.
Not one word.
Blood roared in his ears. All those eyes, heavy as bone. The baby moved again—small sound, cloth rustling—and the crowd flinched.
Someone stepped back, then another.
The space around Torven widened. People pulled away, recoiling but not running.
He didn't stop.
Then movement from the crowd's edge. Someone pushing through—shouldering past people who wouldn't step aside, coming toward them, against the tide of fear.
Moira.
She moved steady. People parted for her without thinking as she crossed the square.
Torven stopped and met her eyes.
Her gaze dropped to the scorched cloak, the burns, everything.
Then to the bundle.
Her hands—rough from tanning, cracked from the chemicals, right one trembling like it always did—reached out. She smelled of lye and leather, of home.
Torven didn't hesitate. He gave the baby to her, gentle despite the ache. Cold rushed in where warmth had been.
Moira took the child. Unwrapped the blanket enough to see the face.
Amber eyes open, catching the grey morning light, unfocused and drifting.
Her hands stopped.
This one was breathing.
She touched the baby's cheek. Her trembling hand steady for this.
"He's warm."
The silence broke.
Not loud, not chaos—but the spell shattered. People shifted, murmured. Questions started again, tentative:
"Where did—"
"How is it—"
"The dragons—what about—"
"Torven, what happened out there?"
Voices rising, swelling.
"Go home," he said, quiet—just to her.
Her eyes found his, and she nodded once.
She turned, the baby in her arms, and pushed back through the crowd, steady and certain.
The crowd parted again. Some stepped back. Some leaned forward. Old Kerra nodded as Moira passed.
A mother turned away, shielding her own child.
Someone whispered: "Where did it come from?"
Moira didn't answer, didn't slow—just walked until the crowd closed behind her and Torven couldn't see her anymore.
She'd make it home. She'd close the door.
Safe.
"Council Hall."
Varn's voice, flat and hard.
Torven turned.
The hunting captain stood ten paces away, facing him, crossbow in hand. Face unreadable.
"Now."
Behind him, the other hunters waited. Ferne scrutinized Torven. Renn still shook. Grey-beard stared at his boots.
The crowd murmured. Watching. Hungry for answers no one had given yet.
Torven held Varn's gaze.
"Council Hall," Varn said again.
He turned to the crowd. "You. Sound the summons."
A young man near the front broke away, sprinted toward the watchtower. Moments later, three horn blasts echoed across the settlement—deeper than the first, measured and deliberate. The Council's call.
Torven nodded and followed.
The Council Hall squatted at the settlement's heart, the largest structure they had: a dragon skull for foundation, ribs forming the ceiling like claws reaching overhead. The scale-reinforced door was thick enough to stop arrows, built to last forever.
It showed cracks now. No materials remained to patch them.
The door stood open, waiting.
Varn led them through. The other hunters followed, Torven last.
The door closed behind them, heavy and final.
The crowd noise fell away. The bone walls were thick enough to swallow sound. The air stale, laden with old smoke and the ghost of dragon marrow.
No one spoke.