Chapter 3: Echoes of Elise
I stood there like a statue. One minute passed. Then five. Then ten.
"Val? Val! Are you breathing?!" Tom yelled, shaking my shoulders.
I blinked, the world finally coming back into focus. Tom and the rest of the boys grabbed my arms and dragged me away toward the village square to play, but my mind was entirely left behind at that carriage.
It wasn't just that she was beautiful. It was who she looked like.
Her name was Elise, I learned later. She had the exact same spun-sunlight hair and polished emerald eyes as Lady Elena Silvercross—the woman who had cut my head off five hundred years ago. It was like Elena had been reborn just to haunt me.
Over the next few days, I found myself watching her. She was quiet, keeping to herself while her parents set up their merchant shop. But there was something wrong with her posture. When she looked around, her eyes were sharp, calculating, and full of a fierce fighting spirit.
Why does a merchant's daughter look like a veteran knight? I wondered.
The answer came three days later.
I was walking back from the bakery when I saw them. Three men had entered the village, and they were bad news. They weren't wearing standard traveler clothes. They wore blackened leather armor reinforced with dark steel plates. Their faces were hidden beneath heavy, ash-grey hoods, and I could see the jagged, serrated edges of executioner's blades hanging from their hips. They moved like wolves—silent and professional.
They were whispering to a terrified farmer, asking for directions to the "new merchant family."
My stomach dropped. I kept to the shadows and followed them all the way to Elise's house.
The three men didn't bother knocking politely. The leader stepped up and hammered his armored fist against the wooden door so hard the frame splintered.
"Open up!" a raspy voice barked.
A moment later, the door creaked open. Elise's father stepped out. He was holding a standard iron broadsword, his hands shaking slightly, but his jaw was set. "Leave my family alone," he commanded.
He didn't stand a chance.
The three men didn't even speak. The leader sidestepped the father's clumsy swing, drew his serrated blade, and in one fluid, brutal motion… it was over. The father collapsed onto the dirt, lifeless.
I clamped a hand over my mouth to stop myself from shouting. My dragon instincts screamed at me to burn them to ash, but I was frozen in shock.
The assassins kicked the door open and stormed into the house. A few seconds later, they came back out, furious.
"They aren't here!" the leader roared. "Search the village! Check every house! Leave no one alive!"
My shock shattered, replaced by a cold, absolute resolve.
I let Elena die once, I thought, my fists clenching so hard my knuckles popped. I am not losing her again.
I sprinted back toward the village square. I found Tom hiding behind a barrel, pale and shaking. "Tom! The merchant's wife and daughter—where did they go?!"
"They—they ran toward your street, Val!" he stammered.
I ran faster than any normal human should be able to. When I turned the corner onto my street, I saw them. Elise and her mother were frantically knocking on our neighbor's door, sobbing, but the neighbor was too terrified to open it.
"Elise!" I hissed, grabbing her wrist. She flinched, ready to fight me, that same fierce spirit blazing in her eyes. "They can't protect you," I told her, my voice dead serious. "Come with me. Now."
I pulled them into my house and locked the heavy oak door behind us. My mother and father rushed into the hallway, taking one look at the blood on Elise's mother's dress to understand what was happening.
"Hide them in the root cellar," I told my father. "Do not come out, no matter what you hear."
"Valdos," my father said, his eyes wide with fear as he grabbed my shoulder. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to protect our home," I said.
My parents rushed Elise and her mother down into the hidden basement beneath the floorboards.
Once the hatch was sealed, the house went dead silent.
I stood alone in the center of the living room, rolling up my sleeves. I could hear the heavy, armored boots of the three assassins crunching on the dirt road outside, getting closer to my door.
I couldn't use fire magic. I couldn't use my dragon aura. If I did, the whole village would know a monster lived among them, and the Capital Mages would come for me.
I guess I'll just have to beat them to death with my bare hands, I thought, planting my feet.
Let them come.