Chapter – Fire Beneath Kindness
For the first time in cenuries, Kael allowed himself to rest.
The village by the lake had a name — Ivenmoor — but Kael remembered it by sound. The clink of iron pots, the soft jingle of goats in the distance, the way the wind passed through the tall grass like fingers through silk.
He and Ren stayed with Eryn, the healer who had welcomed them without asking too much. Her home was small, but warm. A fire that never failed. A quilt that smelled of thyme and memory.
The first weeks passed like gentle rain.
Kael chopped wood in the mornings. Ren helped Eryn fetch herbs and eggs. At night, they sat by the hearth, not saying much, but feeling something none of them could name:
Peace.
The Years That Bloomed
Year One
Ren began to smile more. He laughed at the chickens, fell into the river chasing frogs, and asked Kael endless questions at night.
"Did you know the stars move every hundred years?" Ren asked once.
Kael looked up. "I do."
"Were you alive then?"
Kael nodded softly.
"Wow," Ren whispered, and curled against his side. "You must be very tired."
Kael didn't answer.
Eryn watched the two of them quietly from the doorway that night, and her eyes glistened with something close to love — or perhaps loss.
Year Two
Kael built a garden behind the cottage. Peas. Lavender. Wild carrots. Eryn taught Ren to read. On his tenth birthday, the villagers gifted Ren a little carved dog.
He named it Pip, and carried it everywhere.
They added a real dog too — a stray mutt with one ear and a heart far too big.
One cold evening, as snow fell lightly on the village, Ren curled up in Kael's lap by the fire, his eyes half-closed.
"Papa?" he said sleepily.
Kael froze. The word echoed through his ribs like an arrow shot in slow motion.
"I miss Mama sometimes… but I think she sent me to you."
Kael didn't know if gods existed. But if they did, they were cruel.
He only whispered, "Sleep now, little ember."
Year Three
It should have lasted forever.
Kael laughed more. Quietly, awkwardly, like a man remembering how.
Eryn braided Ren's hair. Kael carved him a wooden sword. At the harvest festival, Ren ran through the fields in a crown of wheat, and Kael—hidden in the shadows—watched with a smile that almost reached his eyes.
The villagers grew fond of him. Of them. Even Kael.
A few began calling him "Old Soul." Some of the elders said, "He's strange, but kind."
For a flicker of time, Kael believed…
Maybe the curse was just silence now.
Maybe grief had finally gone to sleep.
Whispers Begin
It started with a stranger.
A passing merchant stopped at the village tavern and stared at Kael too long.
"That face…" the man muttered. "I saw him sixty years ago. In Elandor. He hasn't aged a day."
People laughed it off.
But the seed had been planted.
Eryn found the first notes in her herb journal. Her handwriting, from year one, next to Kael's wound treatment:
"No change in aging. He still bleeds, but heals too fast. Shouldn't be possible."
Then someone else noticed.
Ren's drawings hadn't changed—Kael looked the same in every one.
The whispers began.
"Witch?"
"Cursed?"
"Monster?"
Kael felt the air shift. Like a winter wind in spring.
The Betrayal
One morning, Kael walked outside to find the scarecrow gone from the field.
In its place stood a crooked figure made of straw and bones. A black cloth draped around its shoulders, long dark hair from dried vines, eyes cut from hollow stones.
A plank nailed to its chest read:
"DEATH WALKS WITH HIM."
Ren came running, confused. "Why are they doing this?"
Kael said nothing.
Eryn wept when she saw it.
"I tried to stop it," she whispered. "But they're afraid now. You haven't aged in three years, Kael. They think… you're cursed."
He looked at her, quiet as ash. "They're not wrong."
The Fire
It came like always.
Not a storm. Not a beast.
People.
Torches. Screams. Stones.
"You brought death here!"
"He's not natural!"
"He's a demon!"
The first bottle shattered against the cottage wall, flames licking the windows like laughing mouths.
Kael grabbed Ren. "Get Eryn. Go. To the river."
"What about you?!"
Kael didn't answer.
They struck him with fire, with blades. His skin seared, peeled, and grew back before their eyes.
"See?! He can't die!"
Eryn tried to help—but was pulled away. A stone cracked against her skull. She didn't rise.
Kael didn't fight back.
Not because he couldn't.
But because he'd learned that fighting fate only delays the pain.
Ashes Again
The next morning, the cottage was ash. The garden was trampled. The dog was gone.
Kael knelt in the ruins, his hands blackened, trembling.
He didn't look for Ren immediately.
Because he knew:
Hope is the cruelest curse of all.
They had called him Papa.
They had called him healer.
They had called him friend.
Now they whispered again:
"Monster."
He remained kneeling, as snow began to fall.
Alone. Again.
Like always.
End of Chapter