Path to identity

not the sharp kind that stings like fresh wounds but something duller, leaden — like my body was haunting me for yesterday's failures. I rolled my shoulders, feeling my stiff back, the bruises still fresh from training. Each movement was met with a silent protest.

I sat with my hands clasped on the edge of my cot, staring at particles of dust dancing in the light streaming through the slats in the wooden walls. The barracks reeked of sweat and wet straw, the soft rustling of the other trainees waking up breaking the silence.

I exhaled. Today would be different. It had to be.

I slipped on my tunic, laced up my boots and went outside into the early morning chill. Before me, the training grounds stretched, empty at this hour aside from a few dying souls, running drills. A wispy fog twisted its way over the wet land. I thought of the woman from yesterday, the way she moved, elegant, unreachable, but somehow unreachable and untouchable in a way I didn't quite understand.

I still didn't know her name.

That reality hung in the air, and I hated that it did.

But the knights had something else in store for us today

By noon we were assembled in the courtyard, where one of the senior knights, Ser Aldric, stood facing us, his face as blank as ever. He was a broad-shouldered man with graying hair; his voice was the grinding of stone as he spoke.

"There's been trouble in the southern woodlands," he said. "We have reported strange activity in a village that has been abandoned for years. Lights. Sounds. Travelers describe figures moving among the ruins."

A mission. Our first assignment.

It wasn't glory or battle. It was investigation. But it was something — something other than sparring matches and drills.

"Aldric time, squad leaders will be assigned." His eyes traversed us, weighing, measuring. "You'll move in small teams."

I calmed my breath, willing the tension to stay hidden.

The list of assignments was read, names paired. Then—

"Alarion," Aldric called. "You'll be with Asura."

That name.

Before I could stop myself, I turned my head.

There she was, at the periphery of the group, arms crossed, her face a mask. Asura.

The name fit her — sharp, elegant, with an edge of something unreadable. She hardly looked my way.

No reaction. No acknowledgment.

Just calm, quiet confidence.

The kind that left me feeling I had already lost something, though I didn't know what.

The name lingered in my mind. Asura.

It was a sound like steel scraping silk — sharp, but smooth; easy, but heavy. It suited her. And now I was also meant to work with her.

I exhaled, steadying myself. This wasn't about pride. It was my opportunity to show something.

Asura stood at the edge of the gathering with the quiet stillness of someone who was well aware of how to conserve her energy. I didn't anticipate an "ahoy" when I approached, and I didn't receive one.

"Alarion," she said, acknowledging me with not so much as a glance.

"Asura," I replied, feeling the name on my tongue.

She looked at me for half a second, as if she was going to measure something unseen. Then she shifted her weight slightly, turning to Ser Aldric.

"Your squad departs at sundown," Aldric said. "Minimal supplies. You will take the east road and arrive at dusk in the ruins."

A murmur fluttered among the trainees. Everybody had heard the stories about the deserted village.

"Do not let rumors addle your judgment," Aldric advised. "This is a test of the discipline, not the courage. That the knight order is based on control — not wild heroics."

His eyes held mine a fraction too long. A warning? A challenge? I kept my face neutral.

"You leave in six hours. Dismissed."

...

The day was spent in anxiety-ridden preparation. I donned my gear — a simple blade, light armor, and enough rations to last a few nights, should the need arise. The others around me moved with this same focused energy. This was the first true test outside the walls.

Asura was Checking the straps on her light leather armor in the distance. She moved deliberately, with no second-guessing, with no wasted motion. You could tell she had done this before.

The thought gave me an uneasy pulse.

How much of this was new to me, but old hat for her?

…..

We were prepared when the sun started to drop, streaking the sky with deep orange and bruised purple.

There were only five of us on the squad, including Asura and me. The others were nameless for now, their presence secondary in my mind. I was concentrating too much on the road ahead.

We rode in silence at first. Hooves against dirt. The fluttering of capes in the breeze.

Then, Asura spoke.

"You seemed surprised when you heard my name earlier."

I glanced at her. She wasn't looking at me. She kept her eyes on the road, her tone as flat as her posture.

"I didn't expect you to be matched with me," I confessed.

A small hum, close to an I see you.

"You said it as though you knew me already," she mused.

I frowned. "No. Just—" I hesitated. How was I supposed to say that she had already haunted my thoughts before I knew what to call her?

She didn't press.

Asura was not someone who broke the silence just because it was silence.

And perhaps that was what disturbed me most.

Nightfall

The village rose up from the darkness like a wraith of its former self.

Crumbling stone. Wood rotted to splinters. Charred shells of buildings loomed as skeletal remains in the bitter moonlight.

No torches. No signs of life.

But the air felt wrong.

Not haunting — no, this wasn't the sensation of restless ghosts. This was something else.

Something watching.

We dismounted. Our horses shifted nervously, ears chasing each other, muscles taut. One of the recruits muttered a curse beneath his breath.

Asura was first, lightly stepping out onto the overgrown path. "Not tracks," she whispered. "No carts, no wagons."

"Nothing alive at all" I said.

She looked at me, her face a blank. "Then why do you have the feeling you're being watched?"

She had felt it too.

I gripped my blade tighter.

The ruins loomed ahead. And in the dark, something waited.

It devoured us, the village.

The wind threaded through vacant doorways, rustling with broken wood and crumbling stone. Leaves and dust swirled in the moonlight, as if the invisible hands and feet of some unseen host were directing their movement. The silence was not simply the absence of sound — it was intentional. Like the land was holding its breath.

I kept my footsteps measured. Controlled. Every instinct told me there was something here. But nothing stirred.

Asura paced forward, no hesitation in her gait, her gaze cutting across every nook and cranny, every darkened recess. The others trailed behind them, cautiously oblivious.

It was strange. No signs of life. But no signs of death, either. No rotting corpses. No war trophies; no remnants of a battle. Just emptiness.

"This doesn't make sense," one of the recruits said under his breath. "A place like this — there should be something left behind.

"A sickness, maybe?" another suggested. "Forced evacuation?"

I shook my head. "Yeah, but there would still be footprints. Burned-out fires. Signs of struggle."

It was more as though the village had fled and never returned.

Or worse—erased.

…..

We scattered, searching what was left. Broken pottery. Rusted tools. Furniture left to rot. Somewhere that once lived, now merely a graveyard.

I picked up a piece of stone from a low wall and knelt beside an old well and traced my fingers over it. Smooth. Unnaturally so. As if years instead of decades of wind and rain washed it clean.

I peered over the edge. The water should have been stagnant, clouded with time.

But it was clear.

So clear that I could see my own reflection staring back.

And then—

A ripple.

A shift.

For a heartbeat there, my face wasn't my own.

The water twisted it, stretched it — no, something under the water was looking up at me.

I yanked myself back, my heart racing.

But the well was still. Silent. My reflection normal.

"Alarion."

I turned. Asura was watching me. Not suspicious. Not concerned. Just… watching.

I breathed out, pacing my heartbeat. "Nothing. Just—"

She didn't push. She never did.

And more than anything that unsettled me.

...….

Signs of Something Else

The sensation only got worse as the others searched.

The village was too clean. The decay wasn't organic; it felt like someone had siphoned the history from the place, and left only a husk of what had been.

Even the air felt… hollow.

Then—

A sound.

A low, dragging scrape of stone.

We froze.

At the far end of the ruins, a shape leaned against a twisted pillar, half-obscured by the shattered light of the moon. It moved slowly and deliberately, as if testing its very presence.

The recruit nearest me gasped suddenly. "What—"

Asura moved first.

No hesitation. No wasted motion. She offed the distance between us in an instant, grasping my wrist — strong, unbending.

"Do. Not. Speak."

Her voice was low, but its message did not allow for counterargument.

The others stiffened; they sensed the change. The air had sharpened, grown colder.

Something was here.

And it was listening.

....

The form remained, little more than a shadow against the ragged rock. Not quite human. Not quite beast.

It watched. It knew.

And then—it left.

No sound. No steps. Just gone.

But the emotion it left behind had not.

I swallowed. This wasn't normal.

At last, the clutches of Asura weakened. But her eyes remained fixed on the empty space where the thing had been.

She didn't ask if I saw it. Didn't ask if I felt it.

She already knew the answer.

"Let's go," she said.

And for once, I found the words, unable to say.

…

The Ride Back

We didn't talk much leaving the ruins.

The others murmured theories — bandits, ghosts, some ancient curse gone bad. Anything that made sense.

But nothing made sense.

The road wound ahead, through the trees. The moon was long up, spilling silver light across the earth.

Asura rode ahead. Always ahead. Like she had a very clear destination.

I watched her again, how she moved. Effortless. Like this world never got its claws in her the way it did in the rest of us.

And yet—

I think I saw it for the first time. The slightest hint of tension in her shoulders.

She had seen something too.

But there would be no discussion of it.

And that meant neither was I.

For now