Chapter 1 — Left Behind

“Ria, take this key and lock yourself in the cellar. Hide under the stairs and no matter what happens, don’t come out until morning. Promise me.”

Her mom’s desperate expression and the way she urgently whispered the instructions gripped Ria’s stomach with fear. Was it because of the shouting coming from outside?

Pressing the iron key into her hands, her mom insisted fiercely, “There’s no time. Promise me!”

“I promise,” Ria barely managed to force out through the fear that was paralyzing her.

Relief showed on her mother’s face for a moment. “We’ll always love you, Ria. Now go!”

The shove from her mother spurred Ria into action, and she fled to the cellar, stumbling across the wood flooring of her house in panicked haste. Pushing the heavy door shut behind her, she jammed the iron key into the lock and turned it with her trembling hands until the lock thunked.

Not even waiting to breathe a sigh of relief, she scrambled down the wood stairs into the dark cellar and squeezed behind some crates to hide in the dark and cramped space under the stairs.

Before she had finished settling into her hiding spot, heavy steps were already stomping about on the floor above.

Ria tried to calm her ragged breathing. She was afraid the sound of her heart pounding in her chest was loud enough to be heard clear through the floor. The latch to the cellar door clanked, and she clamped her hands over her mouth to force back the scream that threatened to break out.

“There’s a locked door here! Break it down?” the man at the door shouted.

“Don’t waste time on that! I doubt this family has much of use. We’ve still got five more villages to do. Just grab anything obvious and move on,” came a shouted reply that could be heard through the floor.

After a loud slam against the door and a curse of frustration, the heavy boots clomped their way around the house and left.

Ria trembled, hugging her arms about herself to still her shaking. The shouting was gone from her house but could still be heard from elsewhere in the village. There was nothing for her to do but wait as quietly as possible until morning, like her mom had told her.

Thinking about her mom, Ria could only despair at the way her mom’s last words had sounded like a farewell. Would she ever see her family again? Her father and brothers were outside working when the shouting started. Was it possible that they escaped?

The whole situation was unbelievable to Ria. The village had been peaceful for as long as she remembered. There were no rumors of war, and the only news of bandits was stories of small groups of petty highwaymen. These men sounded armored and organized. Were they soldiers?

Pushing away such thoughts, she focused on the sound from outside and waited in the darkness of the cellar, a darkness that was only broken by thin strips of light passing between the gaps in the floorboards above. Gradually, her trembling stilled, and exhausted by the fear and tension, she slept for a while.

When Ria awoke, moonlight was filtering between the floorboards above to form faint rays in the dust. A tiny scratching sound caused Ria to pull her knees tighter against her chest, and the hissing noise she made caused the source of the sound to scurry for safety.

The silence from outside had a weight that was even more worrisome than having to spend the night in the dark with the rats. A growing foreboding dread began to press down on her heart as the meaning of that silence worked its way through her head.

Desperately seeking to deny her growing suspicion, Ria listened as hard as she could for what seemed like an eternity. Just barely, the nocturnal sounds of wild animals and insects could be heard.

That was usual and normal. What was missing was the sound of voices, of horses and cows, of dogs barking. And if she was right, the lonely squeaking sound that came from time to time was the sound of her house’s front door left open to creak in the wind.

Ria screwed up her face. She wasn’t going to cry, not until she could see the truth for herself in the morning.

The rest of the night passed slowly and uneventfully, with the exception of one problem that she solved with an empty cleaning bucket.

When the first rays of daylight began to illuminate the rooms above, Ria gathered her resolve and unlocked the cellar door.

Brief glances into the rooms of her house as she snuck forward toward the front door revealed that her house hadn’t been as ransacked as she expected. Drawers were opened, but the contents hadn’t been strewn about. Even her worktable where she did her daily apprentice work was mostly as she had left it. If she had to guess, judging from the empty cabinets in the kitchen, the only obvious thing that had been taken was food.

Peeking outside the open front door, Ria had to choke back a sob.

All of the other houses in view had their front doors ajar, and there was no sign of anyone left in the village. There weren’t any bodies strewn on the ground. Just the eerie emptiness of everyone being suddenly gone.

Ria was still wary of stepping outside the house, in case the men came back, but there was one place that she had to check. Her friend Jeni—their house had a secret room in the cellar, and maybe Jeni had also been told to hide.

Staying to the early morning shadows and trying to be as quiet as possible, she snuck to her friend’s house, peeking into empty house after empty house on the way.

Feeling more and more driven by the desperate desire to find someone, anyone, she was practically running by the time she burst through the front door of Jeni’s house, frantically searching the rooms of the two-story building before heading to the cellar.

“Jeni? Are you here?”

Ria called out for her friend as she pulled over a step stool to reach the glowstone holder that unlocked the secret door. Turning the light fixture, Ria pressed a section of the stone wall open.

“Jeni?”

Calling out again, Ria hopped down from the stool and entered the secret room.

Jeni wasn’t there.

Fear became certainty, and Ria knew she was alone. Overcome, Ria sank to her knees, no longer able to hold back the tears and sobs.