In the middle of a frozen lake, a boy with long black hair and amber eyes sat alone on the ice. He didn’t feel the cold at all, not from the ice underneath him nor the gusts of wind that sent his hair into his face. He stared off into the distance, a lakeshore far away, lined in snow filled evergreens.

“Do you know about the Order, Matthaeus?” A woman’s voice asked sweetly from behind him. She sounded warm, like she was smiling as she spoke.

He looked back slowly, but no one was there.

“I’ve always looked up to them, you know. Most of us common folk do. It’s those nobles and their knights that give them that… reputation.”

His amber eyes turned back to staring at the far shore.

“They give up everything, their families, names, futures… all to risk their lives to protect us from the Beasts. Since I was a girl, I always thought of them as heroes.”

Matthaeus felt the wind ruffle his hair, but it felt warm this time, like a hand. He leaned back into it slightly, closing his eyes and savouring the warmth.

“If you ever meet one of the Order’s members, be sure to be respectful, okay? Promise me,” the voice whispered practically into his ear. The warm wind spread, wrapping around him in an embrace. The wind had whirled into such strength it felt like a physical form, a warm body pressed against his back that he was certain would catch him if he just let himself fall backwards.

“Oh, but it’s probably best if you never meet one, though,” she said abruptly. “There are many things people say about them that are nothing more than rumour. But when people say that they’re an omen of death… well, they don’t go to a town for no reason.”

Crrrrrrrk.

The sudden crack of ice was so forceful that his heart skipped a beat, eyes staring blankly at the white expanse of a lake. The ice had cracked right in front of him, spreading out in all directions from a single point that had ruptured upwards. As if a fist had been driven into the ice from underneath with enough force to crack the entire surface of the lake, but just barely not enough to break all the way through.

The wind faltered, and faded into nothing, the air going perfectly still around him. It was then that he began to feel the chill.

From the center of the crack, underneath the spider-web-like epicenter, he could see something large and dark shifting about in the lake. It writhed like an eel, a tangled mass of indistinguishable size and shape through the distortion of the ice. Matthaeus rose to his feet, backing away from the thing, before a second crack knocked him off his feet and flat onto his back.

The black mass under the ice had bucked hard against the ice, forcing the already weakened point to buckle and rupture. Water sprayed up into the air, dousing Matthaeus and the surrounding ice in a layer of water so cold to the touch it burned.

He lay still on his back, until the spray had ended. The world around him went silent, as he stared blankly up at the clouded sky. Nowhere was there a clearing where he could see blue, just an endless expanse of light grey cloud that may just as well have been a ceiling or a blanket. He climbed to his feet, eyes drawn immediately to the now nearly open hole to the lake below. The chunks of ice had fallen back down into place, so there was no direct view of the waters below, but Matthaeus walked to the edge of the hole anyways.

The black mass from before was nowhere to be seen. The hole it had left was very much real, but whatever the thing was that had made it was gone for now. Even still, the pounding of the boy's heart got louder. Something was still wrong.

Shrrrrr...

Every part of him froze but for the tossing of his hair in the icy wind. Something had moved underneath the ice.

As if a single drop of ink had been spilled, a blackness slowly spread up from the center of the crack. Every bone in his body told him to run, to turn and sprint across the lake as if his life depended on it. But somehow it was like he couldn't control his own body anymore. He was drawn closer, eyes open wide, toes now creeping dangerously over the loose, floating ice over the hole.

A moment later, and the black ink reached the surface. Time froze, only the low beating of Matthaeus' heart proving that the world was moving at all. A single drop of the ink lifted, like gravity had been reversed. It formed into a raindrop, floating up into the air until it hovered at eye level.

He reached out towards it, uncertain and afraid, but driven by a reckless curiosity. The very second the tip of his finger reached the drop, he realised he had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

The inky black drop shuddered, and fell back to the ground. But as it connected with the ice it spread, out and out, racing in all directions so fast he couldn't even react in surprise. In a moment, the entire surface of the frozen lake was stained black in the ink. It seeped into every crack, over every flat surface of ice and snow, until the entire lake was covered.

Right as the ink reached the shores of the lake, a splitting pain in the back of his head knocked him to his knees. The winds whipped around him in a blisteringly cold gale now, but he could barely feel the cold over the pain in his head.

The last thing he remembered seeing was the eel like thing from before, twisting about in the lake underneath him. For a second, he made eye contact with it, as a glowing orange eye opened up on its serpentine face. Even though his eyes watered from the pain and he wanted nothing more than to just close them, he couldn't bring himself to look away.

In that moment, he was filled with the horrible certainty that he had just lost something precious.

Then the eel grinned, and everything went black.

His head still ached when he woke up. He was disoriented for a few moments, gasping and shooting up in the bed and accidentally throwing his blankets off onto the floor. He was drenched in sweat, and almost instantly began shivering from the sudden exposure to the air.

Where am I?

The room around him was... unfamiliar. It was small, barely large enough for the double bed he lay in and the small dresser against the left wall. The door on the right was the only other notable feature, a simple wooden door that was slightly ajar.

With a start he realised that the unfamiliarity of the room wasn't anywhere near the strangest part of his situation. What was worse was that he couldn't remember what room he should have been in. He tried to call up an image of his own bedroom, but could see nothing. Of his house or his town, but could see nothing.

With a growing sense of panic, he found that he couldn't remember anything at all. Where he was, how he got there, where he was from, what he looked like, what his family looked like... everything was blank.

Don't let them take you, Matthaeus.

A woman's voice, warm and comforting, pushed its way up from the back of his mind.

Matthaeus. My name is Matthaeus.

He grasped onto that one memory, that one tiny thing he still had. He repeated his own name over and over in his head, slowly calming himself down.

With the panic over, he took to looking around the room again. No lights were lit but it was still bright enough to see, not that there was much for him to see. The only thing of interest was the bedside table, where he could see a small pile of bandages and other things he could recognize only as being vaguely medical.

He was also covered in bandages, he realised. Every part of his body ached, not just the back of his head. His fingers were stiff and barely moved, and his arms between his knuckles and elbows were so wrapped in slightly dirty white bandages that he looked like a mummy. His left leg was stiffer than his right, and upon inspection he found it had a wooden brace affixed to it, held tight to his leg with more bandages.

It took a couple of minutes, but he was able to pry the brace off, after removing some of the bandages. The leg was still much stiffer than the other, but he could sit much more comfortably now that both legs could bend again.

On the left wall was a window, which he carefully made his way over to, unsteady on his feet. It was either very late at night or very early at morning. The sky was all black above, but on the distant horizon, the sky right at the edge was a deep purple colour.

With how dark out it was and the light coming in from the door behind him, he saw less of the world outside and more of his own reflection staring back at him.

Two amber eyes set high on a thin, pale face, framed by black hair that was only kept away from his face by the bandages wrapped around his forehead. He was young, maybe ten years old at the most, and had to stand on the tips of his toes to see through the window properly.

He heard something moving from behind him, just outside the door. He walked quietly over, not sure why he was trying to stay hidden but feeling the urge to anyways. The closer he got the more clearly he could hear several voices talking in another room. He could hear the low, gruff voice of a very serious sounding man and the higher, scratchier voice of an elderly man, interrupted sometimes by wheezing coughs. A few times he heard an elderly woman, as well.

Matthaeus couldn't make out any words, though. He pressed a little closer to the doorway, straining his ear in blatant eavesdropping. Maybe if he could hear what they were saying, he could start to learn something about where he was?

But right as he was leaning as close to the open doorway as he dared, his left leg betrayed him. It tweaked painfully somewhere in his knee and he stumbled forwards, until he was no longer beside the door but standing right in the open doorway. He glanced up in panic to see if he had been caught... and made eye contact with the young man sitting across the hall.

The young man had brilliant golden eyes and hair that was nearly blond, but was actually closer to copper in colour than any normal shade. Matthaeus took in the black armour he wore, and the sword he carried at his hip, before darting back inside his room and shutting the door as quickly as he could without slamming it.

Matthaeus hurried back to his bed, heart beating unreasonably hard for having just been simply seen. Maybe it was guilt at being caught snooping? He wasn't entirely sure.

Still, he crawled back under the covers, wincing slightly as he had to bend his leg more than it wanted to. The air in the room had been chilly, and he was glad to be back in the warmth and relative safety of the thick blankets. Right as he finished settling in, the little adrenaline spike he had gotten settled down, and he felt heaviness settle into his limbs. He was suddenly so tired that even just sititng upright in bed seemed like too much effort, and the dull ache in his head protested all the movement he had done with more spikes of pain.

Closing his eyes and pulling the blankets up until they covered his chin, he let himself slowly settle back down. While stray thoughts and questions still floated around his mind, he was too tired to focus on any one in particular.

It took a while for him to fall asleep, his exhaustion and the unanswered questions in his mind competing for his attention. Eventually, his mind caved, and the heaviness he felt dragged his eyelids closed. In a moment, he drifted off into a deep sleep, undisturbed by dreams.