Each footstep falls faster than the one before it, pushing harder into the dirt as the boy runs. His black hair flies wildly behind him, and his amber eyes are wide in panic. The branches of the forest reach out to grab him, their bark blackened and slimy, like they were covered in algae. He runs, but nothing chases. There’s no pounding of paws behind him, nor the snarling of beasts.

He runs anyway.

Through bramble after bramble, bush after bush, around tree after tree. Never can he see much farther than his face, the woods are too thick, yet it barely slows him. He pushes, running faster and faster, until all at once he breaks out into a clearing again.

He slides to a stop on the surface of a black lake, the bitter cold wind lashing at him from every side. The countless eyes under the ice seem to mock him, the tangle of eels wriggling in a gleeful dance.

He walks slowly to the middle of the lake. It’s there that he finds it again. A lone eel, above the ice, floundering weakly. But not as weakly as before. Had it grown larger since last time?

The boy did not wait to find out. He picks a new direction and runs, breaths ragged and laboured, until he leaves the lake behind. Then it’s back into the thicket, through the dense evergreens and bushes and vines, running from something that does not give chase.

A few minutes later, he breaks out into a clearing. His feet slide to a stop on the black ice, where mocking eyes look up at him. He bites the inside of his cheek, tasting blood but not registering the pain.

The amber eyes of a lone eel meet his.

And again, he runs.

Over, and over again.

Matthaeus awoke with a scream. Not a cry, not a shout, but a scream that ripped and tore at his throat. His breathing was rapid, panicked, and he clawed at his chest where his heart was hammering within. Vaguely he could feel a bed under him, but it was unfamiliar. Foreign.

A few moments later, or perhaps it was an eternity, his door was thrown open, the sudden bang barely audible over the rushing of blood to his ears.

“Oi, Matthaeus! Kid, what’s wrong?! Why’re ya screamin’ like that?” Reyland shouted.

Oh, I’m still screaming, a distant, calm part of Matthaeus realised. Like a tiny voice in the back of his head that was viewing everything from afar. Like it was happening to someone else, not him. But then, why did he still feel…

He closed his mouth, jaws snapping shut a little too quickly. Reyland looked on with concern. The young apprentice had his shortsword drawn and at the ready, golden eyes dancing around every part of the room for a threat.

“Hey, you-” Reyland started.

Griff barged into the room just behind him, his large, cleaver-like knife in hand. Griff scanned the room in an instant, lowering his weapon slowly.

“Matthaeus,” Griff said quietly, and calmly. “What happened?”

A rolling feeling in Matthaeus’ stomach nearly made him sick. Blood rushed to his head and he keeled over, rolling off the side of his bed before catching himself and standing wobbly to his feet.

Run. Run.

Every part of his mind and body was screaming at him. His limbs began to shake from the weight of it, the pressure that was building behind his eyes.

“Matthaeus, are you…?” Reyland asked, holding a hand out as if to pat him on the back. Matthaeus moved quickly away before he could.

Run. Run and hide. Fight? No, run. Run, run…

Reyland and Griff were saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear them. Instead, he ran. His sudden burst of movement seemed to catch them off guard and he managed to slip through the doorway behind them and out into the hall. He heard Reyland’s shout as the apprentice chased after him, but they were already gone from Matthaeus’ mind.

Why- why is this… what is happening? That lonely, quiet voice in the back of his mind questioned it all.

Run. Faster, faster!

He ran past servants in the halls, then guards, barreling past them as he sprinted faster than he had ever before. No one could catch him, he was too small, too nimble. He ducked under hands and arms and legs just like they were the limbs of trees, reaching out to drag him down.

Eventually, he started seeing them that way, too. Not people, not soldiers or servants. Just the limbs of black trees, swaying and lurching in a cold wind.

Run! Run and fight! Fight!

He burst through a doorway, head swimming as the pressure behind his eyes had extended into his sinuses. He felt like he was about to burst, as if the prick of a needle to his head would pop it like a bubble. Mindlessly he ran up a flight of stairs then crashed through another door, and suddenly he was outside.

Rain pelted against him painfully, so frigid it was on the verge of being hail. It stung every inch of open skin, but he barely felt it.

Fight! Run and fight!

Hunt.

He froze, digging his nails into the wooden railing in front of him, eyes glazed over unseeing.

The wordless, frenzied panic in him thrashed about with a newfound vigour, yet his actions slowed to a crawl. His fingers dug so deep into the wooden railing that several of his nails broke under the pressure.

Slowly, he turned his gaze upwards from his hands, looking out with wide, shocked eyes. He was standing on the outer wall of the keep, looking out over the field and forests that surrounded them - or what little of the surroundings he could see. It was an ocean of black, the storm turning an already dark night into an unseeable void.

A pit formed in his stomach, and his hands clenched even tighter on the wooden railing as he tried not to be sick over the edge.

“Matthaeus!” Reyland called out from behind him, panic and worry saturating his voice. “Come back inside! She ain’t safe out ‘ere in this weather!”

In the distance, lightning struck, followed instantly by the clapping of thunder. The brief flash of light illuminated the forest, which Matthaeus desperately scanned in what little time he had. It remained dark and empty, devoid of any signs of movement.

Reyland’s arm came down overtop of Matthaeus’ shoulder, hugging him to Reyland’s side as the apprentice tried to block the rain with his own body.

“C’mon, kiddo, whatever’s got ya bothered, Griff can have a chat with ya inside-” Reyland said with concern.

Matthaeus refused to budge. He stared out over the forest, even as Griff caught up and quietly came to stand behind them.

Run. Run and fight.

Hunt.

The instincts in Matthaeus’ mind still gripped his body like a vice, pounding and screaming from within. He clenched his teeth together hard, jaw quivering as the blood from his broken nails was washed away by the rain.

He knew this feeling. How could he ever forget? What that night had felt like?

And this was just the same.

“It’s coming,” Matthaeus said quietly, his voice shaking and disturbed.

“W-what?” Reyland said, taken aback.

“The Blight,” Matthaeus said simply. “It’s coming.”

Reyland drew his arm back from the boy, looking back and forth between him and the forest with concern.

“Griff, what, uh, what do-”

“Are you certain?” Griff asked calmly, his dark eyes watching the forest as well.

Matthaeus nodded.

“Griff, we’re weeks away at this point, you don’t really think-”

“Reyland,” Griff interrupted his apprentice. The young man gulped.

“Aye?” Reyland responded.

“Get your armour.”

Reyland gave one final look over Matthaeus, his master and the forest, that worried look never leaving his face. Then he turned on a dime and sprinted back inside the keep tower.

Not a moment later, a horn blared from the front gate. Matthaeus did not even look over. He knew what was coming anyways.

“Riders!” A soldier cried out from the gate as the keep began stirring to life. “Riders in black! It’s the Order!”

A hand came over Matthaeus’ shoulder, gently but firmly. The sudden warmth snapped Matthaeus to attention, blinking rapidly as his senses started coming back to him.

“See yourself inside, child,” Griff commanded in Norlin. “There will be no heroics this time. Understand?”

Matthaeus turned to follow Griff’s gaze, spotting the indistinct black shapes of the Order barrelling towards the gate. Many carried torches that seemed to have all but fizzled out in the rain, just dull orange embers remaining on the ends.

Matthaeus nodded again, the cold, disconnected part of his mind taking over. The frenzy of panic and instinct hadn’t faded, yet it was pushed aside, squashed down underneath a blanket of numbness.

As he walked towards the doors back inside, he heard the rattling of the gate being opened. He paused just long enough to look over the railing to the inner courtyard, seeing the first few Ordained charge through. He saw villagers with them, too, and started scanning for familiar faces with a gut wrenching worry.

“Close the gates! Close the gates!” A young, female Ordained screamed the second the last of them was inside. “Close it now or we’re all mincemeat, ya bastards!”

The soldiers of the keep had stirred, rousing by the dozens as they entered the courtyard carrying torches. None of them moved with much urgency, most seemingly still half asleep.

“Wassa’ meaning’a this?!” The unpleasant shout of a certain commander broke into the air. “Not more’a you damn-”

The man never got to finish his sentence. Matthaeus watched as something blurred through the air, and then the nasty man dropped to the ground. Matthaeus’ heart started to race, the frenzy beneath the calm trying to rear its ugly head once again.

A spine, or perhaps it was a quill, several feet long protruded from the commander’s ribcage. The soldiers around him began to shout and scream, drawing weapons and pointing them at the Ordained, and the gate was still open.

Then, Matthaeus’ amber eyes found what he’d been looking for. There, near the very back, was an old man and woman, grey hair visible even in the dark, supporting each other and barely standing…

He was running before he had even decided to do so. He sprinted along the top of the wall away from Griff, down a flight of stairs and into the courtyard, dashing past soldiers the whole way.

“-As if we would ‘ere do that, ev’n if we could!” The young woman in black shouted, bristling at the weapons pointed at her and her group. Matthaeus paid her no mind.

“You killed the commander! Off with ‘em then, off with yer heads, the lot of ya!” A slurred, drunken sounding soldier shouted back.

“We’ll all be losin’ more than our ‘eads if you don’t get that gate shut!” The woman screamed. “You dyin’ to meet the Blight up close an’ personal-like? Be my guest!”

“She say Blight?”

“Aye, she did, she did…”

The voices of the random, nameless soldiers meant little to Matthaeus as he sprinted by. His eyes were on only two people.

He heard shouts of panic from the top of the gate, followed by a scream. A body fell off the wall, tumbling over backwards with a quill through its chest. A second later a horn blew, and the gate slammed shut.

In the darkness just beyond the metal barricade, something was moving. A great many shapes, swarming over the land. In the darkness of night and storm they were nearly invisible, that is, until all at once their eyes lit up.

Suddenly, the darkness wasn’t so dark. The luminescence of hundreds of eyes flickered on at once, and the panicked yells from inside the keep were the signal for all hell to break loose.

Outside, the beasts screamed in response. Howls, roars, sounds too gut wrenching for Matthaeus to even describe rose into the air as the frenzy in his veins flared like a fanned flame.

The elderly couple didn’t see him until he ran into their sides. He threw his arms around them, squeezing with all his might, to the surprised grunts of the embraced. It was only a moment and a gasp of surprise later that they returned his hug.

“We go,” Matthaeus said in a panicked huff, his breathing as laboured as it had been in his dream. “Please, we go.”

“Matthaeus, my boy,” Arthur said hurriedly. “You shouldn’t be here, you should be long gone by now.”

“All men, to the walls! To the walls!” The screamed order came down from above, blared out through a large conical horn, projected to every corner of the keep.

“I’d hoped at least you would be safe,” Matilda said in a horrified whisper. She pulled Matthaeus deeper into her arms. “Those things, they… followed us. For days. We didn’t even see them at first, not until a few of us went missing.”

“Enough, Mati,” Arthur said, nervously glancing behind him to the gate. The many soldiers of the keep blocked their view through the gate now, but Matthaeus knew what lay beyond. “We must go, quickly. Matthaeus is right.”

“Matthaeus!” Reyland’s voice shouted out, piercing through the chaos. Matthaeus turned around, spotting the apprentice pushing his way through the crowd of soldiers, his damaged black armour now donned.

A piercing, splitting pain wracked the back of Matthaeus’ skull, so suddenly and fiercely that he doubled over instantly, clawing at the back of his head. A hiss escaped his lips, as his vision darkened around the edges, blurring out of focus as the world seemed to fade away.

At the exact same moment, the sounds of battle started atop the walls. The scraping of claws against stone resounded all around, and the gate began to rattle as beasts threw themselves against it. Matthaeus peeked up and saw Reyland sprinting towards him. Arthur and Matilda’s hands were grabbing him, trying to stand him back up straight, but everything seemed so far away.

As if in slow motion, Matthaeus watched the world move by before him. The crowd of soldiers running to the walls, the Ordained who tried to join them or tended to the wounded, the silhouette of Griff stepping back out onto the wall, his own armour fixed in place now too…

Reyland’s stricken face, charging straight towards him, and the way the apprentice’s golden eyes danced around to the walls above, and the beasts at the gate. It was almost funny in a way, how different Reyland looked like this. Not a trace of humour or mirth, but a set jaw and hard eyes. He could have been a different person.

The winds around him seemed so cold all of a sudden, but he didn’t shiver. He felt numb to it all, even the vicious, gnashing cries of his own instinct, telling him to run and fight.

A cold shadow passed over him, blocking what little moonlight existed. In front of him, Reyland’s eyes went wide as he looked at something over Matthaeus’ head, his lips moving in a shout Matthaeus couldn’t make out.

“Wyvern!” A man screamed, and the world suddenly came back into focus.

Reyland tackled Matthaeus, Arthur and Matilda alike, knocking all of them to the ground. Not a second later a talon crashed into the earth right where they had been, and the sudden beating of wings blew dirt and mud over all of them.

Matthaeus looked up in a panic, the cold numbness fully fading from his body. He froze stock still as he did, his eyes wide and unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

The winged beast, a wyvern, had crashed into the courtyard, its wings swiping into a line of soldiers with such force it knocked them across the yard, sending them crashing into the stone wall. Not one of them moved after they had landed.

Its body was blacker than night, scaled with patches of fur that covered much of its back. Its backwards-bending legs ended in vicious talons which dripped with a dark liquid, and its long, whip-like tail ended in a serrated spike.

Then the beast turned its head, and made eye contact directly with Matthaeus. The world came to a screeching halt, as all of his focus settled on that single eye glaring at him. It glowed and pulsed with a sickly, unnatural light, a vibrant orange that stood out so brightly against its dark scales.

It cocked its head slightly, eyes never leaving Matthaeus. He had the gut-churning feeling that it was studying him.

“Don’t just sit around!” Reyland screamed, picking him up and pushing him away from the wyvern abruptly. Matthaeus staggered, barely keeping his footing. “Into the tower, all of you!”

The wyvern turned its attention from Matthaeus to Reyland, and its scaled lips peeled upwards in a snarl. The growl that followed vibrated the very ground, physically shaking Matthaeus in his boots.

The dagger tucked into Matthaeus’ belt burned against his back, but he made no move to draw it. It seemed so… pitiful, in the face of something like that.

Reyland made eye contact with him, and a look of understanding crossed them both.

“Go,” Reyland spoke in Norlin, his accent thick. “Get them to safety.”

Matthaeus had no time to gawk. He clenched his jaw and nodded, then grabbed Arthur and Matilda’s hands, and pulled them as fast as he could towards the tower.

The boy spared one last glance over his shoulder as he ran. The courtyard had cleared, the soldiers too terrified to even approach the winged beast in the centre. They fired crossbows, but each bolt glanced harmlessly off the monster’s scales.

Reyland alone stood before the beast, shortsword in hand. Matthaeus’ heart quivered, but he clenched his jaw and kept running.

He’ll be okay, Matthaeus told himself. He’ll be okay.

Behind him, he heard the sounds of the wyvern bursting into motion. The screams of guards, the buffet of wind lashing against his back… the ring of steel against scale.

Then he pushed through the door and slammed it shut behind him, blocking it all out. The lights and eyes disappeared, his heart began to calm, and the sounds became quiet.

For now, at least.