It began with the scent of woodsmoke and wet earth.
Elara Valen stumbled into the village just after dawn, her wedding gown trailing behind her like a dying ghost. The snow had faded somewhere past the black line of trees, giving way to cold mud and frostbitten weeds that cracked underfoot. The forest behind her felt like it was still watching. But she didn't look back.
The village—if it could be called that—rose like a bruise in the valley's throat. Crooked houses made of warped timber leaned into one another for support, their thatched roofs sagging under the weight of old moss and frost. Chimneys bled smoke into the pale sky. A single stone path wound its way through the narrow center, flanked by slush, splinters, and silence.
There were no carriages here. No glass towers. No guards.
No voices.
Elara drew her arms around herself, shivering as the cold bit through the thin silk of her ruined wedding dress. Her fingers were numb, caked in dirt. The edge of her veil snagged on a wooden post carved with a spiral she didn't recognize. She yanked it free.
Keep moving.
She didn't know what had driven her here, only that something had—something instinctive, like a thread tugged deep in her gut. All she knew was that the Thorn King ruled this land, and this village was one of his many forgotten corners.
A place where no one would look for a runaway bride.
The villagers noticed her slowly, as if woken from a long sleep. A child in a wool hood peered out from behind a door. An old man sweeping frost from a doorstep paused, leaning on his broom. A woman with bandaged fingers and tired eyes watched her from a narrow window above a bakery where the scent of stale bread and old firewood lingered.
No one spoke.
They just looked. As if they were used to strange things arriving on foot, half-dead and full of ghosts.
A crow landed on a nearby post, feathers slick with dew. It tilted its head and let out a low croak.
The sound startled her more than it should have.
Elara pressed onward, eyes searching the unfamiliar landscape. Every house looked on the verge of collapse, yet still lived in. Strips of drying meat hung on wires beside withered herbs—sage, perhaps, or something stronger. One door was painted with a crude red circle. Another had salt across the threshold.
A shrine sat at the village's center—little more than a mound of stones ringed with thorns and bone charms. Teeth. Animal and otherwise. Elara paused before it, unsure whether to bow or spit.
She did neither.
Instead, she crossed the square, her footsteps loud on the wet stone, until she reached the edge of what might once have been a market. A line of open stalls stood beneath a sagging canvas awning. Most were empty, their wares gone or rotted. One, however, was filled with jars—clear glass full of herbs and dead insects, dried roots and dust.
And beside that stall: movement.
A girl crouched on a crate, peeling something with a rusted knife. Her cloak was patched in at least seven places, boots two sizes too big. A pair of uneven braids framed her face, which was dirty but cheerful in a way Elara didn't trust. She was humming. Loudly. Off-key.
Elara meant to walk past.
But then the girl looked up and grinned. "Well. You look like an overturned wedding cake."
Elara blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You know, all frosted and bleeding. Little bits falling off everywhere." The girl waved her knife vaguely. "Very dramatic. Ten out of ten."
Elara stared. She was cold, exhausted, and entirely unprepared to be mocked by a child with turnip stains on her knees.
The girl stood and wiped her hands on her cloak. "You lost?"
"No," Elara said tightly.
"Running from something?"
"I said no."
"Running to something then," the girl mused, tapping her chin. "Always the trickier option."
Elara turned to leave.
"You're not from here," the girl called after her. "Which means you probably don't know about the teeth tax."
Elara paused. "…The what?"
"The tax you pay with your teeth if you walk past my stall without saying your name."
Elara turned slowly. "Is that a threat?"
The girl beamed. "No. It's a joke. You're very serious, aren't you? Like a knife that doesn't know it's sharp. I'm Mira."
Elara considered walking away again. But something in the girl's voice—offbeat, odd, disarming—made her stay.
"Elara," she said, reluctantly.
Mira nodded, as if this confirmed something. "Thought so. You've got that whole tragic, haunted look. It's very in right now."
"I don't need company," Elara said, already regretting the exchange.
"Good," Mira replied. "Because I'm not offering it. I'm just going to walk around beside you and occasionally insult your fashion choices. Maybe steal your soul if I get bored."
Elara blinked.
Mira was already hopping off her crate and falling into step beside her. "C'mon. You should see the swamp. It's got frogs the size of cats. They sing at night. Screechy little lullabies."
"I didn't ask—"
"Also there's a lady who eats livers and sells soup."
"…What?"
"You'll love it. Probably."
Elara exhaled through her nose, glaring at the sky. But she didn't stop walking. And Mira didn't stop talking.
The village of Ashroot, she would come to learn, was filled with people who had been broken in quiet ways. Places like this didn't survive through hope or faith. They survived through habit, through silence, through an uneasy pact with the monsters that lived beyond the trees.
But Mira—this strange, too-loud orphan(a detail Mira tried to speed over) with a grin full of mischief—was something different. Something like light.
And Elara hated that.
Or tried to.
The road bent left around a crooked post where birds had gouged into the wood, and Mira was still talking.
"…and then she looked at me and said, 'Why are there buttons in your soup?' And I said, 'Because you didn't pay me with real coin, lady, you paid me with a rock painted like a mouse.'" Mira spread her arms like this proved a point. "So honestly, I feel like it was a fair trade."
Elara did not respond. Her dress had started to freeze stiff around her ankles, and her breath came in pale huffs. The cold was a living thing, chewing at her bones.
Mira didn't seem to notice. She danced along the path beside her, occasionally leaping over patches of frost or spinning to face Elara while walking backward. "You're walking like someone who's never walked in mud before. Don't they have dirt in wherever-you're-from?"
Elara sighed. "Solaria."
Mira gave a low whistle. "Ooh. So you're from the golden cage."
"It's not a cage."
"Then why did you run?"
Elara didn't answer. She focused on the stone path instead. The way it broke into rough dirt, then returned to cobbled fragments like shattered bone. Every building they passed seemed older than the last—wood bowed by time, windows shuttered with crooked slats. Above them, cloth banners hung faded and frayed, the designs long worn away.
A woman stood in one doorway, eyes dull and distant. She was stitching something—but her needle was made of bone, and the fabric looked suspiciously like skin.
Elara kept walking.
Mira noticed her tension. "They're harmless, mostly. People around here don't ask questions and don't give answers. It's tradition. And survival."
"Survival?" Elara glanced at the woman again. "What kind of village is this?"
Mira grinned. "The kind built in a place where monsters eat the sunrise. C'mon, I'll show you."
They passed a cluster of goats—scraggly, hollow-eyed creatures with too many horns. One turned its head as they walked by and let out a sound halfway between a bleat and a growl.
Elara quickened her pace.
"Most of the folks around here came to Ashroot after the Veilfall," Mira said as they reached another corner. "Some fled deeper into the forest. Some stayed. This is where the world broke, you know."
Elara frowned. "Broke?"
Mira pointed toward a high stone wall in the distance, crumbling and covered in vines. "That used to be the edge of the king's western border. Then the forest swallowed it. One day the sun stopped rising right, and the trees started listening. People say the Thorn King was already here. That he built his castle from the bones of cities that tried to forget him."
Elara looked at her. "And people still live here?"
Mira shrugged. "People'll live anywhere. Monsters need farmers too."
That made Elara stop.
Mira raised her brows. "What?"
"Monsters… need farmers?"
"Well yeah," Mira said matter-of-factly. "Where do you think they get offerings? Salt? Wards? Sacrifices don't grow on trees, you know."
Elara turned to keep walking. Mira skipped beside her like this was all normal.
"Anyway," she continued, "we're going to see the soup lady. She has good stories. Bad breath. Bit of a liver problem."
They turned down an alley marked with red twine and bone charms. Something had clawed the stone walls here—long, deep gouges that oozed a dark resin. A wooden spoon hung above a crooked door.
Mira knocked once. Then again, louder.
"Backdoor's for guts," she called. "And we've got nothing worth stealing!"
After a pause, the door creaked open.
A woman peered out, eyes watery and black around the rims. Her face looked like it had been stitched together from bad memories. Hair in wiry gray strands clung to her scalp like seaweed.
"Elara, meet Miss Murn," Mira said brightly. "Murn, meet Elara. She's got trauma and a broken engagement. We're celebrating."
Murn snorted. "Hmph. Come in or get eaten."
The inside of the hut was like walking into a cauldron. Steam clung to the ceiling. Herbs hung in thick bundles, some dripping with sap. A pot bubbled on a three-legged stove that groaned every time the flame shifted.
Mira plopped down on a stool. Elara stayed standing, arms folded.
"She's a guest," Mira explained, helping herself to a ladle of soup. "Ran away from her wedding."
Murn grunted. "Bet the groom was a bastard."
"He was," Elara said quietly.
Murn handed her a chipped bowl. "You're safe here. For now."
Elara took the soup. It smelled of ginger and bloodroot. "Safe from what?"
Murn gave her a look. "From the ones who take joy in the hunt. The Thorn King doesn't care for the chase. But others do. The Beast of Briars, for one. The Lantern Wolves. Even the Hollow Choir's been sniffing near the river lately."
Mira slurped her soup. "Murn used to be a witch."
"Was?" Murn bristled. "Still am."
"You burned your last wand."
"It bit me."
"And you brewed a love potion that turned the mayor into a toad."
Murn gestured with a spoon. "He was a toad."
Elara blinked, unsure if they were serious.
Then she heard it.
A distant howl. Low, throaty. Not a wolf. Something larger.
The hut went still.
Mira stopped chewing. Murn's eyes flicked to the window.
"They're early," the old woman muttered. "Sun's not down."
Elara's fingers tightened on the bowl. "What is that?"
Murn said nothing. She rose and pulled the shutters closed, muttering something in a tongue Elara didn't recognize.
Mira offered a weak smile. "Just part of the charm of living here. You get used to it."
Elara didn't want to get used to it. She wanted to understand it.
After the sound passed, they stepped back into the fog-thin air of Ashroot. The village had retreated into itself—windows shuttered, doors barred. An old man with a lantern slipped quietly behind a building, trailing salt.
The bells began to toll.
A hollow, metallic clang—slow and cold, like something rusted.
"What is that?" Elara asked.
"The evening toll," Mira said. "It means stay inside. But we're not inside. So either we hurry or we die." She smiled cheerfully. "Your call."
They ran.
Through alleys that smelled of wet fur and sulfur. Past the shrine again, which now had a fresh offering: a tooth in a bowl of milk. Elara didn't ask.
They reached Mira's home—a crumbling house at the edge of the village with a roof half-collapsed and a single window painted with black runes.
Mira shoved the door open. "Welcome to the royal suite. Don't touch the mushrooms near the hearth, they bite."
Elara stepped inside. The air was warmer here, and oddly fragrant. Not sweet—but earthy, like dried lavender and iron. A nest of quilts was piled in one corner. A lantern swung from the ceiling on a chain of bones. On the walls: drawings. Dozens. Charcoal sketches of creatures with eyes like fire and mouths too wide. Elara studied them.
"You drew these?"
Mira shrugged. "Sometimes they draw themselves."
Elara sat stiffly on the floor, too tired to ask what that meant. Her dress was muddy, frozen stiff at the hem. She was shaking.
Mira noticed. She tossed her a blanket that smelled faintly of spice.
"You don't have to talk about it," she said. "Whatever made you run."
Elara looked at her. "A crown."
"Ah," Mira nodded. "One of those monsters."
The silence between them stretched. But it wasn't a cruel silence. Just quiet. Wary.
"I'm leaving," Elara said eventually.
Mira blinked. "Where?"
"To the Thorn King's castle."
Mira stared. "You're joking."
"I'm not."
"People don't go there. That place is—"
"I know."
Mira was quiet. Then she said, "You won't make it two days without someone to help you."
"I didn't ask for help."
"Too bad," Mira said cheerfully. "I'm coming anyway."
Elara didn't leave the next day.
The fog hadn't lifted. It never quite did in Ashroot. The mist hung low and heavy, draping the crooked rooftops and twisted trees like burial shrouds. There was no sunlight—only a pale gray brightness that hovered behind the clouds, making everything look like a faded painting.
She hadn't meant to stay, but her legs ached and her body burned with exhaustion, and Mira had offered her soup and shelter with a shrug that meant "it's not that big a deal," even though Elara knew it was. Shelter was rare in the king's woods.
So she stayed. One night became two. Two became three.
Mira insisted on dragging her around the village during the day. They wandered past butcher stalls and lantern makers, up the crooked hill to where a blind man rang wind chimes to keep away "the singing ones." He offered Elara a smooth black stone.
"For luck," he rasped. "You'll need it. Pretty ones always do."
Elara pocketed it.
They met the candle-woman next—a quiet girl no older than sixteen who made wax shapes that melted into prayers. Mira tried to steal one, got her hand smacked with a spoon, and then apologized with a carrot carved like a cat. The candle-woman smiled faintly and handed her a candle shaped like a heart pierced with thorns.
"This is what you are," she told Elara.
Elara stared at it.
"What does that mean?" she asked Mira later.
Mira shrugged. "Either you're cursed in love, or your heart belongs to someone dangerous. Or both. I once got a candle shaped like a chicken with three eyes."
"What did that mean?"
"Apparently I talk too much and ignore danger signs. But I already knew that."
They returned to Murn's for stew and stories each evening. Elara didn't ask what the meat was.
Mira talked endlessly—about Ashroot, the monsters in the woods, the village's strange rituals. She joked even in the quietest places, even when the wind moaned low like something dying in the trees. Elara rolled her eyes at most of it. But she listened.
And though she didn't want to, she began to smile. Once. Just once, when Mira tried to balance a beet on her head and fell backward into the goat pen.
"See?" Mira huffed, beet in hand. "I suffer for my art."
Elara didn't laugh. But her lips twitched.
By the fourth day, Elara had memorized the village's layout. There were no straight paths in Ashroot. Roads curved like question marks. Buildings slumped into each other. The shrine in the square grew more unsettling by the day. Offerings appeared without explanation—silver teeth, rabbit hearts, a broken crown twisted with iron wire.
She stopped to stare at it that morning.
Mira noticed. "That's for Him," she said quietly, for once not joking. "The one who rules these lands."
Elara's throat tightened.
"He doesn't come here," Mira added. "He doesn't have to. People offer things so he stays gone."
Elara turned. "Does no one fight him?"
Mira blinked. Then laughed. "Fight the Thorn King? You might as well try to fight gravity."
She said it with a smile. But there was something hollow in her voice. Something that made Elara's skin crawl.
"He's just a man," Elara said stiffly. "No one is invincible."
"No," Mira said. "But some people are… older than time remembers. And some kings don't sit on thrones. They build them out of corpses."
She said it lightly. Too lightly. As if it was a story she'd repeated so many times it had become safe.
Elara couldn't sleep that night.
She started helping Murn around the hut. Stirring stew. Chopping herbs. Grinding seeds that smelled like fire. The old woman didn't thank her, but her grunts grew less hostile. Once, she handed Elara a charm carved from a cat's tooth.
"It's not for luck," Murn said. "It's for survival. Different thing entirely."
"Do you believe in any of this?" Elara asked. "The monsters, the curses, the Thorn King?"
Murn looked up slowly. Her eyes were dark and watery. "Child. I once saw a man cough up spiders for lying about what god he prayed to. I watched a woman grow roots from her hands because she stole a ring meant for a spirit. I've seen the Thorn King's wolves. I've heard them speak in dreams. Do I believe?"
She laughed once, sharp and bitter.
"I believe because I have to."
Later that day, Mira tried to give Elara a handmade dagger.
It was clearly junk—a handle wrapped in fraying twine, a blade chipped at the edge.
"Why are you giving me this?" Elara asked.
"Because if something comes out of the woods, screaming your name, I want you to at least be able to stab it in the knee."
Elara raised a brow. "Do monsters have knees?"
Mira considered. "If not, go for the eyes. Everything's got eyes."
"I don't want it," Elara said.
"You need it," Mira said.
"I'm not afraid."
"That's not what I said."
They stood there for a long moment, wind stirring between them, carrying the scent of wet ash and something faintly metallic.
Finally, Elara took the blade.
Mira smiled. "See? Now we're bonded. You take a terrible knife from someone and it means you're stuck with them forever. It's tradition."
"I don't want to be stuck with anyone."
"Tough luck."
That night, the wolves howled again. Louder.
And this time, they sounded closer.
The village sealed itself in with salt lines and bone charms. No one spoke. Even the candle-woman covered her windows in ash and whispered prayers into a bowl of milk.
Elara watched Mira sleep, curled in a pile of mismatched quilts. Her face was relaxed for once. Peaceful.
Elara didn't sleep.
She kept the blade close.
On the fifth day, she decided.
"I'm leaving," she said.
Mira looked up from where she was trying to convince a raccoon not to steal bread. "You said that yesterday."
"I mean it."
Mira didn't argue. She just nodded.
"You'll die alone," she said, not unkindly.
"I won't."
"You will."
Elara stared at her. "You're not coming."
Mira grinned. "Did I say I was?"
Elara exhaled. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I'll just follow you later."
"You wouldn't."
"I would."
Elara didn't answer.
They both knew she was telling the truth