The path that had, at one time, been cut thoroughly through Midriedan Forest, deep into the woods’ darkest depths, had become nothing more than a trail of thorns and forgotten, molding signs. Raven Trynne stared wistfully at the diverging path before him, his satchel thrown over his shoulder. It had been ten years, ten long years, since his last visit to these woods, and to him, nothing could have been more terrible and wonderful at the same time. He was ten years older, ten years wiser, and no longer the same spry young man he’d been when he had anxiously leapt at the opportunity to serve his country during the Wolves’ War. Traces of silver had recently appeared at his temples; lines upon his face were gradually becoming more and more apparent as the winter months slowly slid past. Each year was as interminable as the last, bringing with it nothing new or exciting; just passing time and one less year left in his life.

He leaned heavily upon his walking staff; had this mountain hike always taxed him so? No… In his youth, he and Wren had bounded up this path, when it was clear of debris and decaying matter. During the spring, when the new grasses were flourishing and the flowers made the air heady with their aroma, he and Wren spent countless hours on this small mountain, hunting together and lounging lazily in the sun. They were two young men, counting clouds and running from spring showers when they fell suddenly without warning, laughing jovially together and reveling obliviously in the perfect world they were not even aware of.

He smiled again at the memories, then, catching his breath, he continued his steady trudge through the overgrown forest, pushing his way through the thorny vines with his staff. Instincts that he had believed long dead reminded him of the approaching sunset, urged him to find shelter before the moon rose, illuminating him in its silver light. He would be vulnerable to predators then. Years ago, he would not have worried about this quite so much, but the war had not released him unscathed. He was, quite obviously, cripple, his left knee an almost useless appendage that did nothing for him but hinder his passage through the forest that evening. His senses warned him that he was not alone in his traipse; the creatures of the forest noted his weakness and followed him, waiting for one moment of frailty.

‘Not tonight,’ he promised himself with a smirk and hauled himself up the mountainside.

Raven knew the fate of his village; he had been present the morning the Torakibian soldiers road in on their massive war horses and burnt every single hut to cinders on the ground. He remembered his flight from Scarrou through Midriedan with painfully vivid clarity. Screams of agony followed him for miles during that flight, screams of protest, screams of outrage, screams of despair as his brethren gave all up for lost…

Perched on a dead twig in one of the spidery trees, a single songbird whistled a mournful tune in the dying light of the day. Raven was drawn out of his reverie at the bird’s song. He paused to listen for a moment, a puzzled frown creasing his brows.

He smiled wryly.

The path snaked off to the left, curving around the western side of the mountain along a narrow bluff. Raven hesitated before stepping off onto the shoulder; a little bit of the earth gave way at the press of his booted foot, but it sustained long enough for him to cross to firmer ground. As he stepped off onto a stone precariously near the ledge of the bluff, the loosened soil gave out behind him, becoming a river of deep red dirt as the shoulder vanished.

His return path was gone. With a slightly nebulous smile, Raven realized that he didn’t mind all that much. He had no intention of leaving the nameless mountain ever again.

He passed by the ruin of an old house, and paused long enough to examine the remains. His heart tightened in his chest; the dwelling had once belonged to his grandmother and grandfather, who had perished during the first Torakibian raid. He and Wren had pulled their charred, lifeless bodies out of the rubble and buried them in crude graves. Curiously, he glanced in the direction of the two grave markers… and was not surprised to find them missing. The stones had likely been moved throughout the course of time. His heart throbbed a little at the knowledge that nothing marked where his grandparents lay in their eternal slumber, but he found that this did not bother him as much as it would have during his youth. His grandparents were well cared for in the hands of Stell and his choir of angels.

A mile down the road, Raven knew that the last remaining structures of Scarrou Village would provide him with enough shelter to rest for the night and recover his strength. Gathering his reserves, he set off down the rocky trail, relying heavily on the crutch at his side.

When he passed through the broken, wooden gates of Scarrou Village and took in for the first time the remains of his home, a strangled cry managed to force its way up out of his throat. Raven clenched his eyes shut and looked aside. Scarrou was a ghost town, barren of all life and a graveyard for souls that had no where left to wander. When he and Wren had played in the streets as children, the village was bursting at the seems with maternal love and vibrancy. Now, she cried in despair, holding close the souls of those beings who had lived within her. Raven took a hesitant step onto the grounds and felt a cold breeze buffet him from behind. The barren remains of the village opened to him, as if Scarrou herself welcomed back her last remaining child.

Clouds rolled across the moon then, and with a low grumble of thunder, a light drizzle of frigid rain came down upon both Raven and the village. He inhaled slowly, remembering the scent of wet pine and burning firewood; signs that winter was on the way within his home, and yet this cold, unwelcome night, no misty tendrils of smoke leaked out of chimney tops. No candles burned warmly on windowsills, no laughter was emitted from cracked doorways, and the town physician was not running from cottage to cottage, tending to runny noses or scrapes and bruises.

In fact, the only structures left standing were the village temple and a few scattered shops, all of which were missing their windows and doors, and were likely burglarized by the bandits that so often frequented the recently pillaged remains of towns and ships. His heart heavy with remorse and with tears threatening to spill over his lashes at any moment, Raven trudged down the main road, listening to the patter of raindrops on the dirt and on the leaves of the forest around him, towards the temple.

There was one window that had withstood the test of time, and Raven smiled despite himself at the sight of it. The small stained-glass window, expensively imported from the western land of Kalaweinvyrismere, remained majestically within her frame, depicting the Holy Deity Stell, garbed in his humble brown cloaks, feeding his last piece of bread to a starving child. Raven stopped in front of the modest temple and regarded it with fondness; the beautiful window looked very out of place in the frame of such a decadent building. Nevertheless, Raven felt himself warm to the familiar edifice, and hurried inside its open doors as the rain came down in harder sheets of liquid steel.

The hinges on the doors were decayed with rust, but with a little bit of effort Raven managed to heave them closed and bolt them. He sighed, exhausted from his labor, and stepped backwards to admire the rest of his childhood worship place.

A very slight smile curved up the corners of his mouth.

The tapestry behind the alter had been untouched by bandits; perhaps even in their greedy state, they had been unable to defile such a holy emblem. The tapestry depicted the same scene as the stain-glass window, except in much finer detail. Raven remembered the woman who had sewn the great work; she had given him a caramel-covered apple on his ninth birthday. If he remembered correctly, she had spent her entire adult life working on the tapestry, working into the long hours of the night on it, correcting it and modifying it. It was an icon, some believed, derived directly from Stell’s will into her able hands.

When the final stitch had been sewn, she went quietly in the night, never feeling an ounce of pain as her life force left this plane of existence and passed benignly into the next.

On the alter were other artifacts of worship; a tiny ceramic replica of Stell’s female incarnation in the mortal realm, Victoria. She held an olive branch between her fingers, and at her side walked a fawn. Beside the ceramic figures, Raven saw the humble brown goblet that he and Wren had often drunk holy water from each Thursday evening when they came to worship. Next to the goblet was a single sheet of parchment where Stell’s holy words were written down.

Raven touched his pocket, reached inside, and felt a piece of folded paper there. When he was younger, he scribbled down in his messy scrawl the words from that parchment, and he had carried it with him ever since. He knew the words by heart now, and had no more need for the paper than the priest had, and yet having those words so close to him almost seemed to reinforce his belief. Stell’s Words had always served as a light for him, guiding him and teaching him even when he refused to listen.

He walked slowly down the center aisle; on either side of him were pews, though the decadence of their state made him question whether they could support his weight were he to rest on them. Despite the chill of the weather outside and the dampness within the temple, warmth engulfed him and brought healthy color to his cheeks; he paused before the alter and looked down at the little ceramic figure of Victoria. He felt a childish sort of impishness come to him then; he’d been forbidden to touch the holy artifacts as a boy, though he’d always longed to, just to feel the coolness of the ceramic against his fingertips. He felt compelled to pick up at least the fawn now, just because there was no one there to slap his hand and rebuke him.

As soon as the shameful thought passed across his mind, he shunned it and felt himself burn in indignation. Even that shame felt purifying somehow, as if he was expelling something unwanted from his soul. Then, he gently reached out and touched the curve of Victoria’s hair, not simply because he was able to… but because he wanted to be sure. He wanted to be sure that all that surrounded him was really there, that he was within the sanctuary of his childhood temple.

He was. The ceramic figure was dusty and covered with cobwebs, and he carefully brushed them away.

There was a patch of dry stone underneath one of the remaining intact windows, and it looked relatively clean of mildew and other such wetness. Raven left the alter and sat down stiffly underneath the window. His back voiced a grumble of protest, but he dismissed the ache with a grimace; just another sign that his age was catching up with him. He lay back against the wall and closed his eyes, sighing out a soft breath of relief; his bones quivered from their long hike up the mountain and his muscles felt almost like liquid beneath his skin. After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked at the stain-glass window.

The rain had stopped, at least temporarily, and brilliant white moonlight was streaming inside; vibrant reds, blues, and greens were cast upon the stone floor of the temple. Raven smiled tiredly as a bit of the colorful light splashed across one of his extended legs.

He closed his eyes again and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

When he awoke, morning light was filling the temple, giving it a sort of deteriorating beauty that caused his heart to stir with appreciative melancholy. He groaned as he stood up and took time to pop his back and work the stiffness out of his arms and shoulders. He bent down and picked up his satchel, slung it over his shoulders; as much as he longed to stay within the temple and feel the warmth of Stell’s good grace surround him, this temple was not where he needed to be.

He gave up trying to dislodge the bolt from the door, instead clamoring out one of the broken windows, mindful of the jagged peaks of glass that could tear at his skin and clothes. He jumped off the ledge of the window and landed in a light crouch on the moist grass outside.

The early morning light was melting away the frosty condensation on the grass and leaves, causing the abandoned village square to gleam, as if covered with millions of tiny diamonds. Raven straightened slowly to regard his home, an expression of almost awestruck wonder on his face. A memory passed before his eyes, so powerful in its clarity that he wondered if perhaps it was real; the butcher from his boyhood opening the front door to his house to chuck out a black cat, which sat on his doorstep for a moment or two longer before darting off down the street. As soon as the memory materialized, it dissipated just as quickly, leaving Raven alone in the lifeless present.

The butcher’s cottage was no longer standing, he realized. There was only a pile of fallen wreckage where the stout little building had once stood.

His mind still bleary with sleep, it took Raven a few moments to get his bearings and remember exactly where it was he needed to be. Meandering listlessly into the village square, he turned around in a slow circle, looking at the various muddy streets as they branched off into the forest. He strained his mind, rummaging through the forgotten files of his memory. Which way was it…?

His brow smoothed and, taking up his crutch again, he set off down the path as it unfolded before him.

When he was twelve, Wren and another boy (Robin, he believed, was the child’s name), led him down this same path, blindfolded, to a field of sparse grasses and flowers, and one enormous oak tree. The tree, Raven was later told, was over one thousand years old, and had watched the inhabitants of Scarrou go about their everyday lives for longer than even his greatest grandmother could remember. Most of the villagers paid the tree a visit at least once a yearly cycle; it was almost a social occasion. Friends and families gathered at the massive tree’s base, exchanging stories and reminiscing about wonderful moments years before. Basking within the tree’s shade, there were few who did not feel protected by its sheer enormity.

Wren and Robin had led him into the clearing beneath the tree, and when the blindfold was removed, Raven was delighted to find his entire family gathered there to celebrate his twelfth birthday. It was a surprise, he realized, planned by Wren and organized by his sly friend Robin. That day was one he often thought of during his darker moments, especially during the Wolves’ War.

Robin had died during that war. He’d taken an arrow meant for Raven. Raven closed his eyes in an attempt to push away the memory of the entirely too red blood as it stretched spidery fingers across Robin’s pale shoulders and chest.

His path diverged into a fork, one muddy path leading back down the mountain; it was a relatively safe trip down this way. Raven had traveled it several times with friends as they roamed the mountain together. He knew that it would eventually take him to an inn, the very inn he’d rested in two nights ago, before ascending this mountain. Reaching that inn would take him little time and effort, and drink and a warm place to rest his weary bones awaited him. The other path snaked up the side of the mountain, the trail rocky and unwelcome to travelers, whether they had the stamina to continue or not. It would take him to that great oak tree, the top of which he could see scraping the unfathomable blue sky already, its limbs skeletal and free of leaves.

He remained where he stood for a moment longer, leaning heavily on the staff he clutched at his left side. Hunger stabbed at him suddenly, and he realized that he hadn’t eaten in over a day. Dismay made him grimace; he’d eaten his last ration for breakfast the previous morning, having expected that he would have reached his destination by now. Clearly, he had overestimated his abilities.

Despite the choice the diverging path offered, Raven had but one option, and that was to climb upward. Upward, away from the sanctuary of his childhood temple, away from the war-torn countryside that he had wasted ten years of his life on in an attempt to unify. The result of that war left him feeling slighted and betrayed; in the end, there were no victors, there were no righteous purposes. There were only losers and the dead that littered the bloodstained grass.

He wanted nothing to do with such a world, ever again.

With a resigned sigh, he turned away from the path leading towards the comfort of the inn and began the taxing hike up in the direction of the oak tree. His aching body complained drearily with each step, reminding him that he was no longer a lithe young man and that he could no longer handle this sort of rigorous abuse. Raven turned a deaf ear to the protests; if he acknowledged them, then he knew that his resolve would vanish.

In any event, Wren would not have wanted him to die anywhere else.

The trio of them, Wren, Robin and Raven, had made a pact as boys while lounging under that oak tree one day. It had been Robin’s crazy idea, which wasn’t unusual as Robin was the most outrageous of the three of them. "Let’s come back here to die," he said out of the blue and sat up to observe his two companions. "No matter where we are."

"That’s a bit macabre, don’t you think?" Raven said bitterly. "And besides, how are we going to know when we’re going to die? If I could predict that, I’d make sure to avoid it, for sure."

"I think it’s a splendid idea," Wren disagreed thoughtfully. "Let’s do it."

"Great!" Robin smiled, then looked at Raven. "Please? It won’t be the same if you don’t do it too."

"Well… all right," he conceded unwillingly, but the sight of Wren’s eyes lighting up like the sun in the morning made him smile despite it.

Wren had always managed to make him smile, one way or another.

There had been a saying that circulated the village during his youth—"Love while you can, because you never know when the Torakibians are coming." Raven had written it off as a petty old wife’s tale, but had regretted not taking the words to heart when the War had swept through and changed his life forever. Boys became men in the space of minutes, arrows tore apart families without mercy, and friends held friends as they died in the bloody throes of death. Something had been born between Wren and Raven the weeks preceding the initial battles, something precious and fragile that required more care and attention than the War would allow. Robin’s gruesome death shattered it into a thousand tiny shards that, no matter how desperately he tried, Raven could not reassemble.

Robin’s death had taken something from both of them. And loving each other just didn’t seem right anymore, in Wren’s eyes at least.

"Maybe we should just be friends again," Wren had said awkwardly once the fighting was over for good. They stood at the fork in the road that Raven had paused before. "We can always be friends, right?"

"Yeah," Raven lied with a smile. "Sure."

"That’s good." Wren stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked at his shoes. "Well… I’m going up to the oak tree for a little bit. I’ll see you later, all right?"

"All right." Raven had smiled, had turned and begun a casual traipse in the direction of the inn.

They never saw each other again. Raven never returned to Scarrou, because there was nothing left to return to. The buildings were in disrepair, and his heart throbbed in agony at the thought of the deaths his kinsfolk had experienced. He was not sure, but he was almost positive that Wren had waited in the ruins of the village, waited for a sign from someone or something.

Recently, Raven received a letter from Wren. He had burned it months ago, but he could remember exactly what Wren had written down. How could he forget?

He closed his eyes momentarily and continued his hike. The afternoon passed on soundlessly.

At some point, he chanced a glance to the west and noted that the sun was incredibly low on the horizon. Hunger burned in his stomach like an unquenchable fire and his legs felt like heavy wooden pegs under him. Sluggishly, he forced himself to continue upward, until he saw the blackened trunk of the old, dying oak tree. Its base was surrounded by small wildflowers.

He froze, eyes quivering in their sockets.

A man lay sprawled on the grass, motionless. His body was free of leaves and twigs and other such foliage, which led Raven to believe that he had not been there very long. There was an old leather satchel clasped in one of his hands, some of its contents strewn across the grass like randomly scattered pieces of rubbish. Cautiously, Raven stepped into the clearing and took a few hasty steps towards the supine body.

He all but tripped over his feet as a haphazard gust of wind sent the man’s auburn hair fluttering away from his face—it was Wren.

Raven’s heart clenched in his chest. Any initial suspicions he had about his childhood friend possibly being alive were dispelled by the pallor of Wren’s features and the stiff manner by which he gripped the strap of his satchel. His face was not peaceful; in his death, he had contorted in painful spasms that had wracked his entire body, mangled his limbs.

The color to his cheeks and arms suggested that this had happened very recently. As recently as the previous night.

A flood of guilt washed through Raven, and sprinted forward despite the scream in his crippled leg; he collapsed to his knees beside Wren’s stiff corpse. ‘I shouldn’t have stopped,’ he thought in despair and clutched at one of Wren’s hands; the fingers were cold in his hand, the blood no longer pumping in his veins. ‘If I hadn’t stopped to sleep, I could have been here! I could have done something, said something, cleared the air…’

"Wren?" he whispered hoarsely and lifted one hand to touch his friend’s face; Wren’s muscles were pulled taut, face contorted in a snarl of agony. Tears poured out of the corners of his eyes in rivulets of silver. "Wren, don’t…"

It was useless and futile. Wren was dead, and Raven was well aware of it. No amount of begging or screaming or praying could change that. Stell had called one of His children home, and who was Raven to protest that? In his misery, he reached out to massage the snarl out of Wren’s face, rubbing at the tense muscles until his face resembled something of peace and calm. With quivering hands, he closed Wren’s eyes, then looked away. He couldn’t stand the sight of him any longer.

It was then that he noticed it. Just a few paces away from where Wren lay, there was a narrow hole in the ground, a shovel beside it. Through his misery, Raven felt a sense of curiosity pervade on him, and he looked over Wren’s still form long enough to register the obvious—it was a grave.

Wren’s grave. He had come to the hill to die, just as he had promised Robin he would.

It was ironic, really, that the one who had wanted so badly to die here with his comrades had been unable to do so. It struck a miserable chord deep within Raven’s heart.

He had no intention of ever leaving the spot again anyway. With a stifled sob, Raven hooked his arms underneath Wren’s and dragged the dead weight of the corpse towards the grave. He lowered the body into the hole as gently as possible, but he slipped on the mud and Wren’s head landed with a sickening "crack" at the bottom of the grave. Raven cried out in sadness; Wren’s face was indifferent. The mask of the dead.

A morbid part of Raven’s mind urged him to fling himself into the grave after Wren, to die with the man he had given his heart to years before. He would have done it, had he not wanted to watch just one more sunset before he died.

He looked up at the old oak tree. It no longer offered families protection from the rain and from storms, no longer served as a welcoming meeting spot for friends both old and new. It was a corpse, just like Wren, but it held so many memories within the thickness of its black bark…

Raven sank to the ground against the trunk and leaned against it heavily. From where he was, he could see the sun setting on the distant mountain ranges, could glimpse the first star as it shimmered into life. A shadow of a smile ghosted across his lips. "What a beautiful place to die," he whispered to himself. "I was an idiot for ever disagreeing with you, Robin."

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree. Sleep would come shortly.

Then the blackness of oblivion.