The moonlight yawned over a vast northern plain. It stretched its short arms open, welcoming the world into a new night. As it fluttered its sleepy eyes open, it traced the length of a worn dirt road that stretched in parallel to the dry, winding river bed, its dirt trickling dry towards the edge of the forest, right at Genista’s burned feet.

Genista fluttered her puffy eyes open too. She shuffled as she stretched under the waning moon. She’d run and run until dusk, collapsing in exhaustion against a thin, spindly oak tree at the northern edge of the forest. She shivered as the cold northern wind welcomed her back to the world.

She sniffled, yawned and looked around. The tree she was sleeping against was small and twisting, like all the trees in the untouched northern forest. The sunlight was weaker on this end compared the warmer south, and her people had not inhabited this half due to its lack of herbs. The trunks grew warped and wild, unsmoothed by hundreds of footsteps, and disconnected due to a lack of human cultivation and magic. The canopies stretched into the night sky like unkempt, twisted fingernails all the way to the western mountains and the eastern river. Their leaves grew thin and crispy, barely making a sound under the gentle brush of the northern wind.

Genista stretched and cracked her back against the wild wood, its bark scratchy and rough on her flame-crisped skin. Her eyes were red and dry - she realised she had not had a drink of water since that morning, and even then, only a dirty, ash-ridden trickle. She tried to lick her parched lips, but only made them drier as she pulled the last drops of moisture into her seared, smoky throat. She coughed. Her eyes ground across her eye sockets as she looked to the river, desperate for a drink. But she knew it would be futile given its dire, dying, polluted state.

Instead, Genista rolled her eyes back to her feet. Her blackened, scared soles sat in soft dust at the edge of a long abandoned dirt road. A splintered post erupted from the ground next to her, wild roots encasing a rusted sign that had collapsed to the ground. Genista crawled to the roots and pulled them away. She held up the sign under the faint moonlight, making out its faded text - “Hiraeth Road.” Genista’s heart filled with curiosity as she traced her hand across the cold, rusty sign - she’d never heard of this road before.

Genista looked up the road’s length, wondering what could lie and its end. A few hundred meters away, the moonlight painted the road with the shadow of a small village. Genista’s heart raced - maybe the inhabitants would have something to drink.

The silence of the night was shattered by a terrified whinny. The earth rumbled as the horse she’d borrowed from the plains village bolted from the forest, horrified by the darkness within the foreign land. Its saddle glistened in the moonlight. Genista panicked - she forgot that she’d promised to return the horse to the village by sunset.

Genista’s hair blasted across her face as the horse whipped past her, right down the abandoned road and in a beeline towards the northern village. She grunted as she hoisted herself up using the tree, dropped the road sign, and took off after the horse.

Dust erupted up the road behind the horse’s panicked gallop, searing Genista’s parched eyes as she pursued. She winced as her hair whipped at her as she ran, her lungs and heart pumping at full speed. The horse let out another boosting whinny, its saddle straps slapping against its thick skin, the moonlight filling its dark, terrified eyes. Adrenaline surged through its veins as it looked back at Genista, and it accelerated.

Genista struggled to keep up. She paused desperately, shoved her fingers into the ground, and shot roots along the road, trying to trip the horse. The roots sprung up slower as they moved away from the forest, their thin tendrils snapping and crushing under the horse’s frantic hooves. The memory of Genista’s skin searing in the inferno felt like a pleasant dream as she resumed her pursuit, her muscles burning, the horse now bolting around a corner as it entered the village.

Genista stopped at the village edge. She crumpled over, her lungs heaving and head throbbing. She fell to her knees to catch her breath, her burnt soles singing in relief as the pressure came off them. The cold wind felt like a heavy poison in her chest, cutting into her like shattered glass. She placed her head to the road, the dirt soothing, still warm from the daylight.

The northern wind picked up. The dirt crumpled into her skin as Genista frowned. She noticed that the whirl of the wind was the only sound in the night. Despite being at the edge of a village, there were no thuds of footsteps, no creaking of closing doors, no crackles of fire - just the faint, metallic lick of the wind. There was nothing.

Genista struggled to her feet. Her heart sank as she looked into the village. The buildings were blackened, splintered and charred. Hiraeth Road extended into the main street of the village. Rusted metal shop signs spiked out from the dirt, long consumed by the earth. A few still dangled from spindly hooks, squeaking in the wind. Shattered glass glistened in the moonlight, sprinkled like snow beneath bent and twisted metal lampposts. The village was dead.

As Genista took a timid step into the village, she wondered how many years - or generations - had passed since it was abandoned. She caught many sporadic reflections in shards of glass as she passed the broken window panes. Sometimes her gaze drifted into the darkness in the buildings, but she didn’t dare stare for too long, worried at what she’d see inside.

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Instead, she looked down the road. The horse stood at the end, its head bent down in the middle of the town square, its tail whipping and swinging with joy. Genista slowed, her crispy feet crinkling into the dirt, not wanting to spook the animal by moving too loudly. She creeped closer, her eyes locked on the whipping tail hair.

Genista let out a sharp scream as she accidentally stepped into a pile of broken glass. The horse shot up to look at her as she collapsed to the ground, pulling shards of glass from her skin. Genista cursed the gods, ripped off a sleeve, and wrapped it around her foot to stop the bleeding, When she looked back up at the square again, the house was gone.

Genista slammed her fist into the road and yelled. She grunted as she got up and limped towards the square. She let out a painful wince, then a relieved sigh as the dirt melded into old cobblestone, the cold stone soothing her burns and cuts. A black chain hung from a post in the middle of the square, letting out light clinks as it swayed in the wind and sunk into a hole in the stone, where the horse had been leaning into a second earlier.

Genista’s dry eyes widened as she saw the moonlight shimmering over a layer of water in a well. The water splashed all over her as she rushed towards it, voraciously biting and gulping into it. She felt a rush of vitality return to her as the cold, crisp liquid torrented down her throat and flushed her veins. She only came out the water when she was on the verge of suffocating, before dunking her head in again for more. The northern wind rubbed her back, relieving her.

Her hair dripped as she resurfaced. She splashed more water over her sooty arms and muddy feet. The moon rose further over her, shining deep into the well. Genista leant over. She soaked in her reflection. Puffy, tired eyes. Faint bruises on her throat. Ash soaking into the lines in her skin.

Genista’s heart grew cold as she reflected on just how much the past few nights had affected her. The captive’s attack, the inferno, the death in the village, Brama assaulting her, her father’s death - her powerless or reluctant to stop any of it.

Her reflection looked at her angrily, and she hated that, so she scowled and growled at it, staring it down. Her reflection corrupted itself, her eyes sinking into her skull as she kept staring. Eventually, she was looking at nothing but bone itself.

It took a second for Genista to realise she wasn’t hallucinating. She was actually looking at bone. The wind stopped. It was dead silent. Genista felt her heartbeat echo around her brain. A skull sat drowned just beneath the surface of the water, staring right at her.

No, not just one, she realised. Multiple skulls stuffed the well, stacked on top of each other.

Genista recoiled in horror. The water she just drank ran through the cracks in the cobblestone as she threw up multiple times. Genista grunted, and threw up again, the water tinged black and red with ash and blood.

Her head spun. She placed it to the stone to seek relief, but her mind filled with an image of the well running deep into the earth, and she wondered how many skulls were piled up inside.

That hadn’t just fallen into the well accidentally. All of these people had been killed, and their bones were thrown inside in dishonour. She dry retched as her body tried to throw up one more time, but she was empty.

Genista’s vision was pulsing and fading. She needed to get back home, desperately. She tried to steel her mind, focusing with all her energy to sense where the horse had gone. She sat up and placed her hand to the ground, trying to cast out a seeking light with her magic. The stones glowed a faint blue, rumbling as they struggled to find roots to activate. But then they faded. This village was dead in every which way, Genista thought - devoid of both life and magic.

She reached for her death whistle. It was truly her last resort this time. She knew its bloodcurdling screech would terrify the horse, but she hoped that it would cause the horse to call out, and she could find it and capture it amongst the maze of abandoned buildings. She pulled the whistle to her lips. Her lungs barely summoned enough air to make a sound, but its faint squeal bounced and echoed around the village easily enough in the dead silence.

The horse let out a faint whinny in response, down the eastern road towards the river. Genista knew she had to act quickly to catch it before it ran away again. She got up and limped down the street. She came to the riverbank. To her left, a rusted waterwheel lay dead in the riverbed. Looking past it to the far northeast, Genista noticed that the starlight faded into the clouds, which seemed to catch a dim glow from the land beyond some distant hills. The cloud was only permeated by a cluster of three stars in sky. Genista looked at the stars, and felt a deep unease through her soul as their light pierced through the clouds.

She heard a rustle to her right. A splintered, blackened stable door swayed in the wind, its gentle creak trying to soothe the desperate huffs of the horse. Genista approached and walked in to the stable.

The horse cowered on the ground in the far left corner. The moonlight glistened in its terrified eyes, the only light in this dark space. She approached it carefully, reaching out with her pockmarked hand. The horse tensed and huffed as Genista stepped closer. When she was an inch away, the horse nuzzled closer in a mix of defeat and trust. Genista let out a sigh of relief. She climbed onto it slowly, latching herself into its saddle.

The horse struggled back to its feet. As it stood, Genista heard a deep crack and crunch. Beneath them lay the bones of the former stable hand. Every bone, except their skull of course. As the horse moved to the door, the moonlight reflected off a some metal that lay between the corpse’s ribs. Genista felt a pang of nostalgia - the dagger in the cadaver looked very similar to the one she’d gifted to Fern.

No, it didn’t look familiar. It was identical.

The northern wind cackled as she and the horse emerged from the stable. Genista felt all of her remaining warmth sap from her as the horse readied to bolt. It was her people that had annihilated this village. Her people that threw the skulls in the well. The wind howled in her ear with a victorious cry. “Isn’t this great, my vicious warrior?”

The wind spooked the horse. It turned to run towards the dim light in the northeast. Genista struggled with her remaining strength to orient the horse back to the forest. The horse struggled against her.

They compromised, with the horse instead choosing to run back south down the riverbed. Genista’s hands shot from her twisted stomach to clutch around the horse’s neck as they took off. She let out soft, betrayed, pain-stricken wails into the horse’s mane. Genista fainted from exhaustion and dehydration as they bolted home.