Ryn woke to the sound of screaming.

It took him a moment to realise the screams were real. He had been dreaming, but the dream evaporated when he registered he was in his bed and those horrible cries were coming from outside, somewhere in the town.

He flew out of bed and opened his curtains. No sign of trouble that he could see—just the timbers and thatch of the house next door.

But he could hear more screams outside now, getting nearer.

He pulled on his overshirt and trousers as quickly as he could.

Downstairs his mother had frozen in place at the dining table, eyes staring at nothing, one hand holding a knife in midair from which jam dripped slowly downwards.

“What’s happening?” Ryn asked her.

Her eyes found him. “I don’t know.” Her voice trembled slightly.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He left early to help set up for the Fair… I told him to let you sleep in…”

A horrible crunching noise came from next door, the sound of wood snapping.

More screams, very close now.

“Ryn, go—” his mother started.

Their front door burst open—it hadn’t been locked, why would it be?—making a tremendous bang as it hit the wall.

In through the doorway walked a hulking man in a black suit of armour. He carried a long, black-hilted sword that glinted at the tip. He wore no helmet and his thick hair was flame-red.

Now Ryn’s mother screamed, high and desperate.

Ryn’s breath caught in his throat. He wanted to scream too, to shout, to protest, but he had gone utterly dumb.

Ryn just watched the man walk in, finding himself rooted to the spot in shock.

The man strode up to Ryn’s mother and, as the boy looked on paralysed, as she continued screaming, placed the sword in her chest. It slipped past her raised hands and slid in straight through her heart.

An instant of agony.

The man withdrew his blade and a gush of blood spilled out of the wound with it, spattering his mother’s clothes and the floor. She fell face forwards onto the ground, landing with a slap.

The image of Mum lying face-down on the floor, long brown hair splayed around her head in a growing pool of blood, etched itself into Ryn’s heart.

The man turned to him. There was something animal about the twitch that pulled up the corner of his upper lip in his round face.

“Where’s your father, boy?” he said in a deep snarl.

No words, just horror.

“Stage fright, eh?” said the man. “Let me drop the curtain for you.”

The man stepped towards Ryn, raising his sword high, but when he brought it down Ryn threw himself out of the way, able to move at last. His hip bashed into the kitchen table and he stumbled, putting out his hands to break his fall.

A shadow fell over him. Ryn rolled just in time to avoid another swing of the sword, which thunked into the floorboards where he had just been.

He scuttled backwards and banged his head on the wall, barely noticing the pain.

“Help!” he cried, voice suddenly returning to him. “Help! Attack! Murder! Someone, help!”

The man in black armour yanked his sword out of the floor then shoved the kitchen table over. “No one will come for you, boy,” he said, snarling. His voice was terribly, horribly close. “They are all dead or dying. Now stay still and let me gut you.”

Ryn managed to dive out of the way again as the waking nightmare strode towards him and took another swing. In his heavy armour, the man was slower than Ryn, but only just. The boy ran round the kitchen as the man chased and swiped at him, smashing crockery, knocking over baskets of food, opening a breach in the oven which belched smoke.

“Stay still, damn you!”

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The man paused and Ryn saw a chance—a clear path through the kitchen to his front door. He bolted through the opening, out the door, and into the streets of his hometown.

His hometown, which was burning.

He ran past his neighbours’ houses, red and orange tongues leaping from their thatch and walls, sending billowing black smoke into the sky.

“Dad!”

As he ran he cried for the wanton destruction of everything he had ever known, for the sudden loss of his mother, and for his own shame at having done absolutely nothing to protect her.

Screams filled the air along with shouts of pursuit and gurgles of death, the cries of townspeople pleading for mercy, the crackle of flame, the snapping of timber.

More men in black armour kicked down the doors of houses that were not yet on fire, or walked out of the ones that were. None of them paid Ryn any attention.

When he reached the town square, the first thing he saw was the Summer Totem burning. It stood there in the middle of the square, ablaze, the silk streamers that hung from its top flapping in the air as they burned. At the peak of the totem, the wood carving of the town's god—Enwit, crouched in his hooded robe with his contented, thick-lipped, grinning face—was wreathed in flames. He had done nothing to protect them. Enwit was utterly impotent squatting up there amid the flames.

Beneath the totem, the bodies of men, women and children lay dead, mutilated, burned, dismembered, bleeding, some begging softly to be put out of their misery. The tents and market stalls had been destroyed.

“Dad!” Ryn called out as he searched for a sign of his father.

“Ryn…” said a muffled voice from somewhere nearby.

Ryn sprinted to where the voice had come from. He reached down and hefted a corpse off another body.

Underneath was the grey, bearded face of his father.

Ryn could not contain his heavy, shuddering sobs. One of his father’s legs was entirely missing, taken off at the thigh, the grass beneath him stained red.

“D-Dad…You’re hurt… here, let me help you.”

Should I bind the wound? His hands were shaking. Should I try to do something to stop the bleeding? His whole world, all the safety he had ever known, was disappearing.

“No!” his father said as he reached out. “Leave it, son… I’m past help…”

Ryn looked into his dad’s eyes. Hazel-brown, like his own. “I don’t want you to die, Dad…”

“I know, I know son.” He cupped Ryn’s cheek with his calloused palm, leathery from years working in the fields. “But you must… listen.”

“Shhh, Dad. Don’t talk.”

“No. Ryn, listen. Left inside pocket… my jerkin.”

“What?”

“Take it now.”

Ryn had only heard that tone a handful of times before—once when he had left the door to the chicken coop open all night, and once when he had broken his mother’s favourite vase.

He made his trembling hands obey and reached inside his father’s jerkin. Inside was a hard round object. He drew it out and examined it.

A bright, oval ruby.

“Hide it!”

Ryn immediately slipped the ruby into his shirt’s front pocket. What is going on?

His father spoke more quietly now, the last of the light fading from his hazel-brown gaze. “That… is the reason the empire came here today. I don’t know how they… found out about it, but they took us by surprise. I didn’t even get a chance to use it.”

“Use it? What do you mean ‘use it?’”

“Just listen!” His father coughed hard, blood spilling from his lips, trickling down his chin. “Don’t have long. Ryn… you must protect this ruby now… at all costs. Do not let it fall into the hands of the empire. Run, Ryn. Run, my son… you must run.”

“Run where, Dad?”

But his father’s eyes had lost focus. A long, chill breath whistled out of his mouth.

“Dad! No! Don’t leave me here!” Ryn buried his head in his father’s chest and sobbed.

“Got a straggler here!” shouted a man. “Someone forgot to cut down this whelp!”

Ryn stood and spun.

Two imperial soldiers bearing down on him

Run. Run, Ryn, run.

Ryn turned on his heel and his foot caught on his father’s body. He fell, turning and landing on his back. He pushed himself up on his elbows, and froze.

The soldier was just a step away, sword raised high.

This is it.

Images from Ryn’s brief life danced across his mind’s eye: Joy at playing treasure-maps with his mother and father out in the fields as a small boy; sadness on the day they had buried his grandmother in the ground near Enwit’s shrine; longing at the sight of Carlotia turning and smiling at him in class, the summer sun playing through her hair. And then his mother’s pale face twisting as a man’s sword ran her through. He saw his father’s hazel-brown eyes dimming and a wave of grief followed.

What was the point of it all? A few short moments of happiness and now I’m going to die.

Just as the soldier’s blade came down, red hot anger flared in Ryn.

“NO!”

Fire exploded from his body. Flames erupted from his mouth, from his head, from his chest, from his arms and open hands.

The soldier’s blade disappeared in the torrent. For a heartbeat, Ryn’s vision was obscured by the inferno, and then…

…as quickly as they had appeared the flames receded, leaving only tendrils of black smoke rising from Ryn’s unharmed body.

He looked down at the soldier who had been about to kill him.

The man lay spread-eagled on his back. His armour was sooty and scorched. His face was a mess of deep pink burns, the skin singed away entirely, leaving charred muscle underneath. His eyes had melted.

Ryn looked at his hands, his mouth open, dumb with astonishment. His whole body trembled.

The second soldier still stood nearby, facing Ryn but saying nothing.

Without thinking, Ryn extended his hand, palm out, and willed for the fire to reappear.

Nothing happened.

Ryn thrust his hand out at the soldier again.

Nothing.

He tried a few more times, then shook his hand, as if that would fix whatever had stopped the fire from appearing.

The soldier began to laugh, a cautious, nervous laugh; the laugh of a man whose life has just been spared by accident.

Another soldier appeared at the man’s side, this one without a helmet. He had flame-red hair and a savage grin.

“Hm,” said the new arrival. “Funny that you should have it. You didn’t use it on me when I stuck your mother. And it looks like you don’t know how to use it again now. Relieve him of his consciousness,” the man said to the other soldier, “and bring him with us.”

“Yes sir, General Vorr!”

The soldier moved towards Ryn.

Ryn frantically shook his hand up and down, desperately willing the flames to reappear.

They didn’t.

Pain rang briefly through his head and there was darkness.