In the shadows of twilight, a village on the outskirts of the country of Rhine was both emptier and noisier than it usually was at this late hour. Most of the houses had been vacated, their occupants crowding the road to Castia as if it were a festival day, except city festivals didn’t happen after sundown, and the mood was far from celebratory. Throughout the village, a few Holy Knights were banging on doors and arguing with the stragglers — the stubborn, the elderly, the unconvinced. Though the knights did their best to convince those who had ignored their shouts to evacuate, no villagers were forcibly removed from their residences, and the knights spent no more than half a minute at each building. There wasn’t time to save those who refused to save themselves.

In the town square in the center of the village, two knights sat atop powerfully built horned mounts, watching the commotion, directing and reassuring villagers. Their gleaming full plate armor marked them as leaders of the knights, one in brilliant gold that seemed to glow without giving off light, the other in silver polished to a mirror-like finish.

“Paladin Mirror,” the knight in golden armor said, “take your squad and escort these villagers to Castia. I’ll take the rest of the knights to Perinvale.”

Though both knights looked imposing, the knight called Paladin Mirror was a giant of a man. While, at times, his stature certainly proved useful, he’d spent much of his life struggling against his image. Holy Knights in the Order of Light given the choice (not that they ever were) of being disciplined by Mirror or any other Paladin or Priest would choose Mirror ten times out of ten. Consequently, positions in his squad were the most sought-after in the Order, and the Archpriest did his best to prevent Mirror from dispensing disciplinary judgments.

Paladin Mirror looked at the knight in golden armor as if searching for an answer to a question he didn’t want to ask.

“Light,” Paladin Mirror said, “the Twisted Horde had to pass through the Empire’s territory, right by Fort Noct. Yet they sent no warning.”

Paladin Light gave no reply, watching an argument down the street between a Holy Knight and an elderly woman. Although hints of permanent wrinkles were forming at the corners of Paladin Light’s eyes, his clear eyes and chiseled jawline would have drawn coy second glances on any city block.

Paladin Mirror, who looked a good decade younger than his golden comrade even though they were nearly the same age, pressed on. “They’ve been denying the increase in Twisted activity for weeks. They let that Horde pass. No reinforcements are coming; Rhine will face this Horde alone.”

“Rhine isn’t alone. The Order of Light will stand with them.”

“Even if you gallop to Perinvale, the Horde will catch up before the villagers reach Castia.”

“Speculating won’t help.” Paladin Light’s tone was stern, making it clear that this was a command and the conversation was finished. He shifted his weight, preparing to ride off.

“Grima.” With a massive gauntleted hand, Paladin Mirror reached out and grabbed Paladin Light’s arm. The Paladin of Light wasn’t an idiot. Why was Grima forcing him to say it aloud? “We should all head straight back to Castia. The protection of these villages is the duty of the King of Rhine. We’re all thinking of Dorastia, but the Order fought and bled and died fifteen years ago as we are now. We can’t save a country determined to die. Damn me for saying it, but the Paladin of Light is more important than a few villages.”

The golden knight turned toward Mirror, armor shining, and the taller silver-armored Paladin nearly winced under the golden knight’s gaze. Though they had been Paladins for two — no, three decades now, and they had both become such through similar paths, and they considered each other friends, as much as Paladins could have friends — despite all this, occasionally the glorious leader of the Order of Light made Mirror feel like a copper-plate adventurer.

“Did I ever tell you how I became apprenticed to the Paladin of Light?”

Realizing that Grima wasn’t disappointed in him — the leader of the Order of Light would never be disappointed in one member of the Order looking out for another — Mirror straightened, letting go of the golden knight’s arm. “You were an orphan, we always are.”

In a custom that could be traced back to the first Paladin of Light, who had been touched by the God of Light himself, when he’d still walked among mortals, the Church of Light chose trainee Paladins from orphanages, usually their own.

“I was an orphan, but I didn’t come from an orphanage.”

A Holy Knight supporting a man in better-than-average clothing for a villager entered the town square, heading straight for the two Paladins.

“Paladin Light!” the Holy Knight called out. “This man sprained his ankle helping children onto horses. Could you — ”

A frown formed on Mirror’s face, but before he could speak up, Paladin Light spoke.

“Lesser Heal.” The golden knight waved a hand, and the limping man’s eyebrows shot up. Letting go of the Holy Knight, the well-dressed man jumped side to side, testing his healed ankle.

“Good as new! Thanks, sir Paladin!”

The Paladin of Light gave the man a warm, kind smile. The smile of a nurturing god. A god who had practiced in a mirror multiple times a day early in his career, Mirror happened to know, but that didn’t mean the smile wasn’t effective.

“No need to thank me. It’s the least I can do for a citizen helping others evacuate.”

Trying to stammer a bashful response, the man was quickly ushered away by the Holy Knight.

A sprained ankle would’ve slowed the man down, but he would’ve made it to Castia without getting caught up in fighting either way. Paladin Light, on the other hand, might shortly need every heal available to him.

“Mirror, I grew up in the slums of Rhinia. Begging, stealing — I was good at it, for a child. I thought I was good enough to steal from a noble’s mansion. The guards caught me as soon as I climbed over the wall, beat me, left me on the side of the street with one foot in the afterlife. Didn’t even bother to throw me in an alley. All day, merchants, nobles, adventurers, guards, hundreds saw me and walked past. When Sacro bent over me wearing this golden armor, I thought I’d passed on.” The golden knight let out a short bark of laughter. “It took him four days to convince me that the temple wasn’t in the Cloud Kingdoms.”

Where was Grima going with this story? Even more so — “This country already owes you a debt it’ll never repay.”

The Paladin of Light smiled gently, as a teacher smiles at a young student who has become lost during a lesson. Mirror nearly shouted at him to lay off it. Couldn’t the golden bastard be serious? He wasn’t invincible.

“There are people in danger,” the Paladin of Light said with a practiced expression of divine grace, “powerless people whom I can save. The day I walk past is the day I’m no longer the Paladin of Light.”

The golden knight trotted off toward the road to Perinvale, leaving behind a silver knight who looked unconvinced but too confused and ashamed to press the issue.

By the Light, he couldn’t tell when that damn smile was artificial anymore.

If one looked closely, the first strip of rising stars in the east could be seen reflected in the silver knight’s polished armor, blurred and distorted points of light shining against the black.

* * *

Down the road, in the direction the golden knight was riding, a few hours away at a horse’s gallop, the village of Perinvale was going to sleep. Shutters were latched tight, candles were blown out, and unruly children were being bribed and threatened into bed.

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Vannick Setter was attempting the former with his younger child. Amelia was close to throwing a tantrum, yelling that she wasn’t tired, begging to have the candles relit and stories told to her. Why couldn’t the six-year-old be more like her older brother? Weren’t girls supposed to be easier to manage? Even as a baby, Amelia had cried loudly and incessantly. At least now, once he got her in bed, he could sleep through the night.

Vannick didn’t want to entertain the possibility that Amelia might be getting up in the middle of the night and sneaking around. As much as he loved his daughter, the idea sounded too plausible. Lately, he never seemed to need to replace candles around the house — whenever candles burned low, they were helpfully replaced when he wasn’t looking. Intuition told him by Amelia, probably while they still had some wax left. Light knew what the girl was doing with those candle stubs. One of these nights, he might wake to smoke and flames.

With the sternest expression he could muster, Vannick faced down his prospective-arsonist daughter. “Amelia, you know how important it is to follow instructions right now, don’t you? You’ll help Papa and Mama and be a good girl, won’t you? If you do, someone might get an extra special treat on her birthday.” Vannick winked for good measure.

The squirming girl hesitated, and then grudgingly — he could feel it in her tense muscles — let him pick her up. Bribes worked well on Amelia, and guilt trips seemed to help, too — she was surprisingly intelligent and considerate when she could be convinced to think about her actions.

It also helped that his words were no bluff. Months ago, when the animals had started migrating out of the forest, it had been a source of entertainment. Given which forest it was, the villagers had exercised caution, but with patched up fences, regular patrols by the Order of Light, and no sign of Twisted creatures, they’d been relaxed enough to watch the migration unfold with excitement. Vannick had seen all sorts of creatures he’d never thought he’d see. Birds that made sounds that confused the mind, rats that crackled with lightning, six-legged bears. He’d even watched the Paladin of Light fight a gryphon! The Paladin hadn’t killed it, but what a sight it had been, the shining golden champion with superhuman strength and courage fighting off the swooping and screeching monster, meeting again and again in clashes of sword against talon until the monstrous bird flew off.

At the edge of the village, in the direction of the forest, a few farmers had even constructed a makeshift viewing area, complete with benches and a fire pit. The Setters had spent many a day there cooking and eating with others, hoping to catch sight of something new. Unless Amelia and Stefen became adventurers, they’d never have another such chance to see these creatures for the rest of their lives.

But as the stream of creatures became a flood, the doomsayers began to turn ears, and the appearance of Twisted Stalkers lent substance to their tall stories. In previous years, the cursed beasts had sporadically made it across the Empire’s strip of land, past Fort Noct, and into Rhine, but never to such an extent. Despite the Order’s attempts to clear the area of Twisted, it seemed every week now a Stalker made it into Perinvale or massacred a farmstead nearby.

If there was some conflict with the Empire — how else could all these Twisted creatures make it past Fort Noct? — the King would acquiesce as he always did, blustering about the Rhine’s history before increasing the annual tribute. If the Twisted Forest was really expanding, as the more fervent doomsayers like to proclaim, the King would levy the nobles’ knights and reinforce the Empire’s line at Fort Noct. Whatever the cause of the disturbance was, eventually, someone would fix it, and Vannick wouldn’t lose sleep tossing and turning at night behind his bolted doors and shutters.

The Twisted Forest was contained. For fifteen years, whenever and wherever the cursed thing had reached out, knights and wizards and adventurers had ridden in and beaten it back, as they would this time.

Eventually.

Until then, the villagers would have to survive as they always did, supporting and looking out for each other as best they could, losing a few friends and neighbors to the ever-near Twin Reapers. Vannick could only pray that it wouldn’t be his family.

Vannick laid his daughter gently on her bed. Tucking her in, he tousled her brown hair. She took so much after him, which was, in his humble opinion, considering her other option, rather unlucky.

“Good night, Papa.”

“Good night, Milly-milly.”

“Don’t forget my birthday present!”

Chuckling, Vannick blew out the candle by Amelia’s bed, leaving the room dark save for the candlelight seeping in from downstairs. He’d have to think of something extra special this year. Perhaps he could convince the dollmaker to give him a discount. Toys were difficult to afford on a cobbler’s income.

A scream tore the nighttime quiet like a nail pulling on wet cloth.

Not tonight. Light, why did it have to be tonight? A farmstead had been attacked just yesterday. Couldn’t they have a night of peace?

“Papa?”

“I’m here, Milly-milly.” Vannick felt on the bed for his daughter’s hand and squeezed it tight. “Don’t worry.”

It was a relief that the scream was far away — Vannick felt ashamed for taking comfort in that fact, but he did. If he had to guess, the scream sounded as though it had originated on the other side of town. The Holy Knights on duty in Perinvale — it would only be two, as they were stretched thin — would hear the scream and race toward its source. The most the Twisted had killed in one night was six people. That had been a terrible night followed by a somber morning.

Several seconds passed, and Vannick loosened his grip, although Amelia refused to let go. It was quiet. Quiet was good. Perhaps they’d been lucky and the Holy Knights had been near the attack. Tomorrow would come and there would be no deaths. That had happened a few times.

Then another scream shattered the silence. Then another, and another. The night filled with shouts and screams in all directions.

“Papa?” Amelia’s voice trembled as she squeezed his hand tightly.

A pack of Twisted Stalkers. Hadn’t the Order culled the Twisted? Where were they? Where were Rhine’s knights?

“Up, Milly. We’re going to Papa’s room.”

In the master bedroom — too lofty a title for a room that could barely fit the bed — Vannick’s wife Egasta, the light of his life, had already brought their son Stefen and had lit a candle. His heart eased seeing his whole family in the room. As long as they were together, that was all that mattered.

“Vannick, what’s happening?” Egasta asked, her eyes betraying her calm voice.

“It must be a pack.”

Shouts came from close by. How many doors away were they? One? Two? The butcher’s? They had three little ones. Vannick prayed it wasn’t them, but it was someone, and better them than his family.

Stefen and Amelia winced at the closer cries for help, but they were holding up well, the little adventurers.

“Should we run?” Egasta asked. “The town hall — ”

Vannick shook his head. “We can’t outrun Stalkers.”

Vannick closed the bedroom’s heavy oaken door, barring it shut with a solid plank of wood. This was the reason they’d gathered here. Two stout doors stood between them and the terrors outside. He’d visited the carpenter’s shop two weeks ago and added the planks and latches to bar the doors. The carpenter had been busy with fear-driven requests, but Vannick had once found the carpenter’s daughter when she’d wandered into the edge of the forest and gotten lost. Whenever he needed carpentry work, he got it quick. On the same day that he’d ordered the reinforcement for the door, Vannick had paid a visit to the blacksmith to prepare a last resort, something he’d hoped he’d never have to use.

The trunk scraped against the floor as he pulled it out from underneath the bed. The latches came undone with effort. Tilting back the lid, he lifted out a sword, the cloth wrapped around it falling back into the trunk.

The well-oiled sword glistened in the candlelight. He didn’t know how to use it, but the blacksmith had assured him that his grandfather’s sword was in working condition. The irony. His grandfather had settled down in Perinvale seeking a peaceful life after a short adventuring career. At the time, the Twisted Forest had been hundreds of miles away, with well-fortified cities in between.

Letting the tip of the sword rest on the floor, trying not to worry about the gouge it would leave, Vannick gave his family his best reassuring smile.

“We’ll make it through this. The Order will come.”

Four heads jerked downward. A loud thump had sounded from below and the building had shaken as if something large had crashed against the side of the shop. Or the door.

Another thump shook the building.

“Behind the bed.” Vannick tried to keep the fear from entering his voice.

Fear suffused their faces and their panicked movements as the family scrambled to place the bed between them and the bedroom door.

If only they’d tightened their belts a little more and gotten around to making that cellar they liked to talk about. If only they’d stopped renovating this house and sold it and moved to Castia. If only he’d been brave enough to do some adventuring in his youth.

The thumps became regular. Insistent. Hungry.

Doing his best to point the sword steadily at the door, Vannick prayed to the gods, if any were still listening, to save his kids, to let the Order arrive in time, to send knights, send adventurers, send someone, anyone to fight off the monsters. They didn’t have to save Vannick, or even his beloved wife — Light forgive him for thinking so — just his two kids, who could be disturbingly quiet or spoiled and aggravating at times, but who were good kids nonetheless.

Yes, his kids had long lives ahead of them as adventurers. One day, when their names were shouted by children swinging sticks at each other in play fights, they’d look back on this night and laugh, unable to imagine hiding behind from a single beast behind their poor old father whose sword trembled each time the monster slammed against the door downstairs, a fleeting nightmare before they were rescued by the Order of Light.

Someone would come.