Rian hesitated for only a moment at the edge of the forest. At least it was daytime. He was tense all over as the village disappeared behind him. He was going to find out what was going on with Arwel. He stopped when he saw a man up ahead. The man was staring at him, a terrible sadness in his dark gray eyes. His short brown hair was a mess. There was dirt all over his clothes, and dried blood on the side of his neck.

“Gavin?” Rian had only spoken to the man a few times. He was a village hunter, and one of the four people who had gone missing.

Gavin blinked. “You can see me?” He hurried closer. “Please, can you help me find it? I have to find it.”

Rian took a step back when the man reached for him.

“I don’t know where it is!” Gavin said.

Rian almost turned and ran, but then he heard a voice in his head. A man’s voice that usually only spoke to him when he was in danger.

“Help him find what he seeks,” the voice said.

Gavin was staring at Rian with tears in his eyes. What had him so frightened? Where had he been all this time? He’d been missing the longest, for almost a year.

“I’ll help you,” Rian said. “What are you looking for?”

“You’ll know it when you find it,” the voice said.

Rian hesitated, then started walking. Gavin followed close behind him. Rian hadn’t gone much further before he felt something. It was as though something was calling to him from the ground. The ground didn’t look disturbed, but he had an overwhelming feeling there was something there, beneath the dirt.

Rian looked at Gavin. “There’s something here.”

Gavin said nothing, only staring at the ground.

A chill ran through Rian. There was something strange going on here, but what? He knelt and began to dig. He didn’t dig far before he unburied a skeletal hand, closely followed by the rest of the arm. Rian dug further, finding the skull. He stumbled to his feet and turned to face Gavin. The man smiled, then he faded away into nothing.

“Some souls are trapped and will not move on so easily,” the voice said in Rian’s head. “This one merely needed his body to be found.”

Had he just spoken to a ghost? Rian looked back down at the half unburied skeleton. The clothes were ragged and torn, but that was Gavin’s dagger at the belt. Rian’s father had made that dagger, and Rian had helped make the sheath. That feeling of something beneath the ground hadn’t gone away. There were more bodies, he knew there were. But how did he know?

Rian ran back to the village. He didn’t stop running until he reached the forge. His father was there, hammering away at something on the anvil near the back of the forge. He stopped when he saw Rian.

“Everything alright?” Andred asked.

Rian was catching his breath. “I found one of the missing villagers. I found his body out in the forest.” He hesitated. “I think the others might be there too.”

Andred had gone pale.

The two of them went back to the house, where Mae was tending to the small field. After telling her what Rian had found, they gathered a few villagers and went back out into the forest. Rian had to go with them, to lead them to where he found Gavin’s bones. It didn’t take long to find the spot. Rian and a few others went back to the village for more shovels. It was late in the day when all four of the missing villagers had been dug up.

“Go home,” Mae whispered to Rian. “You don’t need to see any more of this.”

He would already have nightmares about what he had seen. He went home. On the way, he saw the man with the dark gray cloak, but this time the man didn’t stop or say anything. Arwel wasn’t home when Rian got there. He didn’t want to be alone right then and had hoped his brother would be there. What had happened in the forest? Had he really spoken to a dead man? How had he known the bodies were buried there?

His parents came home not long later, Arwel arriving soon after. He looked surprised when Andred and Mae told him about the bodies found in the forest, but it was a different kind of surprise. Rian tried to ignore it, but he thought Arwel was surprised the bodies had been found, not that they’d been there. There was an odd delay before he said anything.

“It’s terrible those villagers were killed,” Arwel said.

“Everyone who was missing was buried out there,” Andred said.

Several villagers were working on figuring out what had killed those people. Rian didn’t recall seeing any wounds on Gavin other than the blood on his neck.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“How did you come across them?” Mae asked Rian. “Why were you out there?”

Rian hesitated. He didn’t know what to think of what had happened, and it didn’t sound likely. He had met Gavin’s ghost and a voice in his head had told him to help Gavin. Then he had sensed bodies buried in the forest.

“I just found him out there,” Rian said, looking away from his parents and his brother. He knew that wasn’t believable, but was the truth any more believable?

His parents looked worried, but they didn’t ask any more questions. None of them spoke during dinner. Late that night, Rian woke up again. Surprisingly, he hadn’t been having any nightmares when he woke up. It was the creak of Arwel’s window that had woken him. Rian hurried to his own window, pulling back the curtain only a little, just in time to see Arwel going into the forest again.

Rian hesitated, but only for a moment. He wanted to know why his brother was distant and distracted. He opened his window carefully. His didn’t creak. Rian slipped out into the surprisingly warm night, closing his window gently behind him. The grass was slightly damp beneath his bare feet. A sudden, cold wind blew past. The shirt and pants he wore to bed were too ragged to wear during the day, and the pants were too short since he’d grown.

He shivered, but he wasn’t going back inside. He ran across the cold grass, then into the forest. He moved slower in the forest, so he wouldn’t trip, and so Arwel wouldn’t hear him following. Arwel was just up ahead. The moon was bright, shining through the leaves, casting deep shadows on the forest floor. Arwel disappeared behind a tree. Rian moved closer carefully, then he saw a clearing.

The man with the dark gray cloak was waiting in the clearing. The hood of his cloak was still up, his face hidden in shadows.

“Are you prepared?” the man asked.

“I am,” Arwel said.

“Then do it,” the man said.

Arwel closed his eyes, just standing there and breathing deeply for a moment. Then he opened his eyes. The dirt not far from Arwel and the cloaked man churned. The skeleton of a squirrel crept out of the dirt, then that of a small bird not far off. The two skeletal animals calmly sat, as though waiting for something. Arwel breathed out quietly.

The two skeletons fell to the ground, the bones scattering again. Arwel closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were a pale shade of grayish red that glowed faintly in the darkness. Rian’s breath caught. He didn’t dare move, not wanting Arwel and the man to know he was there.

“You did well,” the cloaked man said. He looked at the tree Rian was hiding behind.

Rian pulled further behind the tree quickly, his heart pounding. Had he been seen?

“Come out,” the cloaked man said. “I know you were watching.”

Rian hesitated, then he stepped out into the clearing. He didn’t move closer. His brother frowned, staring at Rian with those strange eyes.

The cloaked man sighed. “It would be a waste to kill one with such potential.”

“I want him left out of this,” Arwel said.

The man sighed. “Very well.”

“Go home,” Arwel said to Rian. “Stay out of this. Norris and I are going to free Virida from the Sancta and bring back a true god. Maybe someday I’ll come back.” He looked doubtful.

Arwel and Norris left the clearing, going deeper into the forest rather than back toward Fen. Rian didn’t move for a long moment. What had Arwel meant by a true god? A cold wind blew through the clearing. Rian shivered hard. He ran back through the forest, not stopping until he reached the house, then only stopping to open the front door.

Rian froze in the darkness. His parents stopped talking. They were sitting in the dark, at the kitchen table. Rian closed the front door behind him. His parents were staring at him, waiting. Rian was still breathing hard. He didn’t want what had happened in the clearing to be real, but it was. His legs shook as he walked to the table and sat down.

“I followed Arwel into the forest,” Rian said. He told them everything.

After he finished, the two looked more worried than he had ever seen them. They told him to go back to bed. Rian went to his room, closing the door gently behind him. He heard the front door open and close a moment later. His parents had left the house. What had he just witnessed out in the forest? Had that been necromancy? But his father’s eyes didn’t look like that. Who was Norris? He had told Rian he already had an apprentice. He must have meant Arwel, but what was Norris?

Rian didn’t go back to sleep that night. He lay awake, watching the moonlight creep across the ceiling. How would Arwel and Norris wake a true god and free Virida from the Sancta? The Sancta despised all magic that didn’t come from the gods, calling it wild magic, but Rian’s parents had explained not all magic was wild.

Rian had heard of wild mages, but he didn’t know how to tell the difference between someone who could use magic and someone whose magic was using them. Either way, if the Sancta heard about this, they would send knights after Arwel and Norris. The only reason they left Andred alone was because he never used his magic, and because of his part in defeating Unris.

Then there were the dead villagers in the forest… Rian hoped whatever Arwel and Norris were up to didn’t have to do with the dead villagers. These thoughts kept him awake for the rest of the night. When morning finally came, Rian joined his parents for breakfast. His parents were eating quickly. The three of them said nothing until they finished.

“We’re going to leave Fen for a few days,” Mae said.

“I’ll go with you,” Rian said.

Mae shook her head. “We’re going after Arwel.”

“We know you want to come, but you’ll be safer here,” Andred said. “You’ll stay with Ora until we get back.”

Rian reluctantly packed some clothes in a small bag, then went with his mother to Ora’s house. The house was small, near the other end of the village. The forest was right behind the weathered house. Ora was waiting outside.

“I’ll keep watch of him, make sure there’s no trouble,” Ora said.

“Thank you,” Mae said. She hugged Rian tightly, then walked away.