Chapter 5: The Unseen Shield and the Color of Fear.
The next morning, my mother’s voice found me in the dim kitchen. “Elsbeth.” Her tone was soft, yet frayed with a familiar, weary tension. She held out the coins, the metal already cold in her palm before they ever touched mine. “The market. A loaf from Marten’s.” Her eyes met mine, and in their depths was the unspoken plea, a silent scream I knew by heart: Be quick. Be invisible.
The moment I stepped into the market square, the world constricted. It was the smells that struck me first—the earthy scent of potatoes, the sharp tang of onions, the overwhelming sweetness of ripe berries, a scent so vibrant it was almost a color I could taste. For everyone else, it was a symphony. For me, it was a chaotic noise.
And then the stares began.
It wasn't the bold, confrontational staring of the boys in the alley. This was worse. It was a slow, creeping tide of attention. A woman selling eggs glanced at me, then quickly away, her mouth pinched. Two men by the potion shop stopped their conversation, their eyes following my progress for a moment too long. A mother didn't pull her child away; she simply turned the child's shoulders, a subtle redirect away from the colorless girl.
I was a stone dropped into the pond of the market, and the ripples were made of silence and averted gazes.
I reached Marten's stall. There was one person ahead of me, a girl with a bright ribbon in her hair. Marten laughed with her, his face crinkling, as he handed over a pastry. "For you, my dear, a little extra."
She giggled and skipped away.
His smile vanished the second his eyes landed on me. The transformation was so complete it was like a shutter slamming down. The bustling sounds of the market seemed to recede, creating a pocket of profound quiet around his stall.
"Yes?" he said, his voice flat.
"A brown loaf, please," I whispered, my own voice sounding terribly small.
He turned, his back a broad, unwelcoming wall. He took his time, selecting a loaf and wrapping it in paper with slow, deliberate movements. The silence was a physical weight, pressing down on me. I could feel the eyes of the next customer in line burning into my back. I stared at a floury fingerprint on the counter, my cheeks burning.
He placed the loaf on the counter. I extended my hand with the coins. He took them from my palm without touching me, his fingers deft and quick. He dropped them into his money box with a clink that sounded final.
"Move along, then," he muttered, not looking at me, already glancing past my shoulder at the next, more welcome, customer.
The dismissal was as effective as a shove. I clutched the bread, its warmth now feeling like a fever, and fled the stall, the normal chatter resuming the moment I was a few steps away. I had been a brief, unpleasant interruption, now corrected.
The alley was a refuge for a mere ten paces before they appeared. Jorn and his friends, leaning against the wall as if they had all the time in the world to torment the defective.
"Well, if it isn't the cursed one," Jorn said, pushing off the wall. "Doing your mother's shopping? Shouldn't you be hidden away in the attic?"
I tried to brush past, but one of them, a boy with a splatter of freckles, stepped in front of me. "Hey, Blank. Can you even tell if this bread is moldy? Or is it all just grey mush to you?"
Laughter. It was brittle and mean. I felt a hot tear escape and trace a path down my cheek. I hated it, the physical proof of my hurt.
"Leave her alone." The voice was not loud, but it carried a quiet authority that froze the laughter in their throats.
Roric.
He was just there, having seemingly emerged from the shadows. He stood with his hands loose at his sides, but there was a coiled readiness in him that the boys immediately recognized. He was Wilhelm's best friend, and in that moment, he looked every bit the warrior.
Jorn's bravado deflated. "We weren't doing anything!"
"You were," Roric said, his gaze unwavering. "You were being pests. Scatter."
They scattered. Like cockroaches when the light is turned on, they disappeared into the cracks of the alley.
Roric watched them go until the lane was empty. Then he turned to me. His eyes, a deep, steady grey in my world, scanned my face. He saw the death grip I had on my basket. He didn't mention it either.
"The quickest way home is past the tanner's," he said, his tone now conversational, as if we had just run into each other on a pleasant stroll. "The smell is foul, but the company is better."
I managed a shaky nod. He fell into step beside me, not too close, but close enough that his presence was a shield. We walked in silence, but it was a different silence from the market. This one was peaceful. The only sounds were our footsteps and the distant, harmless noise of the square.
He didn't tell me to ignore them. He didn't say it would get better. He simply walked with me, a solid, silent bulwark against the world's cruelty. With every step, the knot of shame and fear in my stomach began to loosen.
We reached my door. The familiar, peeling green paint had never looked so welcoming.
"Thank you, Roric," I said, my voice finding a little of its strength.
He gave a single, firm nod. “Tell Wilhelm I’ll stop by later.” He hesitated, then added, “Keep your chin up, Elsbeth.”
Then he turned and left, his stride long and easy.
I stood there for a moment, breathing in the quiet of my own street. I looked down at the loaf in my basket. It was just bread. But it was also the bread I had bought despite the stares, carried past the taunts, and brought home under the protection of a friend. I pushed the door open and stepped inside, placing the loaf on the kitchen table with a soft, final thud. It was done. And I was home.
***
The following morning, the fear had a smell: the acrid scent of old ash and metal being sharpened. Mother needed thread for mending, a task that usually felt endlessly mundane. But today, the walk to the weaver's shop felt like crossing a battlefield before the fighting had even begun.
My mother quickened her pace, pulling me along. The weaver's shop was usually a place of quiet industry, filled with the soft click-clack of looms and the gentle rustle of thread. Today, it was a hushed chapel of anxiety.
Several women were crowded inside, their voices low and urgent. Mistress Lorna, the weaver, was not behind her counter but standing among them, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
"It's true," one woman, the wife of the cooper, was saying. "My husband heard it from a guardsman who came in on the last patrol before the closure. He said the very trees at the edge of the Blighted Marches are twisted into screams."
A collective shudder went through the group.
My mother cleared her throat, and the women turned. Their eyes, wide with shared fear, flickered over me for a moment before dismissing me. In the face of a potential demonic invasion, a colorless girl was no longer a pressing curiosity.
"Mistress Lorna," my mother said, her voice barely a whisper. "We need some grey thread. For... for mending." The ordinary request sounded absurd.
Mistress Lorna gave a curt nod and moved behind her counter. As she measured the thread, she kept talking, her words meant for my mother. "They're saying the closure is just the first step. A quarantine. Next, they'll be conscripting our men and boys to fortify the border."
The cooper's wife nodded vigorously. "My Joren has already pulled his old militia leathers from the chest. He says it's better to be ready."
The conversation swirled around me—talk of hidden cellars, of packing emergency satchels, of sending children to relative’s further north. They were building a fortress out of whispers, each woman adding another stone of terrible speculation to the wall.
My mother paid for the thread, her fingers trembling slightly. No one said goodbye. We simply left, the bell on the door jingling a mockingly cheerful note as we stepped back into the fearful air.
***
That evening, the dread had settled into our home like a thick dust. Dinner was a silent, tense affair. The stew was eaten, but no one tasted it. Wilhelm was fidgeting, his energy a live wire in the room. Finally, he could contain himself no longer.
“They’ve closed the South Road,” he said, his voice too loud for the table. “At the Aslean pass. Completely.”
My father chewed his bread slowly, his brow furrowed. He was a practical man, a blacksmith whose world was made of hammer and iron “Avalanche, most like,” he grunted. “That quake the other night was sharp. Probably shook the cliffs loose. They’ll clear it.”
But Wilhelm was shaking his head, his eyes alight with a grim excitement that scared me. “No, Father. That’s not what they’re saying. Hemlock at the chandler’s said the orders were sealed with a black ribbon. A black ribbon.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a hushed, dramatic tone. “And a rider from the south came in this afternoon. He didn’t stop at the inn. He went straight to the mayor’s house, and he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
The air grew colder. My mother’s hand went to her throat. “What are you saying, Wilhelm?”
“I’m saying it’s the Demon Lord,” Wilhelm stated, as if it were the only logical conclusion. “The earthquake was his doing. He’s testing the old wards. The road is closed because he’s assembling his forces in the Marches, and the Crown doesn’t want anyone seeing it—or doesn’t want his scouts getting through.”
My father scoffed, but it was a weak, hollow sound. “Superstitious nonsense. The Crown closed the road because it’s fallen into a ravine. They don’t need to send out a proclamation for every pothole.”
“Is it nonsense?” Wilhelm challenged, his gaze intense. “Why else close the entire pass? Not just a ‘road repair’ sign, but a full garrison blockade? It’s the only road that skirts the edge of the Blighted Lands. The only one. That’s not a coincidence.”
I watched them, my food forgotten. I saw the conflict on my father’s face—the rational man warring with the protective father, the husband. He wanted to dismiss it, but the seed of doubt, so carefully planted by the village gossip, was taking root even in his sturdy mind.
“They say,” Wilhelm continued, his voice barely a whisper now, “that the very air near the pass tastes of ash and iron. That the birds have stopped singing.”
My mother gasped softly. “Blessed Saints, protect us.”
The conversation continued, swinging between my father’s strained logic and Wilhelm’s terrifying certainties. They spoke of mustering the militia, of old stories about the last war with the dark forces, and of whether our village was too far north to be a target.
I sat between them, saying nothing. I looked at my brother's face, contorted with a brave, foolish passion, and my father's, lined with a weary, pragmatic terror. I thought of the women in the weaver's shop, fortifying themselves with gossip, and the men at the smithy, arming themselves with sharpened steel.
And I realized, with a cold clarity, that the Demon Lord didn't need to send a single soldier. He was already here. He was in the frantic clang of the blacksmith's hammer, in the hushed whispers of the weavers, and in the furious, fearful silence at my own dinner table. He was a seed of panic, and it had taken root in the fertile soil of our closed road and our fearful hearts, growing into a monstrous shadow that was already choking us.
***
Later that night, Sleep did not come as a gentle tide, but as a sudden, silent fall. The familiar confines of my room dissolved into a vast, impossible space. I stood in a place that was neither forest nor void, but a crossroads where rivers of starlight flowed silently over a floor of dark, smooth obsidian.
One moment, the rough wool of my blanket was against my cheek; the next, I stood in a place that was neither forest nor void. Before me, rivers of liquid starlight flowed in silent, impossible confluence, their light the only illumination in the profound darkness. The air hummed with a silent music.
At the center of this crossroads waited the presence. The cosmic light, the conscious nebula. This time, there was no confusion. The memory was etched into my soul: the clean scent of damp earth and pine, the sight of his green-golden light, a dance of energies older than time. He was the figure behind the God. I remembered the voice from the forge that had told me to use the G-Pen.
“You remember,” the voice said, the vibration echoing through the marrow of my bones.
“I do,” I replied, my spirit-voice steady. “But I still don’t know who you are.”
In response, the ambient light gathered, pulling itself into a tall, radiant shape woven from swirling galaxies and the birth of suns. His eyes were twin event horizons, promising both infinite wisdom and terrifying depth.
“I am known by many names,” he intoned, each syllable a note in creation’s song. “Shaper of Songs. Weaver of Fates. In your oldest tales, the Fairy King.” But these are titles given by mortals. I was born from the first breath of the cosmos, from pure energy before matter.
The scale of him was terrifying. This was no simple spirit of field or stream. This was a custodian of existence.
“Why me?” The question cracked out of me, a desperate plea from a simple girl. “Why choose a girl from a forge who can’t even light a candle? Aren’t there others?”
The brilliant starlight that composed him dimmed, shaded with a sorrow older than worlds.
“There was another before you,” he said, and the vision unfolded.
A man appeared, his mind a brilliant forge of innovation and wonder, his creations things of breathtaking beauty. Then, a subtle shift. Pride, a slow-acting poison, twisted him. His beautiful creations grew thorns and venom. His eyes, once full of light, turned a violent, hungry shade of purple.
“Absolute power corrupted him.” The king’s voice was heavy with the weight of the loss. “He saw the order of the world not as something to honor, but to replace. The Demon Lord tempted him with dominion. He accepted. He is now one of their Elite generals—using the art of creation to unravel lives.”
The horrifying vision dissolved, leaving a chill in the stellar air.
“I chose you, Elsbeth,” he said, his voice softening into something akin to tenderness, “not for your power, but for your goodness.” For a heart tested by shame and found resilient. For a soul that creates from love, not ambition. That is what I require. That is why it must be you.
The truth of it settled deep within me. This was no longer about the village or my humiliation. It was about a war that spanned realities and my role in it.
I lifted my chin, a newfound strength straightening my spine. “What must I do?”
“When the time comes, it will be clear. Trust in the tools you have been given. Trust in the heart you have always possessed.”
“I have more questions,” I pressed, the core of my earthly pain surfacing. “Most of all—why was I born colorless?”
He smiled—a gentle, ancient, unfathomable expression that held eons of patience.
“You will understand when you are ready.”
Then, the atmosphere of the dream shifted. The flowing starlight of the rivers seemed to stutter. A deep, resonant tremor passed through the non-ground beneath my feet.
“Listen,” he warned. “The balance is fracturing. Trouble moves toward your home. Be brave, Elsbeth. The time for waiting is over.”
The dream began to dissolve, the rivers of starlight flowing backward into the void.
“Be watchful. Be brave.”
The dream shattered into a shower of fading light. I woke with a gasp, the truth beating in my chest like a second, war-drum heart. The Fairy King’s warning was no longer a prophecy; it was a promise. The "soon" was now. And the weight of worlds felt terrifyingly, exhilaratingly, on my shoulders.
The mysterious being has finally revealed its true form.
What warning was given to Elsbeth--?
Find out in the next chapter, same time, same place.
