Ethan adjusted the focus ring on the brass telescope he had built from scavenged glass and copper piping. Through the scratched lens, the muddy thoroughfares of Oakhaven came into sharp relief. Nine cycles. He had spent nine full cycles stuck on this dry, dead-end rim world. His memory stretched back sixteen cycles and no further. Sixteen years, if a cycle here matched the passage of time elsewhere, though his small frame and unaging face offered no answers. He had no record of his origins, no family name, only the faint, phantom impression that Ethan was what he should answer to. Everything prior to those sixteen cycles was an absolute, suffocating void. Down in the crowded square near the portal arch, three figures caught his attention. They wore thick leather dusters over blackened chainmail, their boots caked in red clay. They were not traders or local guards. One of them held an unfurled parchment sheet, displaying it to the town sergeant. Ethan leaned his eye closer to the glass eyepiece. The charcoal sketch on the parchment showed a distinct, delicate face: loose wavy maroon hair, piercing eyes, and tiny features. Ethan lowered the telescope. His stomach dropped into a tight, cold knot. A loud snap of dry wood echoed from the gulley below his secluded shelter. Black smoke began to curl up through the canopy of pines—heavy, pungent timber-smoke. They weren't searching the woods tree by tree. They were firing the ridge to flush him into the open. Silent as a shadow, Ethan packed his canvas haversack. He tucked his precious tools into the inner pockets, checked the small silver pendant hanging against his collarbone, and slipped out through the back latch of his tree-house. He vanished into the thick mountain brush seconds before the first incendiary glass dropped onto his thatched roof. --- For three agonizing months, Ethan lived like an animal in the high peaks far above the valley. He ate pine roots, wild mountain leeks, and whatever runoff water he could trap in slate grooves. The search parties patrolled the smoke-charred forest below for weeks, but Ethan was three feet eight inches tall and moved without making a leaf rustle. His greatest struggle was not the hunger, nor the freezing mountain winds. It was the blood. The portal brokers on this world did not accept local coin or iron ingots for off-world transit. They demanded rare arcana, specifically purified fae blood—a substance legendary for its stability in powering ancient spatial gates. Sitting in a damp, pitch-black cave, Ethan re-tied the linen bindings around his forearms. The process of purifying his own blood had nearly killed him three separate times over the past year. Fae blood was potent, but extracting the raw essence required bleeding himself into a stone crucible, burning off the cellular waste over an open elemental flame, and filtering the liquid through ground quartz. Each attempt had brought blinding, feverish agony that made his muscles spasm until he bit through his own lip. During the distillation, the light blue metallic chitin markings along his cheekbones, collarbone, and wrists had flared with brilliant, agonizing light, as if his very body recognized the loss of something sacred. Now, tucked inside padded leather sleeves, two tiny glass vials rested against his ribs. Inside them, the purified fae blood swirled like thick, molten gold, emitting a soft, ethereal luminescence. Two vials. It was every drop of refined essence he could extract without causing permanent organ failure. --- When the valley search parties finally called off their hunt, Ethan made his way down into the border town under the cover of dusk. The portal plaza hummed with low-frequency energy. In the center of the flagstone square stood a thirty-foot stone archway, its interior shimmering with an oily purple vortex that smelled of sulfur and wet iron. Ethan kept his dark cowl pulled low over his forehead, shading his wavy maroon hair. At his height, most travelers mistook him for a halfling child or a dwarven youth, but he kept his hands shoved deep inside his cloak sleeves to hide the distinct blue chitin plates on his wrists. He fell into the line of off-world travelers waiting at the intake counter. "Next," the gatekeeper grunted. He was an oversized half-ogre with a pitted brass ledger resting on a heavy oak table. Ethan stepped forward. He reached into his coat and withdrew one of his two glass vials, placing the glowing golden liquid onto the wood. The gatekeeper picked up the vial, held it up to the torchlight, and snorted. "Not enough. The tariff doubled two weeks ago. Regional council orders." Ethan stared at the gatekeeper in silence. He did not speak—he hated the sound of his own voice and rarely used it unless forced. Instead, he reached out, tapped a single slender finger against the ledger, and shook his head once in firm refusal. "Two vials, shorty, or step aside," the gatekeeper sneered, sliding the vial back toward him. "And strip off that heavy cloak. New security ordinance passed yesterday—no armor, no cloaks, no concealed gear past the threshold." Ethan’s emerald eyes narrowed. A subtle shift in the air behind him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The four travelers standing behind him in line had shifted their weight. They weren't looking at the portal or checking their baggage. Their postures were stiff, hand hilted near concealed blades, their shoulders arranged in a tight semicircle designed to cut off his escape. The traveler directly ahead of him moved laterally, blocking the ramp toward the archway. It was a setup. The price spike had been engineered to force him to reveal all his liquid gold. The no-cloak rule was designed to strip him of any hidden defense. The men in line weren't refugees or merchants—they were overseers and bounty hunters placed to surround him the moment he handed over his payment, ensuring he would be bound and delivered to whoever was hunting him. --- Ethan didn't wait for them to close the circle. He slammed his heavy boot down onto the foot of the mercenary behind him. The man grunted in shock, his grip slipping from his belt dagger. Before anyone could react, Ethan snatched his first vial off the counter with one hand and pulled the second glass vial from his tunic with the other. "He’s running! Grab him!" the gatekeeper bellowed. Ethan released the spell-seals holding his cloak together. With a sharp tear of cloth, two pairs of translucent, gossamer wings snapped outward from the base of his spine. Hidden and bound tightly against his back for months, they burst free into the night air, beating at a blinding frequency that kicked up a gale of dust and loose parchment. The sudden, explosive lift shot Ethan six feet straight into the air, soaring right over the heads of the lunging bounty hunters. "Crossbows! Shoot him down!" Ethan didn't look back. Unanchored portal travel was notoriously brutal—without a heavy transport carriage, the spatial forces could rend flesh from bone. But he gripped the silver pendant at his chest, locked his emerald eyes on the violet maw of the portal, and slammed his wings back to propel himself straight into the shimmering rift. He smashed into the portal event horizon like hitting a stone wall. The world dissolved into screaming light and sickening gravity inversions. Spatial currents tore at his clothes, burning his skin and threatening to rip his wings from his back. The silver pendant blazed red-hot against his sternum, drawing on its ancient protective wards to hold his soul inside his physical body, but the shear force rattled his teeth and turned his vision pitch black. A fraction of a second later, the pressure violently released. Ethan slammed face-first into frozen mud, skidding through slick slush before crashing violently into a shattered iron shield. The stench of fresh blood, ozone, and burning flesh hit him instantly. Deafening noise erupted all around him—the earth-shattering roar of combat magic, the frantic shrieks of dying men, the thunderous stampede of heavy armored mounts, and the deafening clatter of steel against steel. Gasping for thin, freezing air, Ethan pushed himself onto his knees, wiping blood from his nose. His emerald eyes widened as he took in the scene.

Chapter 1: The Hunt