Chapter Six – The Naming

  The road was long, flat, and without shade.

  No carts. No horses. Just feet against the ash-cracked soil.

  Eleven of them moved like a single dark line across the horizon, their shadows longer than their frames under the pale blue light of the first moon.

  The boy said nothing. He never did.

  But he watched.

  He watched the way the mercenaries moved. Not like soldiers—no drilled stiffness or practiced timing—but like creatures born to movement. Even without a word exchanged, they fell into pace together, eyes flicking at the same distant shapes in the grass, blades shifting the same way as wind stirred across the plains.

  They were not young. Not truly. Even the ones with smooth faces carried something heavy behind the eyes—like they’d all seen something too petrifying to explain.

  The boy noticed all this because he had learned early that silence was a weapon, and observation was armor.

  They were killers. Not the kind who boasted or barked orders, but the kind who had bled in silence too many times to pretend it meant anything now.

  The youngest among them was a lean woman with a crooked nose and half shaved head. She carried no sword, only a hooked spear and a gutting knife blackened with oil. Her eyes were sharp as iron filings. She chewed roots with a strong sweet smell and muttered strange rhymes in her sleep.

  Another—a massive man whose back was so wide it looked unnatural—carried two shields, one strapped and one slung, and no ranged weapons at all. His eyes were dull, but he grinned when he walked, a grin like someone remembering a joke told by a corpse.

  They never spoke to the five new recruits from Fort Drelnath. Those boys still had the stink of hope on them. Still stood too straight. Still reached for water before checking their flanks.

  The nameless boy walked among them like a shadow that didn’t belong.

  He was lean, but not weak. Silent, but not afraid. His eyes watched everything. Not out of caution—out of habit. He memorized each man’s stride, the way their boots pressed the earth, the twitch of shoulders when they sensed movement, the silent ways they spoke to each other without sound.

  He had practiced to notice.

  By pain.

  By repetition.

  By a master who called pain a tutor and fear a mirror; himself.

  And Hargrin Vann—the one who led them—was the one he watched most.

  Hargrin walked as though the road itself obeyed him.

  He did not look behind. He did not speak to the others.

  He simply moved forward. Fast, relentless, unwavering.

  The boy thought Hargrin might be old, though his face showed little of it. His skin was iron-colored, deeply lined, and drawn tight against high bones. His beard was rough and untamed. His left hand had a crater of dark blotches. Like old scars burned scars... Healed somehow.

  But his eyes—his eyes ruined the boy’s ability to guess anything about him.

  They were bright, almost yellow. Not like a beast. Worse.

  They were human eyes that had forgotten how to blink.

  Every now and then, as the group walked in exhausted silence, those eyes would flick back—just once—to the boy. Then forward again.

  Just once.

  But always at the exact moment the boy had been thinking of Hargrin.

  **

  Three days into the march, as the wind turned colder and the soil turned redder, Hargrin spoke.

  The group had stopped for a short rest near a cluster of dead trees. The recruits collapsed against the bark and tore bread from their rations. The mercenaries stood in silence, some sipping water, some tending to their weapons or supplies.

  Hargrin stood on a low ridge, overlooking nothing in particular. The first moon had risen behind him, casting a faint pale rim along his shoulders.

  He turned his head once.

  “Boy,” he called.

  The recruits looked up. The mercenaries did not.

  The boy stood and walked up the ridge, quiet as dust.

  Hargrin didn’t turn until the boy stopped three paces away.

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy looked at him. Said nothing.

  Hargrin squinted. “I asked. Not because I’m curious. Because I want to know what to call you when you’re dead.”

  The boy stared. His lips parted, but no word followed.

  Hargrin didn’t blink. “You’re not mute. I’ve seen you mouth words in your sleep. You know language. That’s good. But you’ve chosen silence. That tells me you were broken the right way. But not all the way.”

  Still, the boy said nothing.

  Hargrin sighed. “No name, eh? Let me guess. Taken from you by some sadist who thought pain could clean the soul?”

  A pause.

  The boy’s eyebrow raised, as if slightly amused.

  Hargrin stepped closer. The boy did not flinch.

  Another pause.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The wind picked up. Dry leaves twisted in the air between them like dying birds.

  "What did Dreaven called you?"

  "He called me 'son' for the most part." The boy answered thoughtful.

  Hargrin nodded to himself. “Fine. You don’t have a name, then you’ll take mine.”

  The boy frowned slightly.

  “No, not my name,” Hargrin clarified. “But the one I give.”

  He tilted his head, studying the boy now. Truly looking. Not just glancing. His eyes drilled in, sifted through the surface. Through the dirt. Through the cold. Through the scars.

  “You watch like a crow. You move like a ghost. But you don’t flee. You wait. You measure. You remember.”

  Hargrin's voice lowered. “That’s what survives out here. The quiet memory. The one who keeps score while others make noise.”

  He nodded once.

  “Ash. That’s what you are. Burned, but not gone. Lightless, but still hot underneath.”

  The boy’s lips parted again. “Ash…”

  It was not a protest. Not quite acceptance.

  But it was the first name he was given a name that wasn't some of mockery.

  Hargrin smiled—thin and crooked.

  “Good. You spoke. That’s enough talk for now.”

  But the boy didn’t move. He looked at Hargrin, really looked.

  “Why me?” he asked. The words were hoarse, unused.

  Hargrin turned his head. “What do you mean?”

  “Why name me?”

  Hargrin’s eyes sharpened. “Because I don’t drag ghosts on the road with me. Either you walk as one of us, or you don’t walk.”

  Ash swallowed. “And if I walk with you?”

  Hargrin’s voice was quiet now. Almost gentle.

  “Then you will bleed. You will kill. You will bury things that shouldn’t have died, and walk past things that should have. And when it ends—if it ends—you will be something else. Something worse. But alive.”

  Silence stretched.

  Then Hargrin nodded again, as if sealing a pact.

  “Come, Ash. We march. No more shadows. No more hiding. If you’re going to follow killers, you’ll learn to walk like one.”

  And so the boy had a name.

  And in the days that followed, he would earn it.

  Not by surviving, but by watching.

  By remembering.

  By learning the cost of every step.

  **

  They arrived on the fifth night.

  The sun had long dipped below the crooked hills behind them, and the cold was creeping like mist into their bones. The river guided them the last leg of the journey—a slow, dark body of water fed by a silver waterfall that sang to no one. Its voice echoed off the distant rocks, muffled by trees and time. The stars above were smeared and pale, and the third moon - Elystra - had just begun to rise, bathing the world in hues of green and faint orange.

  That was when Ash first saw it.

  A wide, sagging hall of blackened wood nestled among the trees just past the river. Not a fortress. Not a camp. Something older. Something forgotten.

  It was square-shaped and low to the ground, but wide—very wide. Nearly a hundred strides across, maybe more. Large enough to hold a war council. Large enough for a feast of kings.

  But no king had ever feasted here.

  Its roof sagged at the edges, weighted with moss and strangled by long curling vines. Fungal rot climbed the lower beams, and its corner posts leaned slightly, like knees buckling under an unseen weight. The entire structure seemed to breathe with age. It wasn’t strong. It barely looked alive. The wooden walls groaned softly in the wind like an old man talking in his sleep.

  Hargrin halted them at the edge of the riverbank.

  “This is it,” he said. “Hall of the Withering Yew.”

  No one spoke. Even the mercenaries were quiet. Not from reverence—Ash would have known the sound of that. This was something else.

  Caution. Memory. Something colder.

  They crossed a shallow point in the river. The water was glacial, biting through boots and soaking into bone. Ash kept pace, as he always did. He was used to cold. Used to worse.

  Hargrin pushed the doors open without hesitation. They were swollen from damp and moved with a reluctant scream. Inside was darkness and dust.

  The scent of old wood, ash, and root-filled earth filled the air.

  Within the light of a few candles, a few grim faces turned toward them. The hall was half filled with the rest of the mercenaries. Some curled up beneath old, torn furs.

  Ash stepped inside behind Hargrin and immediately noticed what wasn’t there.

  No furniture. No hearth. No central fire pit. Only bare floorboards and patches of moss that had grown through the cracks. The walls bore carvings—worn down by time—of figures twisted in dance or war or something in between. Their faces were gone, but their posture screamed.

  Hargrin turned and spoke.

  “This is shelter. Not safety. Get your gear dry, eat if you haven’t.”

  One of the recruits finally broke. "Where are the beds? Not even a fire to keep the cold out! This is not what i signed up for."

  The chained-man didn’t even look at him. “You will be grateful for a cold patch of moss to rest your head by tomorrow's end.”

  Ash watched the mercenaries spread out, setting down packs, checking weapons. They worked with quiet precision. Efficient. Calm.

  And that’s when he noticed it again.

  No scars.

  None of them—not the root woman, not the shield bearer with the graveyard grin, not even the towering archer who had once wrestled a canyon cat—showed signs of battle on their skin.

  Not fresh. Not new.

  But not even old.

  Their skin was almost clean of history. No raised lines. No twisted marks. As if time had reached for them once and been turned away.

  Ash's brow furrowed.

  He had scars. He always would. His back, his wrists, the notch under his chin—each was a memory he carried like a burden.

  These warriors—these killers—they had almost none. Maybe a faint line if you look hard enough.

  He sat against the far wall, his mind burning with thoughts, and watched as Hargrin stood near the center of the hall, alone.

  It was then that the wind shifted.

  From the far window—shattered and overgrown with ivy—Ash could see it. The distant peak, outlined by Elystra, now high in the sky. The High Cold Mountain.

  It pierced the clouds like a blade, rimmed in ice and forever untouched.

  No path led there. No known trails dared approach.

  He had heard rumors, even in the barracks prisons. Stories told by broken men with dying voices. Stories of figures that walked without shadow near the summit. Of voices in dreams. Of entire groups vanishing without a sound.

  Of things that lived beneath it.

  Ash turned toward Hargrin. The large man was watching the mountain too.

  “You’ve been there,” Ash said quietly.

  Hargrin didn’t respond right away. His yellow eyes glinted in the moonlight.

  “Yes” he said. "I felt it's breath..."

  Ash waited.

  “It leaves marks deeper than flesh” Hargrin continued. “Most people do not come back from the mountain.”

  Ash’s mouth felt dry.

  “What’s there?”

  Hargrin’s eyes narrowed.

  “He came before us. Before kings. Before tribes. Before the cold. And he is waiting, always waiting for new flesh.”

  Ash felt something shift in his chest. Not fear. Not yet.

  But something heavy. Something that pressed down on thought and breath.

  Hargrin finally looked at him. Truly looked.

  “Ash,” he said, “I’ll lead you where you need to go. To survive our life and to stand as one of us, you will need to go through the training we start tomorrow."

  Ash studied him in silence. Then he asked the question that had haunted him since the river:

  “Why do none of you carry scars?”

  Hargrin’s grin was slow. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just tired.

  “Who says we don’t?” he said. “We have much more than any other man walking this earth.”

  And then he walked away.

  Ash sat for a long time in the cold hall of the Withering Yew; eyes fixed on the moonlit mountain far away. Watching. Remembering.

  And wondering if scars on the soul could ever heal—or if they only ever faded… waiting to bleed again.