The sound was a hook in her chest, yanking her forward.

  Leyla ran. Her braid came loose, strands of dark hair whipping across her face as the lane blurred past, the morning bread forgotten, the kitchen door left swinging. The high summer sun cast sharp, pitiless shadows from the thatched roofs, and the air she gulped was thick and hot, clogging her throat. A frantic, useless chorus screamed in her mind: Not him. Please, not him. It wasn’t supposed to be him. The faces of the others flashed before her—Naveed’s resigned smile, young Yara’s sweat-damp brow—and tried to build a wall in her thoughts between them and Kamran. It crumbled before it was finished.

  Hassan was outside Aliya’s door, his back a rigid line against the wooden frame. The usual restless energy that clung to him was gone, replaced by a stillness that was somehow more violent. He turned as she skidded to a halt, the pale gold of his hawk-like eyes wide and unmoored. In her terrified face, he saw a ghost of a different panic from years past—a memory of sterile white sheets and a silence that had never been filled. It froze the words in his throat. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His jaw worked silently for a second before he simply stepped aside, a sharp, helpless jerk of his head toward the door.

  Sharp smells and low urgency filled the inside. Aliya knelt on the floor, her hands moving with firm precision. Beside her, Madad passed a cloth, his young face pale but set. Between them, Kamran lay shuddering, a violent, unnatural tremor seizing his great frame. The strong, square lines of his jaw were locked tight, and sweat matted the dark, greying hair at his temples. The sight knocked the air from Leyla’s lungs.

  Madad's gaze found her first. He murmured something to Aliya, who gave a tight nod without looking up, her full attention on stemming the storm inside her friend. Madad rose and came to Leyla.

  “It’s the Burn, Miss Leyla,” he said, his voice low and steady, the voice he’d learned from his mentor. “The same. Aliya is stopping the seizure. She will not let it take him.”

  It was confirmation of the very worst thing. Leyla let him guide her to a rough-hewn stool against the hut’s wall. She sat, the world narrowing to the cold wood beneath her. A violent shudder went through her frame, a chill that had nothing to do with the summer heat. Her lower lip trembled violently; she caught it between her teeth to force it still.

  Hassan stood sentinel a few paces away, silent. His hands clenched at his sides, the knuckles white and the skin over them raw and red, as if he’d recently driven them into something unyielding like stone or heartwood. The old silvery scars on his forearms stood out starkly against his tense, corded muscles. It was an old, useless reflex against a world that took things, a pain he welcomed over the hollow ache of remembrance.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, the thin silver bangle on her wrist cold against her skin, and pray. Not to any saint or spirit of the old world, but a raw, desperate plea into the cold air: Let him live. Let my son have his father. Do not let this be the day the light goes out.

  ---

  Inside the house, the world had ended.

  Faizan stood frozen in the spot where his mother had left him, the echo of the crashing plate still ringing in a silence that was too loud. The sharp, intelligent cast of his face had gone slack, his deep blue eyes wide and unseeing, all their usual observant calm shattered. The voices from the kitchen—the gasp, the panicked words—melted into a distant murmur, like hearing a conversation through deep water. Only the frantic drumming in his chest mattered.

  A warmth streaked down his cheek. He raised a clumsy hand to touch it, bewildered. Tears? Why? His mind, usually so sharp, thrashed like a trapped bird against glass. This isn’t happening. This is a mistake. If I don’t move, if I don’t breathe, it will turn out to be wrong.

  But the truth was a cold stone in his gut. He had seen the blue marks. He knew what they did.

  The need to escape it—the truth, the house, the crushing weight of the new, broken reality—flooded him. His body moved before his mind agreed. He stumbled from the doorway, past the main room, and out the back door into the heavy, still heat. He didn’t head for the lane, for the villagers, for anyone. He ran toward the only thing that offered oblivion: the dense, waiting line of the forest. He ran, feet pounding the hard earth, breath sobbing in his throat, his lean frame moving with a frantic, graceless speed he didn't know he possessed, trying with every step to outrun the image of his father, the strongest man he knew, falling.

  ---

  Fatima spotted Ali at the well, trying to fix a loose strap on his satchel with frantic, uncoordinated tugs. Her face had drained of color.

  “I saw Leyla,” Fatima said, her voice dropped, low and urgent. “She just ran past the smithy toward Aliya’s hut. She wasn’t… she wasn’t right.” The words hung in the still air, naming the fear they both carried. “Something’s happened.”

  They went together, a cold knot of dread tightening in their stomachs. They didn’t speak. Outside the healer’s hut, they saw a small, quiet crowd gathering. The usual morning sounds of the village—the clang of the smithy, the chatter from the well—had vanished, swallowed by a thick, waiting silence. The summer morning, usually vibrant with insects and birdsong, felt deadened and silent. Their neighbors' faces had turned to pale canvases of fear and grim empathy. Halim’s wife with a pot of broth, Old Man Rafay’s daughter with an armful of blankets. They were bringing what little they had, their faces etched with a familiar, weary fear. The community was closing ranks around a new wound.

  Pushing through, they found Leyla on her stool—a statue of prayer. Hassan stood nearby, his face like granite. Fatima scanned the faces. “Where’s Faizan?” she whispered to Ali.

  Ali just shook his head, his eyes wide behind his spectacles. They didn’t dare ask Leyla. They slipped away, back into the lane.

  “Check his house,” Fatima said, already moving.

  The Darius home sat empty, silent but for the faint smell of porridge. The back door stood open, letting in a wash of humid air. “He’s not here,” Ali said, his voice thin.

  They started asking. The weaver shook her head. The baker, dusting flour from his hands, shook his too. Then Jalal Khashm's voice stopped them—a jarring, harsh note in the village's muted dirge, standing with a few other men near the smithy, holding forth in a loud, carrying voice.

  “—always said he pushed too hard. Acting like the walls would fall without him. Pride comes before a fall, I tell you.”

  He stood as a pillar of simmering resentment, built like a bear dragged upright—broad and barrel-chested, his frame straining the seams of a simple, earth-stained kameez. A scarred leather vest hung open over it. His face told a history of violence: a cleaver-shaped jaw clenched tight, a thin white line through one eyebrow, and a knotted scar that pulled his lip into the permanent half-sneer he wore now. His hair was the deep burnt umber of old blood, wild and untamed. But his eyes held her—a light, tawny brown that glinted with a predator's hunger as they turned on her. A heavy blade, its handle worn smooth, was slung across his back, and the smell of old leather and aggression clung to him.

  Fatima stepped forward. “Have you seen Faizan?”

  Jalal turned. His gaze raked them up and down, smirk firmly in place, cold eyes untouched. “The great man’s son? No. And I don’t give a shit.”

  He snorted, a harsh, ugly sound. “Probably ran off the moment things got hard. My son, now, he’d stand his ground. Not a coward.”

  Ali flushed, his hands clenching. “He is not a—”

  Fatima grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “Leave it. He’s not worth the air,” she hissed, her voice low and venomous. She shot Jalal a final, scorching look that promised future trouble. “A man who kicks others when they’re down is the lowest kind of nothing.” She dragged Ali away, leaving Jalal’s mocking laugh to echo in the empty space between them.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  ---

  Back at Aliya’s, Hassan’s silence had become a roaring in his own ears. Plans, worries, rages—they all swirled and collapsed. They crystallized into one solid, immutable thought: Kamran’s family will not break. I will not allow it. The universe had taken its pound of flesh from him already. It would not claim this too. Not while he breathed.

  Leyla's fragile hold on herself—he saw it, and searched for words that could shore her up. Found none.

  Movement at the edge of the gathering caught his eye. Naveed walked slowly toward them, a man with the large, weathered frame of a former hunter now softened by sickness. His hair was the soft grey-brown of ash wood, heavily silvered at the temples, and his eyes held the deep, melancholy amber of old honey. He leaned on the shoulder of a girl with dark, serious eyes—a young face Hassan knew but had never truly seen. Behind them, with similar halting steps, came Halim and Rafay, their movements stiff, each bearing the quiet dignity of those who understood the landscape of this particular suffering.

  They didn’t offer empty comfort. Naveed simply stood beside Leyla’s stool, a solid, understanding presence. Halim placed a gnarled hand on her shoulder for a moment. The girl with Naveed just watched, her gaze intense and knowing, as if she had been waiting for this domino to fall all along. Their silent solidarity spoke a language all its own. Hassan moved to stand with them, forming a protective half-circle around Leyla. They were the veterans of this war, welcoming a new comrade to the front lines.

  The door to the hut opened. Madad emerged, his shoulders slumping with a fatigue that wasn’t physical. All eyes turned to him.

  “The seizure has passed,” he said, the words landing in the quiet like stones. “Aliya has stabilized him. The Channel Burn… it is deep. But he is alive. He is resting.”

  Leyla saw not the warrior, but the man: unconscious, pale, the familiar scar along his jaw stark against his skin, his breathing shallow but even.

  A collective, shuddering sigh went through the small crowd. Leyla’s head bowed, her whispered prayer shifting to one of exhausted gratitude.

  Then, in that moment of fragile relief, Fatima and Ali returned, their search written plainly in their worried faces and empty hands.

  Naveed, his voice a soft rasp, broke the silence. “Leyla. Where is your boy?”

  The question pierced the bubble of her relief. Her head snapped up, color draining from her face. “Faizan…” she whispered, the name a plea.

  Fatima’s answer landed as the final, chilling blow. “He’s not in the house. He’s not in the village. We’ve looked everywhere.”

  The relief that had just begun to warm them froze solid and shattered. Around them, the bright summer light seemed to bleach the color from everything, turning the scene stark and lifeless. Leyla did not cry out; she simply folded in on herself, her hands pressing over her mouth as if to hold in a scream. Kamran was alive, but broken. And now, Faizan was gone.

  ---

  The forest swallowed him whole.

  Faizan ran until his lungs became strips of fire and the village was a forgotten dream. Brambles tore at his clothes, low branches whipped his face, but he felt nothing except the hammering of his heart and the sickening reel of his thoughts. He’s fallen. He’s sick. He’s going to die. It’s my fault. I should have— The cycle was a blade grinding in his skull.

  A hunter’s lesson, drilled into him by a steady voice now a world away, cut through the noise. He dragged a trembling hand across his eyes, wiping away sweat and tears, and when his vision cleared, the frantic terror in his deep blue gaze had hardened into a desperate, razor-sharp focus: Panic makes prey. Breathe. See.

  He stumbled to a halt, bracing himself against a moss-slick trunk, gulping air. His eyes, blurred with tears and sweat, focused on his surroundings. The signs were there, subtle but screaming to a trained eye. A thorny bush to his left: snapped, not worn. A sapling ahead: bent, its trunk scored by something too high and sharp for a deer. On the soft earth near a root—a print, wider than his spread hand, with deep, gouging marks at the front. Claws.

  And clinging to the broken wood, a faint, shimmering residue, like heat haze on a stone but tinged with a sickly violet. Residual mana. His blood went cold. Not just a predator’s trail. A den.

  A twig snapped behind him.

  He didn’t turn. He dropped, rolling under the cover of a thick holly bush just as something heavy and fast crashed through the space where he’d stood. The air stirred, thick with the smell of wet fur and ozone. He pressed his back against a broad tree root, squeezing his eyes shut, holding his breath until spots danced behind his lids.

  Thump. Crunch. A slow, heavy tread. A low, rattling inhale, sniffing. Close. So close the vibration traveled through the ground into his spine.

  He couldn’t stay.

  As the snuffling sound circled toward his hiding spot, Faizan exploded into motion. He burst from the bushes and ran, not with direction but with pure, undiluted terror lending speed to his legs. A roar of fury split the forest behind him, a sound that vibrated in his teeth. The chase began.

  He was a darting shadow; it was a thunderbolt. It didn’t navigate the undergrowth—it plowed through it. The sound of snapping timber and thrashing foliage was a constant terror at his back, gaining. His father’s lessons fragmented into instinct: zigzag, use the thick trees as shields, don’t look back.

  A claw swiped, catching the back of his tunic with a sound like tearing parchment. The force spun him, sent him crashing through a curtain of ferns. He landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him. A mass of shadow and matted fur towered over him—two points of seething violet light fixed on his face. Its maw opened, dripping strands of luminous saliva.

  Never be disarmed. The world is full of weapons.

  His hand closed around a heavy, jagged stone half-buried in the loam. As the beast lunged, he threw with every ounce of strength he had left, aiming not for the skull, but for the blazing eye.

  A wet, crunching thwack. A shriek of agony—not animal, not human. Pure mana-fed pain. The creature recoiled, pawing at its face.

  Faizan was up and running before the echo died. The forest began to thin, the ground sloping upward. The beast’s enraged bellows chased him, closer again, fueled by pain. He burst from the tree line into blinding sunlight and skidded to a halt, gravel scattering from his boots.

  Empty air. A sheer cliff face dropped away before him, the forest canopy a green carpet far, far below. A dead end.

  He turned. The beast emerged from the woods, one eye a ruined mess, the other a vortex of violent purple fury. It lowered its head, a guttural growl building in its chest. It gathered its haunches beneath it.

  There was nowhere to go.

  The beast leaped.

  Faizan took a single, instinctive step back.

  And the world fell away.

  A moment of shocking silence. The roar vanished. The heat, the fear, the crushing weight of his grief—all of it stripped away by the rushing wind. He tumbled, the cliff face a blur of grey and green, the sky a dizzying wheel of blue. The ground rushed up to meet him, vast and inevitable.

  This is it. The thought came crystal clear, almost peaceful. It ends. Everything ends.

  A strange lightness filled him, a sensation of terrible, absolute freedom. His vision began to darken at the edges, the world softening, fading to a distant murmur. The last conscious thought he had of himself was the feeling of the wind pulling at his dark hair, and the strange sensation that the falling sky was the same depthless blue as his own eyes. The last thing he was aware of was the air, how it no longer felt like an enemy, but like a release.

  Then, a loud, crashing thud swallowed all sound.

  Welcome to 'To Dream of Unbound Stars'!

  You've just completed Volume 1: The Fall of Firstdawn. Thank you for giving this new story a chance. If you enjoyed the opening arc, following or adding it to your reading lists helps more than you know.

  The story will update with a new chapter weekly. I'd love to hear what you think—who your favorite character is, your theories on the Channel Burn, or what you hope awaits Faizan next. Your engagement is what makes serial writing so rewarding.

  Thank you for reading.