In a fierce ice age where the only humans are a small society that have been pushed to the brink of extinction by a sinister God called the Wild and his wicked creatures, adventure and danger wait. He's spread famine and frost across the world, and...
A COOL BREEZE BLOWS PAST, WHIPPING my cloak slightly, and blowing a few strands of loose hair around my face. For the first time in my life, I'm not miserably cold, but warmed by the sun's radiant rays, which actually carry heat down for once.
It's not the only heat, however.
I smell the smoke, that bitter ashy fragrance, the instant we ride into the Bia Woods. It drifts up and combines with the sweet smelling flowers and fragrant leaves of the newly green woods, but it doesn't make the aforementioned scent any better.
Deceit has been here.
It's been only a week since I killed Wild... Since chaos descended upon the world. And it's all my fault. That's why I've rushed back home in record time, on my black tiger Argas, and Sallan, the spirit fox who's been traveling with me.
I can see the end of the woods, and I push Argas on faster, weaving and bobbing among the old trees and new roots, intent on getting home.
We burst out onto the sunlight, and there, a few yards ahead, are the high walls of Biawood, my village. And more ominous is the black smoke that drifts up from within them.
I pull Argas to an abrupt stop right outside the entrance, and I sit and take several deep breaths.
"You alright, Ilah?" comes the concerned voice of Sallan from behind me. He leans around me to peer at my face. "I'm sure everything's fine." He sounds way too doubtful for him to even believe that.
"I'm fine," I say, and gather up the reins again. "We have to just push on."
I kick Argas into a gallop, and we ride through the walls, into the smoke-belching village.
We're greeted by a horrific sight.
All the huts and cottages that I've passed all my life... The cabins and lodges I once played among as a small child... Burned. Burned to the ground. With nothing left but the charred and blackened beams that once supported the lovingly crafted roofs.
And all long the paths well worn by villagers walking to and fro are littered with bodies, the bodies of the people that I passed everyday. That waved to me when they spotted me. That helped feed me and my siblings when food was scarcer than normal. My own family, my mother and siblings, Ronin and Gaian... All of them, gone.Because of me.
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Be sure to read Book II: Chaos, out June 2016 on Wattpad!
