“Life had left me alone in this forest to wander — hunting in solitude in the wilderness of my making.”

  I woke up sitting beneath a tree in the middle of a strange forest. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and pine. Above me, the sky was streaked with crimson as the last light of day slipped away, casting long, eerie shadows across the mossy ground.

  A cool breeze whispered through the branches, carrying the faint rustle of leaves and the distant call of a nightbird. Moments later, darkness settled in, slow and silent, swallowing the forest whole.

  I stood up and tried to recall how I had gotten there but nothing came.

  Despite the mystery, the forest felt oddly peaceful. The silver light of the moon spilled through the thick canopy, making the leaves dance like flickering ghosts. The sounds — soft, rhythmic rustling — felt almost musical, a lullaby of nature.

  Still, beneath that calm was an unsettling hush, as if the forest itself was holding its breath.

  Then, a voice broke through the quiet.

  “Help me.”

  A woman’s voice. Gentle. Fragile.

  I froze. At first, I thought it might be my imagination. But then, clearer and more urgent:

  “Help me.”

  Despite the instinct to turn back, something pulled me forward, deeper into the woods.

  I found myself standing before a still, glassy lake bathed in moonlight. The water shimmered like crystal, reflecting the moon so clearly it was as if the sky had folded in half.

  On the edge of the lake stood a woman — held over the water by some unseen glass.

  I hesitated, breath catching in my throat. A familiar face amidst shadow,

  “Ivory?” I called out.

  She looked directly at me, her eyes glowing faintly in the moonlight.

  “Help me.”

  Her voice echoed around me, calm yet haunting.

  “What… what do you mean? Help you from what?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she lifted her hand and pointed toward the lake’s center.

  I followed her gaze.

  The water began to churn violently.

  The peaceful lake twisted into a roaring whirlpool. The wind rose suddenly, howling like a beast around us. The night sky darkened — moonlight dulled to a blood-red glow, stars blinked out one by one, and black clouds swallowed the heavens whole.

  The ground trembled beneath my feet. Trees groaned and ripped free from the earth, pulled into the growing spiral at the lake’s heart.

  Acting on instinct, I rushed forward and grabbed her wrist.

  “Come on!”

  She stumbled, and we both fell backward, crashing onto the cold, damp forest floor just beyond the shore.

  The storm paused.

  From the center of the chaos, a shadow rose — a figure cloaked in swirling black mist.

  Ivory’s voice barely a whisper:

  “Vaskhara…”

  Her face drained of color.

  I scrambled to my feet, shouting, “Who are you?! What do you want?”

  The figure didn’t respond. It drifted forward, soundless, gliding just above the water. Then it stopped.

  A skeletal hand emerged from beneath its cloak, pointing — not at me — but at Ivory.

  “What do you want from her?!”

  The voice that followed was a cruel whisper and a scream all at once:

  “Soon, all will come to pass — and with it, your heart, Vincent.”

  The wind lashed violently. The figure surged toward me like a wave of smoke, striking my face like thick cloth — blinding, suffocating.

  And then—

  Light.

  “Another dream?” a voice asked gently from the left.

  I turned quickly and saw Ivory sitting on a wooden chair beside the bed.

  I yelped, falling to the floor in shock. The pain was real enough to shake off the dream.

  “Vincent! Are you alright?” she rushed over.

  I rubbed my shoulder and managed a lie,

  “Yes… I'm fine.”

  She helped me up, but I noticed her shoulders tense with guilt. I gave her a small smile.

  “No need to worry. it was my fault for sleeping in late.”

  She looked up at me, seeming relieved. “You weren’t usually up this late. I got worried.”

  “Well,” I said, realizing I was still in my nightshirt, “I should probably change out of these first.”

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  Her cheeks turned red as she turned quickly. “Right! I’ll… wait outside.”

  After a quick bath, I looked for Ivy outside my door, but she was gone. I descended alone into the throne room. From the great hall, a huge arched doorway led to a corridor stretching far into the kitchen. It felt empty that day. No servants, coming and going.

  It was a room brimming with herbs and shelved meats, the aroma of burning wood, and the sound of boiling soup.

  I found myself some eggs to fry, a skillet to cook it on— a simple skill I was happy to still have.

  Though unusual, living in a place with royal chefs and still cooking for myself, I felt it necessary. I wasn’t trying to be royalty — I just didn’t want to lose the familiar parts of who I was — or whatever's left.

  I sat alone in the vast dining hall, where long tables stretched beneath the high arches of the throne room. The air was still, the faint echo of my fork against the plate carrying through the empty space.

  Fork scraping plate.

  A silence that followed.

  Until—

  “No, IVORY! And I will not say it again!” boomed the thundering voice of Beltrom as he threw open the massive doors of the throne room.

  “But Uncle—!” Ivory’s voice followed, pleading but cut short by frustration.

  “No more of the Hunt, young lady!” Beltrom’s tone brooked no further protest.

  She turned away, her expression riddled with anger. She glanced toward me, no words I could utter that she could hear. She turned, her silhouette disappearing from the hall.

  I was left sitting awkwardly, unsure whether to speak. Still, curiosity won over silence.

  “Good morning, sir,” I said carefully.

  “Vincent? You’re up? and you... heard that, didn’t you?” he asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “Yes... I did,” I said. “If I may ask — what is this Hunt she spoke of?”

  Beltrom gave a short sigh, his breath muffled by weight of air around us, "It's an annual tradition of the Four Houses" he answered vaguely.

  He sighed and nodded. “And Ivy... She wants to join this year’s Hunt.”

  "And you won't let her?" I hesitated. “Is it because she’s a princess…?”

  Beltrom shook his head. “Not because she’s a woman, Vincent. Not even because she's a Princess," his gaze turned blank with nostalgia.

  "That’s not how the East thinks — not anymore,” he added

  He crossed his arms, lowering his voice.

  “It’s because she’s the only heir to Ironhill. The Royal Bloods made it law: no heir may enter the Hunt unless their succession is secure. It’s not tradition. It’s survival.”

  “But others have risked it before,” I said.

  “Only when there were brothers, sisters, or cousins — someone left to carry the bloodline.” He looked toward the grand doors through which Ivory had exited.

  “Ivory is all we have. If she dies out there, our line dies with her. And in the eyes of the Royal Bloods, that’s too great a cost for pride or stubbornness.”

  I nodded slowly. “The Royal Bloods…?”

  He gave a slight nod, almost reluctantly. “There are four — the ruling houses of the Eastern Seas. Mistfold of the North — hidden in the Haze Mountains, ruled by The House of Childred, who value knowledge above all.

  "Then there’s Crowspeak of the East, under Queen Eleanor of House Eris — brilliant and terrifying in equal measure." his tone deepened.

  "And finally Oakress, located in the western forest, high atop the Tree of Veheem, ruled by King Siegfried Sid — descendant of a house that has rebuilt itself from ash too many times to count.”

  “And Ironhill?” I asked.

  “Ironhill is steel and soil. We guard the southern border, and keep the fires burning." with a worried face, he turned to me saying,

  "That fire, Vincent — she is all that’s left of it.”

  His tone softened for a moment.

  “She’s brave. And stubborn. But bravery doesn’t replace bloodlines.”

  I thought for a while, then asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  His majesty looked at me, eyebrows raised, then sighed. “Convince her. Talk her down if you can. She won’t listen to me. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

  After he left, his words still weighed on me.

  I moved through the eastern wing, past tall arched windows that spilled pale light across worn flagstones. The air grew cooler as I neared a guardsman posted at the base of a narrow stairwell.

  When I asked if he’d seen the princess, he only gave a short nod and motioned upward. The stairs curled tightly along the inner wall, the stone smooth from years of use. Somewhere between thought and instinct, I felt it — not quite a voice, not quite a sound, but a faint pull urging me higher.

  At the top, the walls opened into the eastern tower garden.

  The roses surrounded me, thick and red — but one flower stood out. Silver-white, glowing faintly in the sunlight. It shimmered like glass.

  “Silverose,” she said, stepping out from between the hedges.

  “A rare bloom,” she added softly. “It only grows before the coming of the Cold.”

  “The Cold?” I asked.

  Ivory’s eyes darkened as she knelt beside the flower, cradling it gently despite the anger still simmering in her voice.

  “The Cold is a storm unlike any other. It comes once every thirteen years — silent, merciless. It doesn’t care for walls or warriors. It sweeps through like a shadow, freezing everything in its path, leaving only silence and ruin behind."

  She looked up, eyes blazing, "entire villages have disappeared beneath its icy grasp.”

  “A flower that blooms to remind us of what’s coming — the devastation, the loss… the death that waits just beyond the horizon.”

  Her fingers curled tightly around the Silverose’s delicate stem.

  For a moment, her gaze softened, and she spoke with a bitter laugh.

  “Funny, isn’t it? How this flower and I… we share the same fate.”

  She paused, eyes distant.

  “We both exist only because of what we symbolize. The Silverose warns of the Cold’s coming — the destruction no one can stop.

  And I… I’m kept alive only as a symbol of my bloodline’s survival.”

  Her voice grew quieter, heavy with frustration.

  She looked down at the flower again, then — without hesitation — ripped it from the earth.

  The roots tore free with a soft hiss of disturbed soil. She held the bloom in her palm, delicate and trembling, like it might wilt from her touch alone.

  “I shouldn’t hate it,” she whispered. “But I do. Not because it’s cruel. Not because of why it blooms — but because it doesn’t get a choice to define its existence.”

  She exhaled slowly.

  “Existing with a purpose already written for you — one you never asked for — isn’t noble. It’s suffocating.”

  “Ivy…” I whispered.

  She didn’t look at me.

  Her thumb brushed over the cracked petal, slow — almost tender.

  “Do you know what it’s like to have every decision made before you even learn to speak? To be shaped into something you never agreed to be — taught how to smile, how to bow, how to survive… but never how to live?”

  The wind stirred the crimson roses all around us.

  The Silverose in her hand didn’t move.

  It just sat there, pale and still, like it was listening.

  “I don’t want to be a warning sign,” she said.

  “I don’t want to bloom just because something terrible is coming.”

  She finally turned to me, her voice low and fierce.

  “I want to choose what I face. I want my life to mean something because I lived it, not because I was protected long enough to pass my name on to someone else.”

  She stood slowly, the Silverose still in her grip.

  The petals had begun to bruise.

  “I know what they say — about the Hunt, about me.

  "That I’m reckless."

  "That I’m risking too much."

  "But maybe what they call risk… is just the only real choice I’ve ever had.”

  There was nothing in her voice — no defiance, no rebellion. Just exhaustion.

  Like someone who had been holding her breath for years.

  Her pain was raw, spilling out like water through cracked stone.

  I wanted to tell her I understood — that I’d seen cages of my own, even if I couldn’t remember where or when. Every truth I thought I had felt borrowed, secondhand, like someone else’s memories wearing my voice.

  The words Beltrom wanted me to say clung like thorns.

  Were they mine, or just another role I’d been handed since waking in this place?

  I hesitated, the silence between us stretching tighter, heavier.

  Still, I said them.

  “Ivy… I understand how you feel. But maybe the Hunt isn’t the way to—”

  Her head snapped toward me, eyes narrowing.

  “To what? Prove I’m worthy? Prove I matter? You sound like him.”

  I froze. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did,” she said, voice tight. “You came out here to change my mind. To be the gentle voice, the reasonable one. But you were never on my side, were you?”

  I stepped forward.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why does it feel like you’re just another person trying to put me back in the cage?”

  Silence.

  The Silverose slipped from her hand and fell to the ground.

  Like shards of glass, its petals scattered across the sunlit garden.

  She looked at me one last time — just a flicker, and then nothing.

  “I really thought you cared…”

  Her voice cracked.

  “I really thought you’d understand.”

  Then she turned away, her silhouette dissolving into the hedges like mist.

  I just stood there, silent, watching her fade.