Chapter 2 — He Called Me Brother

Smoke blanketed the sky like a mourning veil. The once-quiet forest roared with fire, its trees alight in unnatural red. Screams echoed from deeper within the village. Creatures that had once been peaceful fled in chaos—or worse, turned violent.

Eli sprinted through the smoke, gripping a hunting axe in one hand and a sloshing wooden bucket in the other. The axe wasn’t made for battle—it was a tool, worn and notched from years of chopping bark and carcass—but it was all he had.

The crash had brought fire. The fire had brought panic.

And somewhere at the center of it all—Jeno.

Eli reached the crater. It steamed like an open wound in the earth, rimmed by fire and twisted roots. He slid down the edge without thinking, nearly dropping the bucket.

Jeno was still there.

Half-buried in dirt and soot, one hand clenched around a knife—simple, black-handled, iron-forged. Nothing fancy. But it glowed. Just faintly. Runes shimmered along its edge like veins of light, and the ground beneath it pulsed with strange heat.

"Still breathing…" Eli knelt beside him, relieved.

A growl echoed from the smoke behind him.

Eli turned, tightening his grip on the axe.

A fangbeast emerged—a creature once kept by forest shepherds, now deformed by red markings etched across its face and legs. Its eyes were blood-mad, frothing at the mouth.

Eli swung his axe up.

Too slow.

The beast lunged.

But Jeno's eyes snapped open.

The knife flared.

A circular rune burst from the blade and scorched itself into the earth—pure light. The beast froze mid-air. For a heartbeat, everything went still. Then—

CRACK.

The rune detonated outward like a shockwave. The beast was launched backward, crashing through a tree, its body twitching in smoke.

Eli dropped to one knee, stunned.

Jeno sat up slowly, blinking.

“…That wasn’t me,” he said, voice raw. “I think the knife just… did that.”

Eli stared at it. The blade looked longer than before—maybe an inch. The simple iron surface now held faint etched lines, curling like vines. Something about it had changed.

They returned to Eli’s home just before midnight. Fire still danced at the village edge, but the town’s guardians had erected barrier runes to contain it. Three homes were lost. Two villagers were wounded.

The strangest part: even the normally passive creatures—Glowbirds, barktails, moss-deer—had gone mad. It wasn’t just panic.

Something had changed the rules.

Jeno lay on Eli’s cot, bandaged, half-awake, the glowing knife now dull beside him.

Eli leaned on the windowsill, cleaning his axe with a wet cloth. His fingers paused when Jeno spoke.

"Thanks," Jeno muttered. "For not letting me roast like a marshmallow."

"You’re welcome… I think."

Jeno coughed, wincing. "What year is it?"

Eli blinked. "The hell does that mean?"

"I just… thought maybe I overslept. By a lot."

A silence passed. Jeno let his head tilt toward Eli, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“You look just like him.”

“Who?”

“My brother.”

Later, as the fires died down and the villagers settled in shelters, Eli washed his hands outside by the basin. His axe leaned against the wall—chipped now, from the earlier strike.

He glanced toward the forest. Past the barrier. Toward the Ember Shrine.

Then he saw them.

Footprints. Burnt into the ground.

Humanoid. Deep. Too heavy for a normal man. The scorched dirt around them still smoked.

They weren’t his.

They weren’t Jeno’s.

Someone else had come through.

And they were walking away from the crater, not toward it.

That night, in the silence of the dim cottage, Jeno stirred.

“I remember falling,” he whispered, eyes still closed. “But I wasn’t alone.”

Eli looked over.

“There was someone else. A guy. I didn’t see his face… but I saw his posture. The way he dove.” He opened his eyes slowly.