EMBERS BEFORE DAWN

📖 CHAPTER THREE: Embers Before Dawn

POV: Kael

Morning came with mist in its teeth.

The rain had stopped sometime in the night, but the world outside still dripped, still breathed like it hadn't forgiven the storm for ending. Pale light filtered through the slatted window, dim and gray, barely enough to cut the cold in the room.

Kael moved quietly, practiced. His boots didn’t creak, his breath didn’t fog the glass. The hearth had died down to glowing embers, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t need warmth. He was used to silence.

He was used to being alone.

The pan hissed as he dropped the last slice of cured meat into it. Beside it, a small hunk of bread—stale, but still soft in the center—and a bit of hard cheese he’d bartered for the night before.

He didn’t look back as he cooked, but he could hear Ron breathing behind him, slow and steady, still asleep.

Kael had considered leaving hours ago. Just slipping out. Quiet as a shadow. No goodbyes. No farewells. Just vanish—like he always did.

But something stopped him.

He wasn’t sure what.

When the food was done, he slid the contents onto a wooden plate, laid the bread beside it, and turned. Ron was curled half on his side beneath the threadbare blanket, mouth slightly open, one hand tucked beneath his head like a child.

Kael rolled his eyes, but... lightly.

He crossed the room, knelt, and set the plate down beside the knight with careful fingers.

He didn’t wake him.

Didn’t speak.

Just... looked.

Only for a moment.

Ron looked different like this—softer. The scar on his jaw less harsh in sleep. The armor stripped away. The grin gone. Just a man, bruised by life and exiled by someone else’s choices. Kael wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to trust someone like that.

Then he stood, pulled his cloak over his shoulders, and stepped out into the morning fog.

---

Outside, the world was hushed and waiting. Crows sat on the crooked fence posts, watching him pass like judges. The ground squelched beneath his boots as he followed the muddy trail out of the village, past the moss-eaten watchtower and into the woods beyond.

He didn’t look back.

He told himself he wouldn’t.

He’d gone maybe half a mile before he heard it.

Hoofbeats.

Kael froze, hand dropping instinctively to the knife at his belt.

But it wasn’t the clatter of soldiers or bounty hunters. It was one horse, moving fast. Familiar.

Seconds later, Ron came riding up the path, hair tousled, one boot barely on, cloak flying behind him like some half-awake knight out of a drunken ballad.

“You forgot something,” Ron called as he pulled up beside him.

Kael blinked. “What?”

Ron leaned forward in the saddle, holding up the wooden plate.

“The food. You left it for me.” He grinned, lopsided and infuriating. “And then you left me. Rude.”

“I didn’t think you’d miss me,” Kael muttered, walking again.

Ron dismounted, walking beside him without asking.

“I told you yesterday,” Ron said, voice quieter now, “we’re stuck together. You might as well get used to me.”

Kael didn’t reply.

Not right away.

But after a few minutes, he said, almost too low to hear:

“I am.”

And the woods swallowed the silence between them.