Chapter One: The Mountain Remembers

The dream starts with fire.

It eats through the dark like it’s alive. Curling. Clawing. Devouring.

The air chokes and the sky pulses red behind her eyelids like a heartbeat.

She’s running. Or falling. Maybe both.

A spear in her hand. Blood in her mouth. Screaming—someone else’s or hers, it’s hard to tell.

Then come the eyes. Red. Not like blood or fire. Red like war.

They stare into her, through her, and she knows them even if she’s never seen them before.

Ares.

He doesn’t speak. He never has. But the way he looks at her—like she belongs to him—terrifies her more than the fire ever could.

And then—

Falling.

Wind screaming past her ears.

The sharp pain of hard, cold, stone.

Silence.

Her name breathed like a curse from the dark:

Thera.

I gasp, the sound rips from me like I’d broken the surface of the river mid-drown. Cold air hits my skin. Rough blankets rub my legs.

My hand’s already on the blade beneath my pillow.  

Instinct. Muscle memory. Paranoia.

Take your pick. They all leave bruises.

It’s always that moment, the fall. The wind screaming. The cliff. My father’s silence. The way the mountain opened instead of killing me. I shouldn’t have lived. But I did.

There’s no one there. Of course not. Just shadows and the creak of old wood.

I sit up slowly, my heart still kicking at my ribs. My knuckles are white around the hilt of my blade.

It always leaves me sweaty, wired, ready to fight gods or ghosts, whichever appears first.

I dig my nails into my palm, jaw clenched. Not fear. Never that. Just the burning, stupid anger that still gets to me. That I still see his eyes every time I close mine.

Ares, with those damn eyes. Málaka—the oldest word in my vocabulary, and still the most satisfying.

I sigh, dragging my hand through my hair. “Get a grip,” I mutter. “There’s no fire. No cliff. No war god stalking you from the darkness.”

Shadows stretch across the rough stone walls of the cave. Each one shaped like a memory hovering at the edge of my mind.

Just another night in this quiet little corner of nowhere. The crickets hum like they haven’t seen war. The moon hangs smug above the pines.

Just me and the ghosts.

I drop the knife. It clatters too loud in the silence.

Good.

Let it remind the shadows who they’re dealing with.

I rub the grit from my eyes and swing my legs over the edge of the cot, bare feet hitting the cold stone. The chill bites, but it’s familiar—real. I focus on that. The bite.

The air smells like cedar smoke and mountain dust. The way the wind slips through the cracks in the shutters, carrying the ghost whistle of owls and something more distant—water? Or wolves?

The hearth is dead. Again.

I push to my feet as the old floorboards creak. Everything here groans: the wood and my bones. I stretch out my limbs, each joint cracking in protest.

Maybe that’s why I like it here. It speaks its truth, no matter how ugly.

 A soft rustle comes from behind the tattered curtain that separates my corner from the rest of the house.

Cyrene, probably.

She sleeps like a stone most nights, but she hears things. Feels things. Some say that’s what madness is, but I’ve never bought that.

She talks to the gods like they still listen.

I move to the hearth, nudging the ashes with an iron rod. Dead. Of course, it is. Nothing ever stays warm up here.

I sigh and grab a log from the stack by the wall—what’s left of it, anyway. We’ll need more before the week’s out.

Not that I mind the cold. It reminds you you’re still breathing.

Our little home is built halfway into a mountain, more a cave than a house, but it keeps out the worst of the storms.

Wood-planked floor. Stone walls that sweat in spring. Shelves lined with dried herbs and glass jars that Cyrene swears are for “divine intention”, but mostly just smell like burnt rosemary.

It’s quiet up here. Not temple-quiet or death-quiet. Just…removed. Like the gods forgot to look this far up.

And that’s why we stay.

The scent hits me before I see her—sharp, earthy, and familiar.

She’s preparing tea now, hunched in her old wool cloak, filling a battered clay kettle. She stirs it with a carved wooden spoon, slow and steady like it’s a ritual. Maybe it is. Maybe that’s why it always tastes like memory.

A handful of crushed herbs sit in a small wooden bowl beside her. Pale green and silver stems still sticky with resin.            

            “Mountain tea?” I ask, though I already know.

            She hums softly. “The strong kind,” she says without looking up, her hands steady even when the world isn’t. “For dreams that leave teeth marks.”

            I huff a quiet breath and sit down beside her, letting the warmth of the rekindled fire crawl up my spine.

“It grew wild near the ridgeline,” she says. “The gods still whisper up there.”

“Mm,” I grunt, noncommittal. I don’t say anything about the gods. Not today.

She doesn’t press. She never does.

That’s Cyrene—still as a mountain stone, sharp as the blade at my hip. She speaks when the world quiets down enough to hear her. She sees things even without her eyes and hears truths people haven’t yet said. It unsettles most. Some call her mad.

They called me worse.

But she’s never once shown fear. Not even when I first woke in her hut, blood in my mouth and vengeance in my bones. She only tilted her head, like she was listening to voices carried on a breeze.

Like she’d been waiting.

Like she already knew I’d fall and chose to catch me anyway.

I wrap my fingers tighter around the cup. The warmth seeps into my muscles, but the ache beneath never really fades. The scar below my ribs throbs with memory—faint but there.

A child’s wound in a woman’s body.

Proof I was marked again long after the gods branded me. Long before I knew what it meant to be broken and breathing at the same time.

It’s been thirteen winters since that day on top of Mount Taygetus. The same mountain I now call home.

I was too young to understand the weight of prophecy. But I remember the look in my mother’s eyes when she stared at the mark on my shoulder.

Not just fear. Recognition.

Like she’d seen it before. Or dreamed it.

Her hands trembled when she pulled the cloth away, when she traced the shape like it might burn her. A spear, slanted and sharp.

And whatever she knew—or feared—she didn’t speak it. Not aloud. Just stepped back, eyes wide. As if she’d already lost me.

They think prophecy is truth. I think it’s just fear wrapped in poetry.

They said I’d bring ruin or salvation.

But Sparta doesn’t gamble. It chooses certainty.

So, they chose the cliff. Because killing a child is easier than risking a future they can’t control.

The Ephors signed the judgment, or so I was told. Men who hadn’t looked me in the eyes since I was born, but still decided I was too dangerous to live.

I remember the fall—wind screaming, the world turning sideways, the bone-snap silence at the bottom. Then darkness.

Then her. Cyrene.

She found me half-buried in blood and stone, more corpse than child. No one should’ve survived that drop. But I did.

And when I opened my eyes, broken and cold, she was already tending to me—blind eyes fixed on my face like she’d seen me before.

“You’re not done yet,” she said.

I didn’t believe her. I still don’t. But I stayed.

At first, because I couldn’t move. Then because she was the only person around who didn’t think I was dead.

She taught me how to listen, and how to read the wind. How to feel the gods without praying to them. And I kept her warm, kept the house together. Kept the shadows from creeping too close when her dreams went dark.

Sometimes, when the fire is low and the tea just starts to boil, she murmurs, “Even the gods fear what they don’t understand.”

And I’ll grunt something in return, pretending I’m not listening. But I am.

I always am.

            The silence between us is broken only by the soft crackle of the fire. Cyrene lifts her head slightly, her face tilts toward the heat. Her blind eyes never quite meet mine, but somehow, they always feel as if they do.

            “You dreamt again,” she says.

Not a question, not really.

I don’t answer. I take a sip of the tea instead. It burns the back of my throat, bitter and bright, like green smoke.

She shifts, her wool cloak slipping from one shoulder as she reaches to stoke the fire with the curved end of her spoon.

“Same dream?” she asks, voice low.

I roll the cup between my hands. “Not exactly.”

She hums again—low, knowing. “They’re getting louder. Dreams like that mean the dead are close.”

The words slip under my skin before I can stop them. I stiffen. “They?”

Cyrene doesn’t reply. She leans back, cradling her cup now, steam curling around her face like smoke offerings. For a long moment, the only sound is the pop and sigh of the fire.

Then softly, too softly, she says,

“The mountain remembers you.”

I stop breathing.

Her face is unreadable, her expression as distant as the gods she speaks to. She doesn’t elaborate. She never does.

But I can feel it, under my skin, as if the mountain is breathing with me. Watching. Waiting.

I set the cup down slowly, carefully, like sudden movement might wake something best left sleeping.

“I was a child,” I murmur, unsure if I’m talking to her or the stones around us. “I didn’t understand what they feared.”

“You do now,” she says.

I look at her, even though she can’t see it. “Is that why they’re coming?”

Cyrene turns her head slightly like she’s listening to something only she can hear. A crease forms between her brows.

“They never stopped,” she says. “You just started hearing them again.”

“Who?” I ask again, even though I think I know.

The ones who still hunt what they don’t understand. The ones who fear what I might become.

A shiver creeps down my spine, slow and deliberate, like fingers brushing bone.

            Outside, the wind shifts. Not loud, but…different. Like it learned a new way to breathe.

I glance toward the doorway though it’s just shadows and the low whistle of the draft slipping through the stone.

“They’re closer than before,” Cyrene says, and for the first time in a long while, I think I hear fear in her voice. Not panic. Not dread. Something older. Wiser.

I clench my jaw. “What do they want?”

Cyrene lifts her cup, sips it, and sets it down. “The same thing they always have,” she says. “To be seen. To be heard. To be remembered.”

I swallow hard, the taste of mountain tea gone bitter in my mouth.

“And you,” she adds softly, “carry all three.”

I don’t want to carry anything. Not their ghosts. Not their prophecies.

But it’s too late, isn’t it?

Cyrene falls silent once again. The air seems alive with something like it was present for our conversation.

The moment sinks. Cyrene hums once, and it’s gone.

I rise slowly, collecting the empty cups. My legs ache from sitting too long, but it’s the kind of ache that keeps you grounded. Keeps you from drifting too far into the past.

I glance toward the curtain covering the entrance of our home again. The pale light leaking in has dimmed—storm clouds, maybe.

But something tightens in my gut as I look at it. As if something waits on the other side.

Watching.

I let out a slow breath, forcing the tension from my shoulders. Wind needles the doorway. Enough. I pull the curtain and look out.

The world outside is muffled, the trees swaying with a slow, uneasy rhythm. Clouds have gathered low over the peaks, dragging shadows down into the valley.

I step out anyway.

The cold bites fast, curling around my ankles like water. I cross the narrow ledge that serves as our porch and crouch near the woodpile. The kindling basket’s low—too low—and the traps I set yesterday still need checking.

I grab the basket and sling it over my shoulder.

Routine. Motion. Things that make sense.

Behind me, Cyrene’s humming fades into silence.

The path down into the trees is worn by years of use—by my boots, and hers before mine. It winds like a scar along the mountain’s side, disappearing into the thicket where the mist gathers.

I move slowly, my eyes scanning out of habit. The traps aren’t far, nestled between rocks and roots, hidden from easy view.

I check the first—empty.

 The second—sprung but nothing inside.

It’s the third one that makes me stop.

The trap is intact, untouched. But the earth around it…

Disturbed.

The dirt’s been brushed over hastily as if someone was trying to hide their tracks. A few leaves laid too deliberately. And a print beside it, just barely visible in the soft mud. It was the indention of a boot.

The blood freezes in my veins and I stiffen.

Someone’s been here.

A chill wraps around my spine, different from the wind.

I straighten slowly, the basket creaking on my shoulder.

The forest holds its breath. So do I.

I take a silent step back. Not afraid, just aware.

Aware that something’s coming. And it’s closer than I thought.

            But how? No one knows I’m alive. No one could’ve—

            A flash of memory cuts through my panic: blood, fur, jaws snapping. The trader. Weeks ago, limping, delirious. I’d only meant to scare the wolves off, but he’d looked at me like he’d seen a ghost.

            “Didn’t think the stories were true,” he’d muttered, half-collapsed by the fire.

            “What stories?” I remember asking as I dressed the deep cut on his leg.

            He smiled, half delirious as he stared into the mist like he expected it to swallow him whole. The fire hissed. He leaned closer.

            “The girl from the mountain,” he spoke as if in a fever dream.  I didn’t react. Didn’t move. But the echo stuck with me like a bruise.

Not many people know I exist.

            Back then, I thought it was nothing. A half-baked camp tale from a frightened and hurt man who’d gotten too close to death.

            But now…

            Something like dread curls in my gut.

            I’ve become a story.

            And someone’s finally decided to find out if it’s true.

            I turn and bolt, feet pounding the path. Branches whip against my legs, the cold long forgotten. The hut’s only a few bends ahead—if I can get to Cyrene before—

            Movement. The rustle of leaves.

            I slide to a stop.

            Someone stands in the path. A man. Lean, cloaked, armed.

            We lock eyes.

            He startles—turns on his heel—and runs. No insignia, but I don’t need one. I know who sent him. And I know what happens if he makes it back to Sparta.

            He can’t.

            I’m moving before I think.

            Branches claw at my arms and legs, but I don’t slow. My feet remember the path better than my mind ever could—the curve of the hill, the half-rotten log slick with moss, the crag that gives way if you step too far left. He’s fast, but I’m faster.

He doesn’t know this land. I do.

            Mist winds through the trees, thick and low, curling around us like it’s listening.

            I see the flash of his cloak ahead, dark against the pale morning light. He leaps over a fallen tree, misjudges the slope on the other side, and stumbles. That’s all I need. I slide into position, bow already in hand, arrow notched.

            Exhale. Adjust. Release.

            The thrum of the string cuts through the air—and a sharp cry follows as he drops to the ground.

            My legs carry me forward before I’m ready. He’s trying to crawl, dragging himself toward the brush with one arm, and clutching his thigh with the other. My arrow juts from the muscle just above the knee, clean shot. He won’t be walking anywhere.

            I reach him and plant my foot on his back before he can grab the dagger at his side. “Don’t.”

            He freezes.

            His breath comes in sharp gasps. “You’re real,” he whispers like it’s a curse, his eyes flicker to my shoulder and widen. “The mark—”

            “Quiet.” I wrench the dagger from his belt and toss it aside. “You don’t get to speak.”

            I bind his wrists with a cord from my satchel, rough and quick.

 I don’t know what I’m going to do with him, but I need answers.

He winces as I drag him deeper into the woods, off the path, and into a dip in the land hidden by brush and boulders. No one will see us here. Not unless they’re already looking.

 “Why are you here?” I ask.

He says nothing. I draw my knife and press the edge lightly against his throat. “Try again.”

He swallows hard and a brief flash of fear crosses his features. “There were…rumors. Whispers. A trader said he saw a girl in the mountains who saved him from wolves. Said she vanished into the mist.” He slowly shakes his head. “They didn’t believe him, not really.”

“But you still came.”

He nods slowly. “The rumors were getting out of hand and the Ephors went to the Pythia.”

My chest tightens—Malaka. That damn Oracle.

“What did she say?” I demand. I begin to add more pressure on the blade, and this time, a small drop of blood beads onto his skin.

His eyes widen but he continues. “She said…” his voice shakes. “She said, ‘The girl who fell will rise, and when she does, Sparta will bleed.’”

They believe I’m alive. No more whispers. Only a warning.

The knife trembles, just slightly, in my hand. I see it then—the two paths laid out before me. If I let him go, he’ll crawl back to Sparta, and they’ll come for me. For Cyrene. My hand tightens around my blade at the thought.

But if I kill him… There’s no undoing it.

No slipping back into the shadows, pretending I’m a ghost. This would be an act of war.

But at the same time…it’ll buy me time to move before they discover their scout is missing.

 He sees the shift in me. I watch it dawn in his eyes—the moment he realizes I’m weighing his life like a general counts the dead.

A crooked, bitter smile twists his mouth. “What’s wrong?” he rasps. “Does it weigh on you, daímōnas?”

 Demon. The word lands like a stone in my gut, not for what it means—but for how familiar it sounds.

 When I don’t answer, something meaner flickers across his face.

“You think they feared you before?” He sneers. “Wait until they find out you murdered one of their own. They’ll burn these mountains to ash and drag you back in chains.”

I don’t flinch.

 His voice rises with the color in his cheeks, harsh and furious. “You should’ve stayed dead!”

 He spits at me.

A dangerous calm settles over me as I wipe his disgusting saliva off my face.

 The wind goes still, and a crow calls once, distant and sharp, then falls silent. I feel every heartbeat in my body, slow and deliberate. He’s still watching me, waiting to see what kind of monster I’ll be.

One swift motion. Clean. Silent.

His eyes widen, then go still. My breath hitches. Just once.

It’s done. No sound. No scream. Just silence and red.