Author’s Note

  Welcome to Paladin of the Winterbloom. Expect grimdark atmosphere, slow-burn character bonds, and a faith-driven power progression. Chapters 1–3 form the opening arc—thanks for reading.

  Cinderholt burned, and with it, the only life Eldric had ever known.

  The monastery, his home, was aflame as he rushed toward it. The houses of the village were pyres of the dead. Screams resounded like a choir of the damned all around him as the village fell victim to calamity. In the eyes of Eldric, reality itself was in its final death throes.

  He ran, his body burned from fighting, and each breath was filled with ash and smoke. What was even the purpose of fighting? The living were made to serve, and even death was not an escape. What was he in the face of sorrow?

  Mud splashed up onto his legs and chest as a groan from a collapsing house foretold the explosive violence that followed. Eldric dove to the ground as a supporting beam erupted from the wall. Blazing embers hissed past him as shards of wooden shrapnel pierced his skin.

  He swiped mud and soot from his face as he rolled onto his back.

  A low, heavy thud rumbled once, then again, followed by a bellowing roar as an ogre stepped free from the remains of the house. Ethereal blue script—living symbols—slithered across its skin, and the pale light of the Sorrowcurse burned in its gaze.

  There was no thought in the ogre’s eyes. No hatred. No rage. Just obedience.

  Like all the sorrowcursed, it simply observed Eldric and followed the Sorrowscribe’s design. The ogre lifted the beam as though it weighed nothing and brought it down.

  Eldric rolled away, barely clearing the burning arc as the beam smashed into the ground where he had been. He scrambled to his feet without looking back, lungs screaming as the ogre’s heavy steps thundered after him.

  A guttural bellow split the night behind him.

  Pale blue light shimmered in the air as he ran. Eldric’s head jolted up as the sky distorted behind a faint azure veil of magic. Complex runes drifted across it, slow and deliberate, and one by one the streets, the roofs, the fields were all covered by its glow.

  Eldric recognized the shape of the spell even as it finished closing. His breath caught in his chest. There would be no fleeing this.

  More footsteps joined the chase, and Eldric's amber eyes took a frantic glance back. The glowing blue eyes of the Sorrowcurse looked back—no longer just the ogre's, but others. People who had once been citizens of Cinderholt raced after him, glowing script moving across their bodies, writing their reality, commanded to consume him as well.

  A scream tore through the air on his left as he saw a couple running through the night’s infernal glow. A man was pulled to the ground by long strands of ethereal script as he reached for the woman he had been running with. She reached down and tried to pull him free of the strands as they glided up his body, wrapping around his limbs and face.

  Eldric ran in that direction. "Run!" he yelled, trying to warn the woman away from the man. He was already lost. The script tightened like a collar of damnation, and he lurched bodily. The woman jerked her hand back and looked toward Eldric, her eyes glinting in the inferno of the burning buildings around them.

  He didn't slow as he ran up to her, recognizing Wren almost immediately. She was in her twenties, not much older than Eldric. They both looked over at her father, Garrick, as his hand slapped in the mud and he began to rise.

  Eldric grabbed her hand and pulled her with him; she resisted only for a moment before relenting with a broken sob.

  The doors of the Ashen Monastery came into sight, and Eldric ran harder.

  Tendrils of script slithered across the ground, wrapping around a man who ran ahead of them. They dragged him down as if shackled by unseen chains, biting into his skin and pinning him to the mud.

  The man screamed. Not in pain, but in sorrow. The sound was raw and hollow, a voice already grieving at its own end. Eldric faltered, his stride breaking as the mass of cursed closed in.

  Rain streaked down his face, mingling with tears he did not remember shedding. His sword slackened in his grasp, and the edge struck the stones at his feet. Around them, a semicircle of figures gathered, eyes glowing with the same pale blue light. Humans, ogres, elves, dwarves, and a procession of other races. Once they had been free in their differences, but under the curse they were all the same.

  “Eldric!”

  The Ashen Monastery’s doors thundered open. A massive man stepped into the firelight, his eyes blazing with ember glow as he faced the gathered cursed.

  Before Eldric could respond, Elder Tolsten gave a roar of his own and charged. His ornate longsword cleaved through a rushing sorrowcursed, splitting it in two as ash and blue light scattered across the stones.

  “The tenets, boy!” Tolsten shouted as he spun, his eyes burning with pale orange fire. “Remember our tenets!”

  The ogre surged forward, bellowing, and Tolsten met it head-on. The beam came down in a burning arc. Tolsten stepped inside the swing and struck, his blade shearing through the beam as flames burst across his shoulders and legs.

  “I who hear Thy voice,” Tolsten intoned as he drove the ogre back, “answer Thy call! I am the hollowed throne!”

  He felt Wren pull on his arm, and Eldric looked between them as she pulled him into the Monastery. Eldric looked back toward Tolsten, the ground beneath his feet cracked, orange light seeping through the stone as heat rolled outward in suffocating waves. Tolsten staggered a half-step, grasping his chest, then forced himself upright and finished the strike.

  Eldric flinched at the sound of bones breaking and fire igniting together. The sorrowcursed screamed as they pressed around Tolsten and erupted into flames.

  He crossed the threshold of the monastery as Tolsten thundered after them, slamming the doors shut just as clawed hands and burning bodies crashed against them from the other side.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Tolsten braced himself against the doors. Muscles rippled beneath his armor, and his eyes flared as he pushed back. His boots scraped across the stone, leaving scorched lines in their wake.

  “Listen… to me…” Tolsten strained, his voice raw. His feet slid another inch.

  Eldric and Wren rushed to his side, pressing their weight into the doors with him.

  Stone cracked behind them. A burning wall collapsed to their right, and even Tolsten stepped back as the sorrowcursed poured into the chapel of the monastery in droves. The doors burst inward, and those they had held at bay joined the rest.

  They were surrounded. Yet none advanced.

  They stood in a widening circle, silent and still, content to watch.

  Tolsten dropped to one knee. The light in his eyes dimmed, then faltered. Eldric reached for him, but Tolsten waved him away.

  "Why is this happening?" Wren sobbed as she clutched at Eldric's arm.

  His response died in his throat as the doors to the monastery opened wider with a deep, dreadful groan.

  A single man stepped through them, cloaked in living script, a thin blade in his hand shaped like the edge of a quill. Blue eyes glowed beneath his hood as ancient symbols slid from his form and drifted across the stone. The ember light at Tolsten’s feet faded completely.

  The man lifted his head. A scarred, gaunt face emerged from shadow. A book snapped shut in his left hand as his gaze locked onto Tolsten.

  “At last,” the Sorrowscribe said, yet the words came from every sorrowcursed mouth at once—a layered chorus of damnation. His tone was melancholic and haunting, and each syllable planted a deep-seated dread inside Eldric's heart. "How fitting that the final chapter of the Order of Ashes would be written in fire and script."

  Before any of them could react, a tendril of inky script sprang from the floor and pierced through Wren's chest. The young woman's eyes widened, her mouth open in a silent scream as she fell to her knees.

  Eldric gave a cry of surprise and caught her as she began to slump forward. His eyes burned, and his whole body shook as fear intertwined with helplessness. He had saved no one. He had only known life in the monastery, in Cinderholt… and that was gone now. The last vestiges of it died with Wren and would be rewritten by the Scribe. Eldric's shoulders shook as he held down the sob that threatened to spill out of him.

  "Become what the world needs," Tolsten solemnly stated. "Eldric must die tonight…" Tolsten continued and hefted his sword. "Do you understand what I mean, boy?"

  Sacrifice births rebirth.

  Eldric's muscles seized as his head dropped. The Order's tenets—even at the end, he needed to be reminded of them, of what it meant to be a paladin of the Order of Ashes.

  Eldric opened his eyes and looked down at Wren's lifeless face. There was a mercy in death; at least she would not be aware of being rewritten…

  A burning beam of the chapel's roof finally gave out and collapsed near the back of the monastery. Neither Eldric nor Tolsten looked back as Eldric gently laid Wren down on the floor and rose to his feet.

  The Sorrowscribe's head tilted a bit as he seemed to notice Eldric for the first time. "It is good I found you while you were still young. To think someone like you would be hiding inside this pathetic cult."

  Eldric's eyes narrowed and something inside him shifted. Fear gave way to anger, and anger gave way to something he had never felt before.

  Wrath.

  His skin began to itch, and his body grew uncomfortably hot.

  The mantra of ashes began in Eldric's head as the heat began to blossom across his whole body.

  Tolsten roared. The peaceful mentor had transformed into the paladin that Eldric had always known existed beneath the solemn fa?ade. He thundered forward, his body glowing with an internal light as the Lord of Ash and Rebirth filled him with power.

  The clash of steel screamed within the chapel as they fought. The burning monastery's weakening structure wailed, more sections collapsing to the all-consuming fire.

  Sacrifice births rebirth. The path leads to divinity. Suffering sets us free.

  Eldric raised his sword as the remaining stained-glass windows of the monastery exploded inward. Hands of all races began to reach through, and Sorrowcursed poured their way inside.

  Looking down at Wren, Eldric began to whisper a prayer. "Lord of Ash and Rebirth." His amber eyes took on the color of smoldering embers as his body began to burn with holy fire. "Hear the cry of your devoted…"

  Eldric took a fighting stance and roared a battle cry of his own as the Sorrowcursed moved in. One by one, he began to cut the cursed puppets down. "You who knew her life, you who knew her burdens—" He sidestepped a downward chop from a farming hoe before taking a single step back to avoid the slash of a sickle.

  "I ask that you give Wren a merciful rebirth." He parried away two more slashes from the sickle-wielding farmer. "Take her soul into your care," His blade found the farmer’s chest, and the weight of it felt like it pierced his own. "And grant her life anew on this world!"

  A small blue orb of light rose from Wren's chest, wavering like a breath loath to leave her. The ethereal blue light bled away, revealing an untainted white glow beneath. The Lord of Ash had bled the curse away from her soul. Wren was free in death.

  As Eldric fought them back, his teeth clenched until his jaw ached. Faith was all he had left now; it was fraying yet belief was the only thing that held him upright. As that realization began to sink in, Tolsten's words bubbled up in his mind.

  "Eldric must die tonight…"

  He had to give himself over completely to the tenets. Eldric wasn't enough to survive tonight. He had to be more, a vessel…

  Eldric took one step forward and batted the sickle aside, knocking it free from his opponent's cursed grasp. They tried to lunge for him, but he swatted them aside with a backhand that seemed to come from someone far stronger.

  His eyes burned like embers of a forge as his body began to ignite just below the surface of his skin.

  Every cursed in the monastery, and perhaps even outside of it, echoed at the same time. "To think the Order held someone like you." The ethereal blue gaze of every being present turned onto Eldric as Tolsten staggered back from the Sorrowscribe, breath ragged, his strength all but spent.

  Time seemed to slow as Tolsten met Eldric’s gaze, something like acceptance passed between them as script pierced the elder’s armor.

  Sound died in Eldric's throat as Tolsten was held aloft by the spears and the cursed dove into him like a wave. His mentor disappeared into a mass of bodies.

  "All will be consumed by my design." This time, when the Sorrowscribe spoke, it was just from his mouth, but the whisper carried like prose from a silken voice to his ears. "I will rewrite reality itself, young paladin."

  The wrath inside Eldric died in an instant.

  Elder Tolsten was dead.

  Wrath gave way to acceptance as the Sorrowscribe closed in… toward him? What was left of Eldric?

  Was Eldric dead yet?

  He heaved, his lungs expanding and shaking out a breath. His wide-eyed stare bore into the Sorrowscribe as the mass of writhing Sorrowcursed moved around him.

  "You will rewrite nothing," the vessel responded, his body impossibly hot, his eyes glowing like an inferno.

  The Sorrowscribe's eyes narrowed, and a shudder ran through the present cursed.

  "All will be consumed in fire… reborn in ash." The low growl of his last words held a dual tone, like an echo of an ancient being.

  A pulse of orange light reverberated out of him. Every Sorrowcursed surged forward.

  Eldric released a roar and turned his sword, point toward the ground, and shoved it into the floor.

  A second wave of light exploded out of him. His body was a mere vessel of the divine as all he knew—all that had been taken from him—was consumed by the light of retribution.

  Cinderholt was gone.

  The monastery was gone.

  Elder Tolsten was gone.

  Wren was gone, and in the fires of rebirth, Eldric was gone.

  Suffering forges power.

  Power bears burdens.

  Burdens reveal truth.

  Truth demands sacrifice.

  Sacrifice births rebirth.

  The path leads to divinity.

  Suffering sets us free.

  The tenets of the Order of Ashes were all that he knew in those final moments.

  Nia flicked her long white tail, her fox-like ears twitching as she frowned at what remained of the monastery's doors. Like the rest of Cinderholt, there wasn't much left of the building save for a few burnt scraps of wood and the blackened stone of the foundations.

  Her lithe form stepped further in, and a grin spread across her face, revealing her small fangs as she approached the lone figure on the ground. She could smell he wasn't dead… just very burned. Perhaps a lone survivor of whatever catastrophe had befallen this little town.

  "Hey~" She called to the others in her party. "I think this big guy's alive…" She crouched at his side and reached out, poking his cheek—only for him to groan. Her grin widened as she poked harder. There was a survivor after all.

  End Chapter 1