Read the Prologue to Book One of the White Feather Saga now – for FREE!

Every legend has a beginning.

Years before prophecy stirs and the White Feather begins her journey, something ancient awakens in the northern reaches of Vireth.

When a routine investigation leads Captain Hollis Armenios and his patrol to a silent mountain village, they uncover evidence of a forgotten horror that the Concord insists no longer exists. Their discovery will ripple across nations, challenge centuries of accepted doctrine, and quietly set into motion the events of Book One.

If you’re new to Vireth, this prologue is the perfect place to begin.

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Prologue

Hollis Armenios | Mayra 28, 4460 TE | Borosse, Igni

           Captain Hollis Armenios adjusted his gloves and descended the watchtower’s spiral steps. The red stone promenade held the day’s heat beneath his boots. Along the docks, lumencrafts lanterns blinked awake one by one, their golden reflections stretching long across the darkening water. There, boats groaned through the confluence where the Northern Crimson met the Vida as dockhands called across the evening noise.

           Borosse was never quiet. Even at dusk, the port city pulsed.

           He had nearly reached the far side of the promenade when he saw Theron Emberlin moving toward him at a quick pace.

           Something was wrong.

           Theron was not a man who hurried.

           The man’s coat hung crooked, one side still unbuttoned as though he had dressed in motion. Mud darkened his boots to the ankles. His graying ponytail was damp and plastered to his nape.

           Hollis slowed.

           “Captain,” Theron reached him huffing for air. “I require a patrol.”

           Hollis studied him. In the two years since his posting to Borosse, he had come to know the harbormaster as a man precise to the point of irritation. His ledgers were always balanced, the markets properly ordered, and caravans scheduled to arrive and depart down to the minute. Theron did not arrive anywhere unannounced or distressed.

           “Where?” asked Hollis.

           “Pinspire.”

           The name surfaced in memory like a half-forgotten map. A small grazing village north of Borosse, tucked into the foothills where the Sacras began their slow rise from the steppe. Hard land with hardy people. He had visited once to find wind-carved stone and goat herds clinging to cliff faces like pale moss. Nothing about the place struck him as remarkable. Or suspicious.

           “They deliver their spring wool shipment every year by the first week of Mayra,” Theron said with measured clarity. “No one has seen their caravan.”

           “And Skylin?” Hollis asked, recalling the Pinspire goat-milk woman who frequented the market.

           “She has missed two market days. She’s never missed one in my fifteen years as harbormaster.”

           The harbor noise continued behind them, indifferent and relentless, but the air between the two men shifted.

           Dropping his voice, Hollis asked, “Could the roads be washed out?”

           “No,” Theron shook his head. “The snowmelt came early with the warm winter. If anything, their caravan should have arrived sooner.”

           They looked at one another.

           Pinspire was not political. Yet rumors had thickened of a Featherfall operative cell embedded in the countryside beyond the Curetes Guard’s reach. It was the very reason Hollis’s company had been sent to Borosse. Nearly two years of hunting, and nothing found. But if the silence from that small hillside village correlated to Featherfall agitation, then Hollis had an obligation to the Concord, the nation of Igni, and the people of Pinspire to check.

           “I’ll take a patrol,” Hollis said at last. “Quietly.”

           The harbormaster held his gaze and nodded.

***

The patrol mounted within the hour.

           Four riders left Borosse under a sky raked with the last bruised colors of sunset, hooves ringing against red stone before the road softened to hard-packed dirt beyond the city gates.

           The land north was not welcoming of travelers.

           The lush river valley narrowed to rocky upland steppe where soil clung thinly to stone. Junipers crawled across the ground, their branches twisted by wind into shapes that seemed deliberate. Pines leaned like old soldiers bracing against a charge. Spring pressed wildflowers through the craggy cracks in small, defiant bursts of purple and yellow and white.

           They rode for two days.

           On the third morning, the wind changed.

           It began as a faint shift. Cooler. Heavier.

           Cresting a ridge, the point rider, Derren Norvik, raised his hand without turning in his saddle.

           “Sir,” he murmured.

           Hollis moved beside him and took in the descending landscape.

           A fine grayish dust moved low across the ground. Its grains did not swirl or rise the way dust should, instead it crept along the soil like smoke refusing to lift. It made the captain think of ash but… not.

           Wrong, the dry grasses around them seemed to hiss. All wrong.

           His senses alert, Hollis instructed the patrol to cover their faces. Those of Borosse were used to such tactics to keep both the fine red dust of the land and the smell of the rivers at bay. Derren and the younger guard, Bryndar Pelias, pulled neck gaiters over their mouths and noses while Calista Ironvale unbound her sphendone to partially veil her face. 

           The wind strengthened as they pressed forward.

           Cresting another rocky rise, they came upon the outer grazing fields of Pinspire. Stone corrals dotted the valley below in broken rings.

           Hollis noticed the land’s color appeared off. The rust-red earth of the uplands should have burned warm beneath the morning sun. Instead, it lay dull and muted, coated in thin gray sheets that bleached the stones and silenced the soil. Even the rocks looked as though they’d been leached of their reddish hue.

           Inside the nearest corral, a pale shape lay in the grime. A puff of dry filth drifted from it when the wind shifted.

           “Pelias,” Hollis inclined his head. “Ride down.”

           The younger guard visibly swallowed but nudged his mount forward. Copper waves bounced as he descended into a monochromatic backdrop. His horse picked its way between exposed stones.

           Surveying the land before him, Hollis noticed a cluster of purple verbena growing from a crack near the trail ahead. Their petals were vivid against the gray behind them. As he watched, a pale sheen appeared along the flowers’ roots. Like frost, it spread upward. Stems darkened. Leaved curled inward as if pained. The petals followed, shriveling until they loosened from the stem and fell into small dry clouds before the wind carried them away.

           His stomach twisted.

           Pelias returned at a gallop. The guard’s face pale above his buff.

           “Sheep, sir. I’d wager an entire flock.” He paused. “Nothing left but bone.”

           Behind Hollis, Calista made a small, choked sound.

           He did not rebuke her.

           Clicking his tongue, he led the patrol toward the village. He could hear the guards murmuring to themselves.

           “A fire?” Calista asked, hope hanging in her words.

           “Nah,” croaked Derren, “this is not by mortals’ hands.”

           Passing near another corral, Hollis saw firsthand the jutting ribcage of an animal. Up close, he could see the faintest creep of gray overtaking the remains. One might assume, without proper inspection, the bones charred.

           But Derren was correct. This loss was not caused by fire, magical or not.

           This was divine intervention.

           Or retribution.

           Sepo.

           Hollis shook his head, banishing the word from his mind.

           The closer they rode, the worse the land became. What he remembered as broad open pastures lay barren. Skeletal trees stood brittle and hollow, their branches snapping when brushed by a breeze. No insects stirred. No birds crossed the sky. Even the soft thumps of the horses’ hooves were swallowed by the dust-packed earth as though the land itself refused to echo.

           They passed a runoff channel where snowmelt had carved soft mud weeks earlier. The sun hardened its surface. One set of footprints led away from the village, smeared and haste-broken, heading south.

           Pinspire appeared beyond the final rise. It was as unremarkable as memory recalled. Thirty stone buildings clustered together like a family bracing against the cold.
           He remembered the place as rugged, but alive. Sheep bleated in their corrals, children laughed between the work of their parents, and smoke rose from chimneys carrying the smell of cooking fat and cut juniper. Now the village lay pale and motionless.

           Dismounting at the edge of town, Hollis’s voice trumpeted against the stillness. “Keep your faces covered and gloves on. Do not expose any skin. Search every building, and if you find someone, call out.”

           The guards nodded and spread without a word.

           Hollis moved to the nearest cottage. He pressed a gloved finger against the door. It swung slowly inward with a long, tired creak. A wooden table stood set for a meal. Four bowls rested beside bone-handled spoons. A rotten loaf of bread sat next to a cold hearth. Curtains drifted at an open window, but nothing else moved. A fine gray dust had settled over every surface. If he did not know better, Hollis would assume the house had been sealed for the winter and never reopened.

           He circled the building. A garden plot stretched along the rear wall, its soil dark and bare. The spring sun should have drawn green sprouts up weeks ago. He looked at the empty earth for a long moment, then moved on.

           The second and third homes waited in similar abandonment.

           Then, down the lane, a shout.

           Hollis ran toward it, arriving at an open gate to find Calistia standing rigid with one hand pressed to her temple. Derren was outside a small house, bent double. He straightened when the captain arrived, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and cursing quietly.

           Patting him on the shoulder, Hollis stepped past him and over the threshold.

           The smell reached him first.

           An unexpected waft of citrus and pine lingered from the ghost of incense burned long ago. On the western wall, a charred stem of frankincense curled upward from a small wooden altar. Above it, a dove carved from dark wood spread its wings toward the ceiling. Its hollows were smooth and worn, polished by years of hands pressing silent supplication.

           Which of the gods or saints claimed the dove? He tried to recall. Fidelity, perhaps. Or harmony. Concord cities favored polished marble temples and etched scripture dedicated to the elemental gods, but outlier villages kept older traditions fixated on the Octave, the saints of virtue. Prayers spoken over household altars in the intimate hour before sleep, ritual passed from parent to child until the gesture was as natural as breathing.  

           Before the altar, a skeletal figure knelt half-hidden in shadow. Its spine curved forward, pale hands outstretched toward a god who had not come. What remained of a ragged tunic and threadbare trousers sagged against the frame where flesh had long since vanished. Dust gathered in the folds of cloth and hollows or bone, softening what would otherwise be unbearable to see. The skull fell forward, prostrate against the dirt floor. The final breath had carried the body one inch closer to hope of salvation.

           Hollis looked away.

           Across the single-room home, a small table with four stools stood. Beside it, baskets and travel satchels gathered in a loose cluster. The quiet arrangements of people preparing to go somewhere. One sat open, half-filled with neatly folded wool blankets. Another held dried roots bundled with twine. Among them lay a small doll, its yarn hair the color of wheat. Its stitched smile was worn faint from handling. Nestled nearby was a sealed waterskin with sides drawn tight and full.

           Everything in the room suggested deliberate preparation for a journey that had never begun.

           A narrow bed rested alongside the far wall.

           Three figures lay beneath a thin wool blanket. Two smaller shapes were tucked close against the larger. The blanket was drawn to their shoulders, its edges smoothed flat by hands that must have trembled as they worked. The outlines of bone pressed softly through the faded weave.

           A long-fingered hand rested across the chest of the smallest child, fingers curled slightly inward, as though trying even now to hold the small body closer. The adult’s skull was turned toward the other child. Tilted at an angle suggesting a final kiss pressed to a crown of hair no longer there.

           Something settled into Hollis’s chest like ice dropped into still water.

           They had known.

           No overturned furniture. No clawed walls or broken door. Only the quiet devotion of a family who waited for mercy that declined to come.

           He took an involuntary step backward. The room felt smaller. Silence pressed against his ears until he forced himself to turn away.

           The hinges groaned as he pulled the door shut, latch slipping into place with a dull click.

           Hollis stood before the weathered planks. He studied the grain of the wood as though it held some explanation for what waited on the other side.

           Sedo, his mind whispered again.

           He had never been a pious man.

           In a world where the gods answered virtue and not hope, prayer had always seemed a hollow habit. He lived by the high virtues—the Octave—but otherwise his life was steel and discipline. Not once in all his years had he bent his head in that posture of appeal.

           But the stillness behind that door unsettled him in a way his discipline could not reach.

           He bowed his head. The gesture felt borrowed, a ritual meant for someone else. His voice dropped to a murmur as he asked that the family’s souls find the path through the Forest of Souls and into the paradise of Virturra.

           He did not know if the gods listened.

           He spoke the words anyway.

***

           “Mount up,” Hollis ordered after their continued search found no living souls.

           Relief moved across the other’s faces before discipline could fully mask it. Leather creaked. Tack jingled. Hooves thudded dull and muffled against the dust-choked earth as the horses turned away from Pinspire.

           Hollis hung back. His gaze swept the low rooftops, the shuttered windows, and the empty lanes as thin ribbons of ashen dust quivered along the ground.

           “We’ll circle wide on the return,” he said, his voice stead despite the tightness riding high in his chest. “We must see how far this has spread.”

           Calista and Derren nodded solemnly. Bryndar wore the same grave mask as the others, yet something about it felt different. Less grief or shock, and more… calculating.

           His amber eyes drifted over the still village with unsettling precision. They lingered on the cottage where they had found the family.

           “Whoever did this was organized,” he remarked quietly.

           Calista shot him a look.

           Spitting on the ground, Derren said, “There was no who involved. This was the Sepo.”

           The old guard’s weathered face tightened before he hid it behind his gaiter.

           Everyone knew the stories. The Sepo appeared generations ago in the far north. Villages emptied overnight. Crops blackened in their fields. Men and women twisted into husks before crumbling into ash.

           Bryndar blinked and turned to him.

           “The Sepo is contained,” he said evenly. “The Concord settled that years ago.”

           “That’s what the Concord says,” snorted Derren.

           “Yes,” Bryndar replied, “and if the Concord says it is contained, then it is.”

           The words were polite, but something in them made Hollis glance his way. It was not agreement he heard in Bryndar’s voice. It was dismissal. As though the truth mattered far less than who possessed the authority to declare it.

           “We need to report this,” said Calista, whose eyes darted everywhere but to Pinspire.

           Hollis nodded, “There should be a Skythread roost nearby. Perhaps a threadbird remains so we may send a missive to the commander.”

           Derren’s gaze swept the surrounding hills. “If this reaches another settlement—”

           “It won’t.”

           The certainty in Bryndar’s voice cut cleanly through the conversation.

           Three heads turned toward him.

           “The Concord has monitored the Sepo for generations,” he said. “If there were genuine danger, the High Archons would already know of it.”

           Derren barked a humorless laugh. “You doubt what’s sitting right in front of us, boy?”

           “I think panic serves no one.”

           Hollis frowned. A village lay dead before them, an entire community erased. Panic seemed a strange concern.

           Calista crossed her arms. “What would you suggest? We return to Borosse and pretend we never saw this?”

           “Of course not,” Bryndar said. “I merely question whether alarming the world before we understand what happened is wise.”

           His answer was sensible, the sort of thing a cautious man might say.

           Yet something prickled under Hollis’s skin.

           “We report it,” Hollis said firmly.

           Bryndar’s gaze shifted to him. For a moment, coldness flickered in their depths.

           The expression vanished so quickly Hollis almost doubted he’d seen it.

           Inclining his head, Bryndar said, “As you say, Captain Armenios.”

           They rode east along the foothills. The land climbed in wind-carved ridges and dropped again in barren stretched of stone and scrub. Ashen grime moved in restless currents. More than once a horse shied from a drifting swirl, ears pinned flat.

           They crested another rise near midday.

           Below them stood a narrow stone building with a square tower rising from its center.

A Skythread station.

           The tower’s open windows stared blankly across the hills. No wings stirred within the rafters. No threadbirds traced circles in the sky above. A banner hung above the door with a gold feather stitched boldly.

           Hollis gulped.

           Messenger threadbirds carried dispatches across the entire realm. From remote villages to marbled halls, the Skythread network stitched the realm together with wing and parchment. Trade agreements, court decrees, and love letters traveled in small scrolls tied to feathered legs. If this roost was compromised, then whatever had consumed Pinspire would not remain confined to forgotten hillsides.

           Raising a hand, Hollis halted the patrol. Instructing them to remain saddled, he swung down from his horse and crossed toward the station alone. The wind pressed against him, snapping his charcoal chlamys tight against his shoulder. He fought the sudden, irrational urge to stop.

           The roost should have been loud. Others were filled with constant rustling from threadbirds, the low percussive caw of birds speaking to one another through the rafters.

           He stopped at the door and listened.

           There was nothing but wind through the hills.

           Glancing backward, Bryndar had dismounted and was watching with his hand of the pommel of his sword.

           Exhaling, Hollis raised a fist and knocked once.

           The stone walls returned a faint, hollow echo.

           He knocked again.

           Still nothing.

           He wrapped a gloved hand around the handle and pushed.

           The interior lay dim and stale, pale shafts of light falling from the narrow tower windows high above. Wooden perches lined the walls. All empty. Small wicker message baskets hung at intervals where incoming scrolls were sorted and catalogued. Empty too. The silence inside felt pressurized, like a breath held waiting for something to happen.

           Hollis stepped inside.

           The door creaked softly behind him.

           Sunlight caught on a shimmering oil slick.

           Hollis squinted.

           The slick quickly morphed into a brilliant display of iridescence as an explosion of wings erupted from the darkness.

           He stepped back instinctively.

           In a shrill shriek, the bird collided with his chest like a closed fist. They crashed to the ground in a mess of flesh and feathers. The edges and contours of the assailant flashed with blues, deep purples, and hints of emerald.

           The raven thrashed with frantic, convulsive bursts as he grappled for control. Claws raked across his gambeson before catching the exposed skin of his wrist. A piercing heat flared along his neck caused by its sharp beak.

           Attempting to break free, he caught a glimpse of the raven. Feathers hung in ragged clumps from dark, cracked skin. Its eyes were clouded to milky gray. It released a broken squawk, wings hammering his chest in violent spasms, until it fell still.

           The body sagged across his chest.

           Hollis lay motionless for a moment. He stared into the sun, mind turning slowly over what had happened.

           He shoved the carcass aside and tried to rise.

           His arm gave out beneath him.

           “Captain!” Calista’s voice sounded.

           He felt it then. Not heat or pain, but coldness.

           It spread outward from the torn skin at his neck with terrible deliberateness. He imagined this is what it would feel like to drown in the deep cold waters of the River Vida. The cold moved through him disturbingly aware, as though it had a purpose.

           Thudding boots sounded from the far end of a long corridor. He heard the muffled, distant cries of his patrol. He tried to answer.

           The cold had taken his voice.

           He rolled his head to look at the tower. The golden feather banner swayed above the station’s entrance. The fine dust settled into the grooves of the stitching. Slowly, the gold began to dull.

           The wind roared over the shouts.

           The world blurred into a darkening haze, the edges closing inward.

           “What are you doing?” cried someone, but he could not connect name to voice.

           Louder the wind grew.

           Louder.

           The last thing Captain Hollis Armenios saw was the feather turning gray.