Contents
Chapter 20
Overview
Aris and Raker accept food and lodging from an immortal healer living beside the encroaching Bone Woods. The healer shares vital lore: the mists are a prison holding ancient horrors and a rumored godsword. After Aris defies drunken immortal knights, they stalk her at dawn. Cornered at the mist’s edge and abandoned by Raker, Aris chooses the only escape—she throws herself into the Bone Woods.
Summary
After a night of rain, Aris finds brief relief: clean water, a rare berry bush, and sword drills under Harlan Raker’s terse instruction. When two immortal boys steal her training coin, their mother—an armed immortal—intervenes, returns it, and invites Aris and Raker to a nearby village for food and shelter as another storm gathers.
At the inn, Aris washes, eats, and tries to rest, but drunken immortal knights harass her. She rebukes one, winning silence but also his simmering anger. Uneasy, she later seeks quiet at the immortal woman’s home and learns the woman is a healer. Given a mild sleep elixir, Aris rests by the hearth and studies a bestiary, realizing Starside’s true dangers are its ancient, often magical beasts.
During their talk, the healer explains the Bone Woods: a creeping, mist-walled prison that swallows armies and reputedly hides a godsword of unknown patron. The gods no longer risk themselves, she says; instead they send others. By morning, the healer gifts Aris a few precious vials for future cures.
When Aris leaves, she overhears the knights plotting to behead her for her sword. Determined not to endanger the healer’s home, she avoids the inn and tries to hide in the rain-slick alleys. The knights spot her and give chase, savoring her fear. Aris screams for Raker, but he does not come.
Driven to the village edge, Aris feels the Bone Woods’ paralyzing chill as she sprints along the mist. Boxed in by the knights and with no rescue in sight, she makes a desperate choice: she turns and leaps through the wall of mist, choosing its unknown terrors over certain death by the immortals’ blades.
Who Appears
- ArisProtagonist; trains, accepts shelter, learns about the Bone Woods and a godsword, angers knights, and escapes pursuit by leaping into the mists.
- Harlan RakerBound knight companion; drills Aris, hunts unsuccessfully, remains distant and absent when she calls for help.
- Immortal HealerArcher and mother of two; returns Aris’s coin, offers food and roof, provides sleep elixir, lore on the Bone Woods, and healing vials.
- Immortal boysHealer’s sons; steal Aris’s coin in play, return it under their mother’s glare, fascinated by Raker.
- Drunken immortal knightsInn warriors who harass Aris, then hunt her at dawn to take her sword, cornering her at the mists.
- BarmaidRedheaded server who takes Aris’s coin and serves soup, silently noting the knights’ hostility.