The Anomaly's Path

Twenty-three years ago...

The village of Wayford was smaller back then. The orphanage was newer, its walls not yet weathered by decades of rain and wind. The children who filled its rooms had not yet learned to hide their pain behind laughter.

Some things, however, never changed.

”One day, I will be the strongest swordsman in the world and save lives!”

The shout echoed through the courtyard, loud enough to startle the chickens scratching in the dirt near the fence.

A boy, no more than ten years old, stood on a wooden crate with a stick in his hand. His chest was puffed out, and his eyes burned with a fire that refused to be ignored. His hair was a mess, dark and tangled, and there was a scrape on his knee from a fall he had taken earlier that morning. He did not care.

His name was Roran.

The other children gathered around him. Some laughed. Some cheered. A few rolled their eyes and muttered under their breath. But none of them told him to stop. They had learned that trying to stop Roran was like trying to stop the rain.

He would just get louder.

”The strongest swordsman?” one of the older boys snorted. He was thirteen and already convinced he knew everything. ”You cannot even lift a real sword yet.”

”Then I will learn!” Roran shot back without hesitation. His voice did not waver. ”I will train until I can. I will train until no one can beat me. I will make my name so big that everyone in the world will know who I am!”

He let out a boisterous, confident laugh, flashing a toothy grin that made it hard for anyone to stay annoyed with him.

The older boy opened his mouth to argue, but a small girl spoke first from the edge of the crowd. She could not have been more than six, with dirt on her cheeks and her hair in tangled braids.

”And what about us?” she asked. ”Will you forget us when you are famous?”

Roran looked at her. His expression softened for a moment, and the fire in his eyes flickered with a different kind of warmth. ”Never,” he said. ”I will come back. And I will bring so much gold that this orphanage will never need anything again. We will have a feast every single night!”

The children cheered at the thought of the food. Even the older boy was smiling now.

From the doorway of the orphanage, a woman watched. She was younger then, maybe in her late forties. Her hair was still dark, with only a few streaks of grey. Her face was less weathered, and her eyes were still sharp. She had not yet become ”Elder Marta” to everyone.

She was just Marta.

She smiled as she watched Roran climb down from his crate and immediately start swinging his stick at a practice post someone had propped against the wall.

That one, she thought, is going to be a lot of trouble.

The years passed and Roran grew taller and stronger. He also grew more stubborn with each passing season.

He trained in the jungle behind the village, using heavy branches as swords and large rocks as weights. He fell more times than anyone could count. He bled, he bruised, and he limped back to the orphanage with cuts that needed stitching.

But he never stopped.

The village learned to recognize the sound of his practice. The rhythmic thud of wood against wood. The occasional crash of him falling. The muttered curses that followed when he hit the ground too hard. Some of the villagers found it annoying. Most found it endearing.

”He will either become a great warrior,” old man Hemlock said from his porch, watching Roran drag himself out of the dirt for the tenth time that morning, ”or he will break every bone in his body trying.”

”Maybe both,” his wife added from the rocking chair beside him.

They were not wrong.

The war between the races and the demon followers was happening somewhere far away.

The villagers of Wayford heard rumors. Travelers passing through spoke of battles and blood and cities burning. The war never reached them directly—no demon army had ever marched on their walls, no soldiers had ever burned their fields.

But the war still touched them. Refugees passed through, tired and hollow-eyed, carrying what little they could. Merchants raised their prices. Food became scarcer. The children still played, and the crops still grew, but there was a tension in the air that had not been there before.

And there were the monsters.

The jungle around Wayford had always been dangerous, but in recent years, the creatures had grown bolder. They crept closer to the village walls. Farmers found their livestock torn apart in the night.

A hunting party had disappeared three winters ago, swallowed by the trees, and no one dared to look for them.

The villagers learned to be careful. They posted guards at night. They carried torches when they walked outside after dark. They prayed to gods they were not sure were listening.

But the demons never came to Wayford. Not yet.

The children still played, the crops still grew, the seasons still changed, and Roran trained.

He trained until his hands bled. He trained until his muscles screamed. He trained until Marta had to drag him inside and force him to eat. He was stubborn, more stubborn than anyone she had ever seen, and she had seen many children come and go over the years.

”He has a good heart,” she told one of the other caretakers. ”But he wears it on his sleeve. That will get him hurt one day.”

The caretaker shrugged. ”Maybe. But at least he will never say he did not try.”

Marta looked at Roran, who was already back outside, swinging his stick at the practice post again.

”...That is what I am afraid of,” she said quietly.

_

Roran was seventeen when he decided it was time to leave.

He stood at the edge of the village, a bag slung over his shoulder and a real sword at his hip. It was not a fancy blade. The steel was plain, the hilt wrapped in worn leather. He had saved for months to buy it from a traveling merchant who passed through twice a year. It was not much, but it was his.

Marta stood in front of him. Her arms were crossed, and her eyes were glistening, though she would never admit it.

”...You do not have to leave, Roran. You could stay here and build a life.”

”I will come back,” Roran said. His voice was steady, but his hands were shaking. ”I cannot build the life I want here, Marta. I need to see what is out there. I need to make something of myself so I can take care of all of you.”

”What about the children who look up to you?” Marta asked.

Roran looked back at the orphanage. Through the window, he could see the younger kids pressing their faces against the glass. They were watching him. The little girl with the tangled braids was there, her hands flat against the windowpane.

He swallowed the lump in his throat.

”...I will make my name big,” he said, turning back to Marta. ”I will become someone worth knowing. And then I will come back. I will help you. I will help this village. I will make sure no child here ever goes hungry again.”

Marta stared at him for a long moment. The wind moved through her hair, and for a moment, she looked older than she was.

Then she stepped forward and pulled him into a hug.

”You are already worth knowing, you stubborn kid,” she whispered.

Roran did not know what to say to that. He just hugged her back.

When she let him go, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He did not want the kids to see him crying.

”One day,” he said, without looking back, ”everyone will know my name.”

He walked down the road, and he did not look back. Marta watched him until he disappeared over the hill.

The years that followed were not kind, but they were full of action.

Roran fought in skirmishes that no one else wanted. He took jobs that paid very little and cost him a great deal of blood. He lost friends and he made enemies.

He learned that the world was not fair, but he refused to let it dampen his spirits. In the camps at night, he was the one who laughed the loudest and sat by the fire telling jokes to keep the men from losing hope.

Slowly, his name began to spread. People talked about the mercenary who fought like a man possessed but always had a smile for the villagers he protected. ”Have you heard of Roran?” a merchant would say in a tavern.

”The mercenary? The one who cleared out that nest of monsters near the pass?”

”Yes, that guy. They say he fights like a man possessed. They say he has never lost a battle.”

”They say a lot of things.”

”Maybe. But I have seen him fight. And I would rather have him on my side than against me.”

He gathered a group of followers, not because he wanted to be a leader, but because people felt safe when they were near him. Broken soldiers, lost souls, men and women who had nothing left to lose—they came to him, drawn by something he could not name.

They found something to believe in when they saw him fight, something that made them think that maybe the world was not as hopeless as it seemed.

He did not understand it. He was not a leader. He was just a stubborn boy from a small village who refused to give up.

But they followed him anyway.

_

Five years after leaving Wayford...

The camp was quiet. The fire had burned down to embers, and most of his people were asleep, wrapped in blankets and leaning against their saddles. The night sky was clear, full of stars, and the wind carried the smell of distant rain.

Roran sat apart from the others, staring at the flames. His sword lay across his knees, the leather hilt worn smooth from years of use. He was not a young man anymore, but he was not old either. His shoulders were broader, his hands rougher, and there were scars on his arms that had not been there before.

His second-in-command, a grizzled veteran named Aldric, walked over and sat down beside him.

Aldric was older than Roran by at least fifteen years. His beard was grey, and his left leg had never healed right after a fight with a mountain cat. But he was steady, reliable, and he had saved Roran’s life more than once.

”You should sleep,” Aldric said. ”We have a long ride tomorrow.”

”I know.”

”You have that look again.”

”What look?” Roran tilted his head.

”The one you get when you are thinking about something stupid.”

Roran laughed, a bright sound that cut through the quiet night. ”Maybe I am, Aldric. Maybe I am.”

Aldric was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ”We received word from a traveler passing through. A group of demons is marching through the eastern pass. They will cross right through Blackwood.”

Roran frowned. ”Through the village?”

”They will have to go through it to reach the war front. The village is in their path. If no one stops them, the demons will tear through it on their way.”

Roran looked toward the east, where the hills were dark against the night sky. ”What do we know about the village?”

”Not much,” Aldric admitted. ”It is small. Poor. The people there barely scrape by. They cannot pay for protection.”

”Then they have no one else to turn to.”

Aldric nodded slowly. ”That is what it sounds like.”

Roran was silent for a moment. He looked at his sword and then at the sleeping men in his camp. He thought about why he had started this group in the first place. It was never about the money.

”Wake the others,” he said. ”We leave at first light.”

Aldric did not move. He studied Roran’s face for a long moment. ”You are not even going to ask if there is a better job out there? Something that will actually fill our purses?”

”No,” Roran said. A small smirk crossed his face. ”You already know me, Aldric. I did not start this group to get rich. We are going to help them. That is what we do.”

Aldric stared at him for a moment longer. Then he shook his head and let out a long breath. ”You are going to get us all killed one day.”

”Maybe,” Roran said as he looked toward the east. ”But not today. Today, we have a village to save.”

He did not know it yet, but Blackwood was where his life would truly begin—and where he would find the person who would change his world forever.