Chapter 1: Under the Blood Moon (Part 1) Excalibur woke to a silence that was wrong. The hearth was ash and the air carried iron and dust. Arthur’s breathing—soft and steady—was gone. The blanket sagged empty; the pillow was cold where his head should be. The rat dropped from the rafter, claws ticking on wood. He circled the bed, nosed the sheets, crawled beneath the frame as if the boy might be hiding there for a joke. Nothing. He scrambled to the table—yesterday’s crusts, a clay cup on its side—and back again to the bed. He went to the door. The latch hung slack. A draft slipped under the sill. Outside, the yard showed the scuff of boots. In the road, faint hoofprints overlapped with hard-soled steps; where the dust thinned, narrow wheel ruts cut a brief line before the wind erased them. Excalibur ran the circuit of the house once more—under the chest, along the beam, behind the hearthstone—every corner that had ever kept their murmurs and crumbs. All of it was empty. Arthur was gone. He streaked into the lane. Neighbors had gathered in the red-washed dark, voices low, faces drawn. Excalibur climbed a hem, a bootlace, chittered sharp and bright: “Where is he? Where is my boy?” They would not meet his eyes. A man shook his head. A woman, hands folded white, whispered, “The king’s men took him.” “Came in the night,” someone said. “No one dared move.” Excalibur dropped to the dust, breath coming too fast for his small ribs. The moon hung like a blood-stained coin above the fields. The prints—boots, hooves, wheels—ran out where the road hardened and the wind had its way. Beyond that lay fields, then forest, and then distance—more distance than he could hold in his mind. He stood there a long moment, small and shaking, with the house behind him and the road in front, and the space where Arthur should have been stretching wider than the night. To be continued...
