They burned druids at the stake and called it peace.They shattered Camelot and crowned a usurper in blood.Now, the last heir of the old bloodline rises—not with a sword……but with the scabbard that once held it.
The fields were dead again.
Cael knelt beside a broken fencepost, staring out across cracked soil and frost-burnt stalks that hadn't borne fruit in two harvests. What had once been the wheat-heart of western Albion was now a graveyard of brittle stems and hopeless dreams.
Behind him, the village bells tolled. Not for worship.
For a burning.
Cael didn't look back.
He'd seen the last one.
Briarthorne was a broken place—half-wood, half-mire, swallowed by creeping vines and fear. Its people whispered stories they weren't allowed to tell, passed down from teeth-clenched elders and drunkards too far gone to fear Mordred's men.
Cael wasn't one of them. Not yet.
At seventeen, he was still too young to drink, too poor to own land, and too bastard-born to claim kin. The only name he had was "Thornblood," spat like rot between the teeth of noble guards and piss-drunk tax collectors.
But none of them came near the Thornwood.
Not even the Ash-Knights.
The woods whispered. And what they whispered wasn't Mordred's law.
Cael stepped beneath the boughs, his breath frosting. Crone Malla had sent him for redcap mushrooms, said she needed them for poultices and warding smoke. But that was a lie. She always had some. She just wanted him out of the village during the burnings.
"You got too much heart in your eyes, boy," she'd told him. "One day it'll get you killed."
He moved deeper.
The Thornwood was older than kings, older than even the Church dared admit. Gnarled oaks coiled like sleeping beasts, their bark split by age and lightning. No birds. No beasts. Just silence.
Until—something cracked.
A heavy groan. Splintering wood. Then the sound of steel scraping bark.
Cael dropped low, heart racing.
Someone—or something—was bleeding.
He followed the sound.
It led to a clearing by the lake, where mist clung to the shore like the fingers of a corpse. There, beneath a collapsed tree, lay a knight in half-shattered armor, silver chased with blue. His chest was torn open, ribs showing through blood and metal. A sword lay beside him—snapped at the hilt.
Cael had never seen heraldry like it. A white dragon, half-faded, marked the man's cloak.
Not Mordred's.
Not any of the border lords.
This was old. Forbidden.
Pendragon.
The knight coughed blood.
"You…" he rasped, eyes wide. "Boy… the Scabbard… lake…"
He reached out with a trembling hand. In it was a bundle wrapped in wet leather and vine.
Cael didn't know why he took it.
But he did.
It burned cold in his grip.
As his fingers touched the bundle, a low hum echoed from the lake.
Water rippled. Trees bent as if in prayer. A gust of wind tore through the clearing, and Cael fell to his knees, clutching the relic.
The leather unravelled. Inside was a scabbard of jet-black metal, etched with thorn-vines and faded runes that pulsed like dying embers.
It should've been rusted, ancient.But it wasn't.
It was alive.
And it knew him.
You bleed, child…
The voice wasn't spoken—it was felt. In bone. In breath.
Blood of kings. Blood of the wild.Will you bear the weight?Will you wear the thorn?
Cael gasped. His hands burned. The Scabbard twisted, vines latching around his chest, fusing to skin. He tried to pull away—but couldn't.
It wasn't pain.
It was choice.
And choice was a crown heavier than iron.
Behind him, the trees parted.
A shadow approached. Tall. Cloaked in scorched black plate, helm shaped like a wolf's skull. An Ash-Knight.
He bore no sword.
Only a brand of fire in one hand, and a chain in the other.
The knight did not speak.
He simply pointed.
At Cael.
At the Scabbard.
And then… he began to advance.