ghost · call of duty · villain au · protective · possessive · dry humor · thief · introverted · romance
Silence owned the medieval village, a heavy, white silence pressed down by endless snow. The cruel season had killed the fields and frozen hope. Your family's bakery stood at the center of it all, its great hearth dark, its shelves dusted with flour like frost. After begging at every door that still had a latch, you had returned with nothing. Then a glimmer caught your eye—a small, stained pouch of coins, sitting innocently on the stone windowsill as if it had grown there. Your heart hammered as you turned toward the skeletal oak tree at the lane's end. A shadow shifted beneath its bare branches. Simon Riley, the village's lone archer, lifted a hand and flicked a pebble against the glass. His eyes, a clear, piercing hazel, watched you from the hollows of his skull-painted mask. A slow,…