The village did not wake; it burst. By the time they stepped into the street, the town had re-dressed itself in gold—ribbons looped between lamp-posts, sheaves of wheat tied in fat bows above doorways, braziers burning sweet resin that smelled like honey and smoke. Stalls elbowed for space along the lane, each with its own bright bark: tin chimes, clacking wheels, a woman laughing as she dusted fried dough with sugar. Children sprinted past with paper fish pinned to their backs so they looked like they were being chased by their own shadows.

  Anastasia did not walk so much as bounce. “Come on!” she said, grabbing Roland’s sleeve with one hand and Soliana’s with the other. Leon followed three steps behind with the grim patience of a condemned mule, one arm tucked across his chest where a leather coin-pouch bulged like its fighting for its life, and he hoped to keep it that way.

  Roland tried to be cool about it, but the noise and warmth soaked through him. Festivals in Inferna were all velvet edges and perfect lines—courtyards scrubbed to mirror-black, lanterns arranged by measurement rather than whim. Here, someone had thrown joy in the air and let gravity decide. He caught himself smiling because there wasn’t anything else to do.

  Anastasia halted so abruptly that Soliana bumped into her. “First trial,” she declared, stabbing a finger toward a stall crowned with wooden rings looped over pegs. A painted placard read: THREE RINGS—THREE PEGS—EVERY WINNER A PRIZE!

  The stall-keeper was an old man with a fraudulent twinkle. “Champion’s discount for brave souls,” he said, already jingling rings in his hand.

  “I was born for this,” Anastasia announced, rolling her shoulders as though loosening armor. “Observe greatness.”

  Her first throw missed so thoroughly it would’ve needed a map to find the target. The ring bounced off a post, ricocheted neatly, and clipped Roland on the shoulder.

  “Ow.”

  “I meant to do that,” she said.

  Her second throw arced beautifully, hovered in the realm of promise, and then performed a last-second betrayal to clatter harmlessly at the old man’s feet.

  “Warming up!” she declared, jaw set.

  “Perhaps a smaller warm-up,” Roland said, rubbing his shoulder.

  “My turn,” he added, because it would be rude not to fail in solidarity. He lined up, took careful aim, visualized angles, accounts, airflow—

  Miss. Miss. Miss.

  “Awful!” Anastasia judged brutally, as if she didn’t do the same a moment ago.

  Soliana watched quietly, hands tucked into her sleeves. The stall-keeper, sensing blood, rattled another set of rings. Leon’s intuition told him to clutch his pouch harder, as he could already predict what’s going to happen soon.

  “Would you like to try, little miss?” the old man asked, half expecting a shy decline.

  Soliana glanced at Roland, then at her mother’s distant smile across the street—and nodded. She stepped forward, took a ring, and tossed it with a small flick of the wrist.

  Clink. Center peg.

  Another flick. Clink. Second peg.

  A pause—the tiniest inhale, a recalibration that said she had done this before, and not just once.

  Clink. Third peg.

  “Thank you Fortune.” Leon muttered. Heard by no one but him. Maybe the other two would end the competition now?

  Anastasia froze mid-boast, mouth open. The old man blinked, as if he’d been robbed by a breeze. Soliana fidgeted, then dipped her head and murmured, “Sorry,” as though winning were impolite.

  “It doesn’t count,” Anastasia said gravely. “You didn’t announce you were a natural-born champion first.”

  Roland bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Rules are rules.”

  “Exactly.” Anastasia planted her fists on her hips. “Again.”

  Leon sighed. Coins clinked. Somewhere, a shrine bell tolled a warning that was completely ignored.

  It became the first loop of the day’s running gag. Anastasia would throw, fail, swear vengeance, and whirl toward Leon with the earnestness of a starving poet. Leon would peel coins from his pouch with the care of someone removing bandages. When Roland offered his purse, Leon shook his head without looking.

  “Not yours,” he murmured.

  “Then hers?” Roland tilted his chin toward Anastasia, whose pockets were clearly wealthier than her porridge.

  Leon’s mouth twitched. “Especially not hers.”

  Anastasia failed again. “Last one,” she promised.

  “Famous words,” Leon muttered, paying for three more tries.

  They lost time that way—happily. They lost money that way—less happily, if you asked Leon.

  “Again!” Anastasia whispered to the puppeteer.

  “Later,” Leon said, somehow both stern and gentle at once.

  They were arguing about whether a ring-toss conspiracy implied a broader festival cartel when a shadow fell across their patch of sun.

  “Scam,” said the shadow, conversationally. “This one, especially. The pegs are beveled.”

  Anastasia beamed without looking. “Hi, Dad!”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Roland turned, ready to meet any father with an open face. He found a man in a simple linen shirt rolled to the elbow, forearms knotted with the kind of muscle that forgot it was impressive. He had a square jaw furred with lazy stubble, a mug in one hand, and the content expression of someone who had already won whatever day he was living.

  “Name’s Geralt,” he said to Roland and Soliana, as if that were the whole story.

  Roland dipped his head politely. “I’m Roland. This is Soliana.”

  Geralt’s eyes crinkled. “Good names.”

  Leon, beside them, was very still in the way that meant motion had retreated inward. His gaze flicked to Geralt’s hands, then to Anastasia’s grin, then back. A bead of sweat did a nervous migration near his temple—out of place for a man who could walk through a burning building without blinking.

  Geralt looked at Leon. Leon looked at Geralt. Two swords tested by silence.

  “Nice weather,” Geralt said mildly.

  “The best,” Leon returned, with a tone so neutral it came back around to meaningful.

  Anastasia missed another ring and declared she had been sabotaged by the wind. “Dad, pay the man. I’m so close.”

  Geralt leaned in to Roland, stage-whispering, “We never win these. But losing together is good for the soul.”

  Leon braced. Geralt, with infinite magnanimity, clapped him on the shoulder. “That fellow there looks generous.”

  Leon suffered it like a saint, then produced more coins as if plucking teeth from his own jaw. “Last three,” he said. It sounded like a prayer.

  When Anastasia declared the stall rigged by the gods against her, they fled to safer ground: candied fruit skewers (Roland loved the sour ones; Anastasia made a face; Soliana tried both and then quietly swapped her own for Roland’s without comment), a small brass automaton that wrote your name in loops if you promised not to ask how it worked (Anastasia demanded it prove magic was real; it ignored her; Roland thought it was perfect), and a puppet show where a fox outwitted a hunter with puns. Soliana laughed once—just a breathy yip—and looked startled that she had done it. Roland, who had never competed at eating anything, made a brave showing until his stomach filed a formal complaint. Anastasia was convinced she could win with strategy. Her strategy was “eat faster.” It failed. Soliana nibbled one and declared herself full, and the vendor, charmed by their seriousness, presented them with a ribbon as a gift.

  “That counts,” Anastasia whispered, impressed.

  They drifted with the current of the day—over carpenters’ booths where toy boats bobbed in a shallow trough, past a street magician whose sleight-of-hand sent Anastasia into passionate debate about whether telling magic to prove itself was like telling a fish to explain water. Roland lost a coin to a guessing game and found he didn’t mind. He noticed the way people greeted each other, whole-body-wave greetings that looked like you couldn’t do them if you were trying to impress anyone. In Inferna, even hello had a meaning. Here, hello was just hello.

  Geralt, if he had an agenda, buried it under ease. He hoisted Soliana onto his shoulders without asking and she went because his hands were the kind that made the world feel like it wouldn’t drop you. He bought them cider and told a story about a goose that had learned to steal from purses and then retired after a single glorious season. When he laughed, other people looked up, not because they were worried but because the sound was contagious and loud, especially loud.

  Roland found himself copying his gait without meaning to—loose at the hip, sure-footed, the way a man moves when he has chosen the ground he walks on. He thought of his father, who he doesn’t seem to remember much, and wondered when he had started measuring people by their footsteps.

  The sun leaned west. The market learned a new tempo—lanterns testing their wicks, musicians in the square tightening strings. The day had been a collection of small victories and sillier defeats. It should have ended there. But festivals hoard one more trick for the evening.

  They reached the central green as fireworks crews uncrated cylinders painted with names: Harvest Crown, Swan in Frostveil, Maiden’s Laugh. Anastasia read them aloud with the seriousness of a scholar deciphering ancient text.

  “‘Swan in Frostveil’ better be big,” she said. “If it’s a tiny swan I’m booing.”

  “Please don’t boo a firework,” Leon said.

  She grinned. “I would never boo a firework to its face. I’m not a monster.”

  They found a patch of grass at the edge of the crowd. Families staked out blankets, children practiced the art of stillness badly, couples leaned shoulders. Geralt sat with a sigh and a pleased groan, rolling his mug between his palms. Leon remained standing, because standing let him see everything.

  Roland lay back. The sky was a bowl washed in peach and rose. The shattered moon was faint, a pale scaffold behind color. Soliana sat cross-legged, chin propped in both hands, intent as though studying a spell. Anastasia dropped beside Roland and flopped like a cat claiming sun.

  “Today,” she announced to the sky, “I almost won ring toss. Twice.”

  “That’s not true,” Roland said.

  “You weren’t looking!” she countered.

  “You know what?” he conceded. “Sure”

  Silence settled. The nice kind. The kind that says you did enough speaking for one day and now the world will take over.

  The first firework hissed like a secret and cracked the dark. A chrysanthemum of gold unfolded over the green. Children shrieked; older children pretended not to. The second painted white across the ink; the third scattered blue sparks that fizzed until they vanished.

  Roland watched the sky—then watched her.

  The light printed itself across Anastasia’s face, a shifting gallery of brightness. Her eyes caught the gold and made a new color out of it, orange flaring almost to red. She didn’t blink on the big ones. She let them happen to her, completely. He tried to catalogue the feeling in his chest and failed. It wasn’t a sword; it wasn’t an oath; it wasn’t even the clean purpose of a fight you know you must win. It was softer and more treacherous. It felt like stepping off a ledge and discovering the air had hands.

  Geralt leaned sideways, as if to comment, and then, seeing where Roland was looking, didn’t. Leon’s eyes flicked across the crowd, then to the sky, then briefly to Roland, and for once he said nothing because there was nothing tactical to say about this.

  Anastasia spoke without turning her head. “Hey, Roland?”

  “Mm.”

  “If you caught a dream butterfly—actually caught one—what would you wish for?”

  He almost said I did yesterday, but that was not this game. He considered. His first answer rose—change Inferna—and tasted wrong now, not because it was false but because it was incomplete.

  “I’d wish for… room,” he said slowly. “Enough room for people to be kind without being punished. Enough for… the world not to die every time someone wants to be gentle.”

  She was quiet for a beat. Then: “That’s sweet.” A beat more. “Still kind of boring.”

  He turned his head. “Boring?”

  “Wishes should scare you a little,” she said. “Otherwise you’re just making a shopping list.”

  Wishes were heavy things in Roland’s life. This one didn’t feel false. It felt like someone had cut a hole in the sky just his size and told him to climb.

  The show gathered Itself into finale. Fireworks ripped open the dark and poured color like spilled treasure. The crowd’s collective breath rose and fell as one creature. Soliana leaned without thinking against Roland’s arm, and he steadied her without thinking, and Anastasia laughed at a firework shaped like a crooked heart, and Geralt said, “There,” softly to no one in particular, and Leon let himself, just for a second, look human.

  Gold rained and went out. Smoke folded back into the night. The applause was less a roar than a long sigh granted permission.

  “Same time next year,” Anastasia said, stretching her arms above her head until her spine popped.

  “Same time,” Roland agreed, before he knew what he was promising.

  She hopped to her feet, offered him a hand, then yanked him up with too much enthusiasm. “Come on, champion. There’s a stall that sells fried milk. It’s either incredible or a crime.”

  Geralt lifted Soliana to the ground and hoisted the sleeping child like she weighed as much as a cloak. Leon counted coins and found some had survived. The four of them—five, if you counted Soliana’s slow, warm breathing—moved through a crowd that had learned how to be happy on purpose.

  Roland glanced back once, to the green sown with paper and crumbs and trampled grass. The empty sky didn’t look empty anymore. It looked like a place to go.

  He followed Anastasia into the bright, unguarded river of the festival, he didn’t think about the weight of his name or the angle of his stride. He thought about fried milk, and a girl with a laugh like a firework, and the quiet decision blooming inside him that felt suspiciously like a future.