Lyralei woke to screaming.
Her heart slammed against her ribs before her eyes even opened and confusion flooded through her as she tried to make sense of what was happening. She'd just left Gerald at the stream to come back to her quarters and sleep when the sounds of children screaming tore through the night air.
She bolted upright and threw herself out of the furs she'd been sleeping on, her feet hitting the cold stone floor as she rushed outside in nothing but the thin sleeping shift someone had given her. Sharp stones bit into her bare soles but she barely registered the pain as adrenaline flooded her system.
The settlement was chaos.
Fires burned throughout the area but these weren't the controlled cooking fires she'd seen earlier, these were buildings ablaze with flames licking u
