Heartstone - Chapter 4: Chapter 4

They found him in the village of Korba, nestled in the Carpathians. A place so small it wasn’t on most maps. Mark had believed they’d be safe there. He was wrong.
He never heard the bullet. The assassins didn’t make mistakes. Three shots in the dead of night. One through the window. Two in the chest. He collapsed before he reached Avera’s crib.
But she wasn’t alone.
Nikola Varga had been watching the house for days—he always did when Mark moved. A grizzled local with one eye, a ruined leg, and a history soaked in blood. Years ago, he had stood on opposite ends of a barrel during a covert op in the Caucasus but was spared.
Nikola had never forgotten.
When the gunfire erupted, Nikola acted. He burst into the house moments after the kill team escaped, found Mark already cold on the floor, Avera screaming, soaked in blood that wasn’t her own.
He didn’t hesitate.
He wrapped the baby tight, grabbed the emergency pack, and vanished into the snow as the whole village burned down.
Flames roared behind him, licking the night sky with violent orange tongues. Screams echoed through the trees—men fighting, women crying, children calling for help. Nikola didn’t look back. He couldn’t. Not now. The baby in his arms—Avera—was all that mattered.
Each step through the blizzard felt heavier than the last, his boots sinking into the deepening snow. Ash rained from the sky like black feathers, mixing with the falling snowflakes. His heart pounded as distant explosions rocked the earth beneath him. He knew who had come—the same ones who killed Mark.
He stumbled into the forest’s embrace, the shadows offering only a sliver of safety. He whispered to the baby, “I will keep you safe… even if it’s the last thing I do.”
Behind them, the last of the village's towers collapsed in a burst of fire.
And so began Avera’s true journey—hidden in snow, born of fire.
They wouldn’t chase him into the mountains. Not this high. Not in winter. The air here was thin. The terrain brutal. But he knew every trail, every cave. Every whisper of the wind. Up here, he had ghosts of his own.
As Nikola trudged through the snow-covered forest, a sharp wind howled between the trees. Avera whimpered in his arms, her tiny fingers gripping the edge of the blanket.
He stopped under a thick pine tree to catch his breath, the cold biting into his face. As he adjusted the baby’s wrap, a small object slipped from the fold of her diaper and dropped softly into the snow.
Click. A faint metallic sound.
Nikola looked down, frowning. He crouched and picked it up—a small, thin metal, unfamiliar in design. It had a strange symbol etched into its surface—a glowing circle with three branching lines, almost like roots or veins. It pulsed faintly in the dark.
He muttered, turning it over. “Where did you get this, little one?”
Avera gurgled softly, unaware of the importance of what had just been found.
Nikola didn’t know it yet, but the flash drive contained everything—Mark Breknac’s final research, evidence of the betrayal, the secrets of the .
He slipped it into his emergency pouch, not realizing that this small device would one day ignite a revolution.