It was late autumn on the Veslish coast—the kind of night when rain came in sheets and the wind carried the taste of salt and iron. Shariif had been sleeping in the loft above his unfinished barn when a frantic knock came at the door. A transport truck carrying horses had overturned near the causeway. The local handlers couldn’t get them out.
By the time he reached the site, the world was a blur of headlights, mud, and shouting. Three horses had been caught and loaded onto trailers, trembling but safe. The fourth—a dapple-gray mare—stood knee-deep in the flooded pasture, wild-eyed and foaming at the bit. Each time someone approached, she reared and struck, her hooves slicing the air with lethal precision.
“She’s gone mad,” one man warned, grabbing Shariif’s sleeve. “She’ll kill you if you go in there!”
But Shariif had already slipped past him into the field. Rain plastered his shirt to his back; water sucked at his boots. He didn’t speak, didn’t lift a rope—just kept walking, slow and steady, eyes fixed on the mare.
For a long while, neither moved closer. The storm howled between them, lightning flashing in the distance. Then, when the wind fell quiet for a heartbeat, Shariif exhaled—long and low. The mare’s ears twitched. He took another step. She backed once, twice… then stopped.
When his hand finally touched her neck, it was like touching fire through ice. She trembled, then sagged against him, exhausted.
They loaded her last. Shariif rode in the trailer beside her, whispering to keep her calm as the truck rumbled toward higher ground. The mare never took her eyes off him.
No one claimed her afterward. The faint white brand on her shoulder—shaped like the Greek letter Λ—gave her the name Lambda.
After the rescue, local authorities and the shipping company tried to trace the mare’s origins. The transport manifest had been ruined by water, and the handlers could only recall “a Spanish-type gray” loaded last at the port of Neris. The pale brand on her shoulder—Λ—matched no registered breeder in Vesland’s equine database. A few old records suggested it might belong to a private Andalusian line from the southern isles, but the trail stopped there.
For weeks, Shariif checked notices and sent inquiries, but no one came forward. In the end, the mare’s silence about her past became part of her allure. The brand that should have identified her instead marked her as a mystery—a horse that belonged nowhere until she belonged to him.