🎬 Episode 2 – Shadows Ride

Runtime: ~40 minutes

Read the summary of these series here: Witcher Fans, Prepare Yourselves, Cavill’s New Fantasy Project Goes Even Darker

🌒 Prologue – Echoes in the Flame (3 min)

Smoke rises through the vision, a flickering candle in an ancient ruin. A girl, barefoot and cloaked in rags, stands in a circle of ash. Whispers claw at her mind as she draws symbols on the floor in blood and coal. Her name is Lysara, and fire coils beneath her skin.

She whispers: “The flame remembers. The flame warns.”

In her eyes, a vision: a man with storm-colored eyes and a broken sword. He stands amid the ruins of a burning village. The whisper says: “The Broken Flame must ride.”

🏞️ Act I – A Village Under Siege (7 min)

Alaric rides through the night. Rain has not touched this region, and smoke blackens the horizon. He finds a small coastal village named Highmere, its harbor ablaze.

Chaos reigns. Screams echo. Houses burn. Villagers run, hunted by beings not of flesh, but of moving shadow, creatures formed from nightmare, tall as men, eyes like hollow stars.

Alaric unsheathes a borrowed sword, short, unremarkable, and dives into the fray. His movements are brutal but practiced, parrying clawed arms and slicing through tendrils of dark mist. The creatures shriek, dissolving into black flame.

In a crumbling barn, a group of children cower. A shadow-creature breaks through the ceiling, and is incinerated by a blast of fire from the hands of a young woman.

Her name is Lysara. Her hair is braided with cinders, her eyes like living embers.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she tells Alaric. “This place is marked.”

🔥 Act II – The Witch of Fire (6 min)

As dawn breaks, the fires die down. Lysara leads Alaric to a hidden root cellar where survivors huddle. They speak of nightmares that arrived with the blood moon.

“They were looking for me,” Lysara admits. “They always are. They call me Witchspawn, Ashborn… Fire Wretch.” Her voice is bitter.

Alaric, still wary, watches her. She’s powerful, too powerful to be untrained. Yet she carries herself like prey.

Alaric: “You should hide better.”
Lysara: “I did. Until I saw you… in my dreams.”

She speaks of visions, of a knight bathed in moonlight, a sword broken by faith, and a war that swallows stars.

“You are the Broken Flame,” she says. “You’re meant to stop what’s coming. Or begin it.”

⛰️ Act III – The Mark of the Court (7 min)

While burying the dead, Alaric finds a sigil scorched into the ground: a crescent moon over three eyes. He’s seen it before, burned into the armor of the assassins who slaughtered his fellow wardens near the North Range.

“The Shadow Court,” Lysara whispers. “They are not of this world. They serve the one who dreams in chains.”

The villagers prepare to flee inland. Alaric and Lysara help them load carts, herd children, and map the safest routes. Despite his gruff manner, Alaric is gentle with the people. One old man blesses him, calling him “Knight of the Lost Star.”

That night, they camp on a cliffside overlooking the sea. The stars shimmer unnaturally. A second moon appears, then disappears.

“The veil grows thin,” Lysara says. “Soon, even time may lie.”

⚔️ Act IV – Riders from the Void (8 min)

The group is ambushed before dawn. Riders cloaked in obsidian armor descend from the forest, Wraithbound, servants of the Court.

Alaric fights atop a rocky hill, commanding the terrain. He throws oil into the grass, lighting it with Lysara’s flame to trap the enemy in a ring of fire.

One of the riders speaks, not with a voice, but through a ripple in Alaric’s mind:

“The Flame must die. The Broken One must kneel.”

Alaric nearly falls, but Lysara unleashes a torrent of flame that consumes the rider, who explodes into moth-like cinders.

The others flee, but not before leaving a message scorched in the soil:

“Maelgard remembers.”

🌿 Act V – Flame and Doubt (5 min)

After the attack, Alaric confronts Lysara. “You knew they would come. You used this village as bait.”

“Not bait,” she replies. “But if they were hunting me, I had to see who would answer. And you did.”

Alaric turns to walk away.

Lysara: “Why did you break your oath?”
Alaric: “Because justice became obedience. And I will not serve fear.”

She stares at him long. “Then maybe you’re not broken. Just reforging.”

🌌 Act VI – The Pact (5 min)

Atop a windswept bluff, Lysara reveals a hidden map etched on a fire-scorched parchment. “These marks are where relics sleep. The Ancients left them, keys to the Seals.”

Alaric reads a name near the northern ridge: Eltharion. A place he once defended in his youth. A place said to hold one of the lost blades of power.

“Help me find them,” Lysara says. “Before the Court does. Before prophecy becomes ruin.”

Alaric: “This path leads to war.”
Lysara: “Then let it burn behind us, not before us.”

They shake hands. A breeze stirs the leaves. Far away, in the ruins of a forgotten tower, something watches… and begins to wake.

🎵 Final Montage (3 min)

• In a cavern lit by cold fire, hooded figures chant over a black obelisk. The name “Alaric” echoes like a curse.
• High Lord Veras meets with a pale envoy whose eyes are milk-white. “We must sever the Broken Flame.”
• In the forest of Viremont, trees begin to whisper again after centuries of silence.
• Lysara dreams of a city drowning in flame. She sees herself wearing a crown… and bleeding stars.

📜 End Credits – Episode 2: Shadows Ride

As dawn touches the world, Alaric and Lysara stand at the edge of a deep forest, where light dies quickly and legends sleep. Their path leads into shadow, but beside them flickers the first true alliance, a knight with nothing to lose and a witch who may burn the world to save it.

The Shadow of Eldros rises once more.