Sleep found Matthias gently that night, like a warm hand settling over his eyes.
When he opened them again, he stood in sunlight so golden it seemed to sink straight into his bones. The ache in his joints was gone. His scars no longer tugged when he moved. Before him spread a meadow brighter than memory itself, the grass untouched, the flowers bowing lazily beneath a sky wiped clean of worry.
And there she was, as she always was.
Sera stood at the edge of everything, as though the world had quietly arranged itself around her. Her hair fell loose down her back in soft waves, catching the light in shades of honey and copper. She wore the simple green dress she had loved in the old days, before sickness had thinned her frame and stolen the color from her cheeks.
Here, she was whole.
Here, she was laughing.
Here, she was alive.
“Matthias, my love,” she said, and the sound of his name in her voice felt like a promise.
He crossed the meadow without effort, without pain, his heart pounding with a joy so sharp it almost frightened him. When she smiled, it was the smile he remembered best—the one meant only for him, soft and knowing, as if she carried every secret he had ever kept and loved him all the more for them.
“You’re frowning, my love,” she teased, lifting a hand to smooth the crease from his brow. Her fingers were warm. Real. “You always do that when you’re thinking too hard.”
She laughed softly, though there was sadness tucked somewhere inside the sound, as if she already knew the answer to a question he had not yet found the courage to ask. Her thumb lingered at his forehead before tracing the line of his cheek.
“Tell me,” she whispered, brushing the hair from his face. “What burdens you so much today?”
He lowered his eyes.
The words would not come.
For a long while, they simply stood together as birdsong filled the silence between them and water murmured somewhere in the distance. The wind stirred the loose strands of her hair until they glimmered like spun gold across her shoulders.
At last, Matthias looked at her.
“I’m afraid, Sera.”
The confession was barely more than a breath.
She blinked. “Of what?”
He gave a bitter little laugh, ashamed of how foolish it sounded now that it had been spoken aloud.
“Everything.”
His gaze drifted over the endless field, but he no longer saw the flowers. He saw banners. Smoke. Broken shields. He heard the screams of dying men.
“I have trained my whole life to hold a sword,” he said, his hands curling into fists. “I’ve spent years learning how to kill another man before he kills me. And now I find myself wondering what any of it is for.”
He swallowed hard. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.
Sera noticed and stepped closer, taking his hands in hers.
“They call it honor,” he went on. “Can you believe that? Honor, for killing another living soul. And they tell us courage means charging into battle without hesitation, without doubt.” He shook his head, and a tear slipped free. “But I don’t feel courageous. Not at all.”
He looked back at her then, and there were tears in her eyes too.
“I feel terrified, Sera,” he said, his voice breaking. His hands trembled in hers as her fingers threaded through his. Her touch was gentle. Warm. Steady.
“There is no shame in fear, Matthias,” she said, stepping closer still. “You are human. Fear is one of the most human things there is.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Alongside love, of course.”
“But you’ve never seen war,” he said, his body tensing despite her hold. “How can you say that when you’ve never seen what it does?”
“No,” she admitted softly. “You’re right. I haven’t.”
“Well, I have.” His breath came unevenly now, his shoulders rising and falling with each one. “I saw the veterans come home. They smiled for their wives. They laughed with their children. But their eyes…” He stared past her, into some distant place she could not reach. “Their eyes never came home at all.”
Sera watched him with quiet concern.
“I keep wondering,” he continued, shifting where he stood, “what if that becomes me?”
The words tore out of him like a wound opening.
“What if I survive the next battle, Sera, and the man who comes back to you…” His eyes found hers again, both of them shining. “What if he isn’t the man standing here now? What if I come home changed? What if you look at me and no longer recognize who I am?”
He looked down at his hands in hers, as though they already belonged to someone else.
“What if I become cruel? What if I stop caring who lives and who dies? What if one day I look at another human being and feel nothing at all?” His jaw tightened. “I fear death. But not nearly as much as I fear becoming the kind of man who no longer deserves to live.”
Sera moved into his arms then. She lifted both hands to his face with such tenderness that he closed his eyes without meaning to, leaning into her touch like a weary traveler leaning toward the warmth of a fire.
“My sweet Matthias,” she said, her voice no louder than the wind. “Do you know why those fears haunt you?”
He opened his eyes.
She smiled sadly at him.
“Because your heart is gentle.”
She brushed a strand of dark hair from his brow and wiped away the tear trailing down his cheek.
“A cruel man does not fear becoming cruel,” she said. “He simply is.” She rested her forehead against his. “The very fact that you are afraid of losing your kindness tells me how fiercely you are trying to keep it.”
He exhaled. He wanted so badly to believe her.
“But battle can change people, Sera.”
“Yes,” she said. “It can.”
“It can harden them.”
“Sometimes.”
“It can break a man into pieces.”
“Sometimes,” she whispered.
“It teaches terrible things.”
Her eyes glistened. “Sometimes, Matthias. Yes.”
He searched her face. “Then how can you sound so certain?”
“Because I know you,” she said, her smile returning, softer now. “I know the boy who carried an injured raven home because he couldn’t bear to leave it dying in the snow.”
His breath shook as it left him.
“I know the young man who gave his cloak to an old beggar and walked the rest of the way freezing because he couldn’t stand to see someone else shiver.”
Another tear slipped free. She caught it with her thumb.
“And I know the man who apologizes when he steps on flowers.”
Despite himself, he laughed—a broken, breathless sound.
“I know what lives inside your heart, Matthias.” She placed her hand against his chest and kissed his forehead, the touch filling him with a fragile kind of peace. “If war changes you, then let it change your scars. Let it mark your skin. But never surrender this.”
Beneath her palm, his heart beat strong and uncertain.
“This belongs to you,” she said. “No battlefield can steal it unless you choose to leave it behind.”
He stared at her, unable to speak.
Sera slipped an arm around his waist and drew him closer until their bodies rested together. His forehead found the curve of her shoulder, and she held him there, her fingers moving slowly through his hair, combing through the tangled strands with patient affection. The motion was steady and soothing, almost enough to quiet the storm inside his mind.
“You don’t have to be fearless,” she murmured. “No one is. You only have to remember why you fight.”
He closed his eyes. “For you?”
She smiled against his temple.
“For hope, Matthias. You fight for hope. For the family we dream of. For the children who deserve peaceful summers. For the old who deserve quiet winters. For every morning we have not lived yet.”
She lifted her chin until their eyes met once more.
“And when this war is over,” she said, her smile brightening with a fragile certainty, “you will come back to me.”
“You can’t know that, Sera.”
“No,” she said without hesitation. “I can’t. But I can promise you this.”
Her fingers lingered along his jaw, as though memorizing him all over again.
“If you return carrying sorrow, I will help you bear it. If nightmares wake you, I will wake with you. If silence feels easier than words, I will sit beside you until the words come back.”
She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek.
“And if one day you look in the mirror and no longer recognize yourself,” she said, gazing at him with unwavering devotion, “I will remind you who you are.”
His throat tightened.
“I don’t deserve someone like you, Sera.”
She smiled with quiet certainty and laid her hand over his.
“Love was never something we earned, Matthias,” she said. “It was given.”
The breeze moved through the meadow once more, carrying the scent of wildflowers between them.
For a while, they only stood there, holding each other as if that single embrace might somehow keep the storm from reaching them.
At last, he took a slow breath.
“I don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” he said.
She laced her fingers through his again. “No. None of us do.” Her smile was soft, almost bright in its gentleness. “But we have this. Right here.” She squeezed his hand. “And until tomorrow comes to take it from us…” Her eyes stayed on his. “Let it be enough.”
“I’m afraid I’ll forget your face,” he said suddenly, the words spilling out before he could stop them. “I’m afraid—”
She kissed him before he could finish.
It was gentle at first, familiar and heartbreakingly tender, her lips finding his as if they had always belonged there. Around them, the meadow seemed to breathe. The grass stirred in the wind. Matthias’s hand settled at her waist, solid and warm beneath his palm, and the simple reality of her nearly broke him.
She drew back just enough to rest her forehead against his.
“You will never forget me,” she whispered.
He let out a soft laugh when she kissed him again. “You always knew how to make me feel better, Sera.”
“Well, someone has to,” she said. “Someone has to know the real you, beneath all that armor and battlefield grimness.”
She took his hand and led him through the meadow, their fingers entwined.
As they walked, memories opened around them like petals: laughter beside a crackling hearth, rain tapping against a cottage window, quiet mornings tangled in blankets while the world waited patiently outside. He felt the warmth of her body against his again, the way she fit against him so perfectly it seemed the gods themselves had shaped her for that very place.
They lay together in the grass beneath the wide, endless sky while she traced small circles over the center of his chest.
“I was never frightened by the thought of scars,” she told him, smiling. “They won’t matter to me.”
“They should,” he murmured.
“Why?” She shook her head and kissed him again, slower this time, deeper, her breath mingling with his.
Passion warmed between them, steady and grounding, less like a blaze meant to devour and more like a fire built to keep out the cold. Matthias felt anchored there, held by her presence, by the quiet certainty of being wanted. Of being enough.
For a time, there was nothing else.
No wars. No graves. No unfinished business. No unfinished goodbyes.
Eventually, Sera rested her head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart.
“You’re so tired,” she said.
“I don’t ever want to lose you, Sera,” he answered, his fingers moving through her hair.
Her smile turned sad, though her eyes remained kind. “I know, my love.”
The light around them softened. The edges of the meadow began to blur.
Matthias tightened his arms around her, panic rising fast and sharp. “Stay with me,” he pleaded. “Everything was perfect back then.”
“I never left you.” She pressed her hand over his heart. “Not really.”
Her form began to pale, thinning like mist at dawn. Her warmth lingered even as her shape faded.
“Live, Matthias,” she breathed. “That was always enough for me. Live for both of us.”
Matthias woke with tears on his cheeks and one hand clenched tightly against his chest, as if he might still feel her there.
The room was dark and quiet, except for the wind sighing through the oaks of Oakwind outside.
The pain returned slowly.
But so did something else.
A fragile, stubborn peace.
He lay still for a long moment, breathing shallowly, letting the last threads of the dream slip away. The ache settled back into him, into his chest, his joints, the quiet places he had tried so hard to bury again and again. He stared up at the low rafters, at the familiar cracks running through the beams, and swallowed against the tightness in his throat.
“I miss you so much, Sera…” he whispered into the dark, sighing her name as his heart gave a small, painful flutter.
The words felt heavier than any sword or armor he had ever carried.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and planted his feet on the floor. Pressing his palms against his thighs, he waited for the trembling to pass. The peace she had left behind still clung to him, delicate as frost.
He held on to it for one heartbeat longer.
Then a scream tore through the night.
Matthias went rigid.
The scream came again, closer this time, high and raw, then cut off so abruptly his blood turned cold. He rose from the bed in a single motion and moved to the window.
The wind shifted, carrying something sharp and metallic.
Wrong.
Smoke.
Burning wood. Burning hair. Burning flesh.
Another scream followed, then shouting, panicked and desperate. Matthias’s heart slammed against his ribs. Without thinking, he reached for the sword resting against the wall. His fingers closed around the familiar grip, and the weight of it grounded him at once, waking something old and deadly in his bones.
He charged out the door and into the night.
Oakwind had become fire and chaos.
Flames climbed the sides of cottages, devouring thatch and timber with a hungry roar. Sparks twisted into the dark sky like lashes of hellfire. The oak leaves overhead glowed red and gold, their soft rustling drowned beneath the crackle of burning wood and the screams of the dying.
Bodies littered the road.
A farmer lay face-down near the square, his back split open, blood soaking into the same dirt he had worked so carefully only hours before. A woman slumped against the well, eyes wide and glassy, her throat a ruined red line. Matthias’s breath came fast and hard as he took it in, every detail burning itself into him whether he wanted it to or not.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and broke into a sprint.
They were everywhere.
Figures in crimson robes moved through the village like a tide of blood, their garments dark with soot and gore. Some carried swords. Others bore axes or hooked blades. They killed without hesitation, cutting down fleeing villagers, dragging people from doorways, laughing as they worked.
One man threw himself over a child to shield him.
A robed figure drove a spear through them both in one brutal thrust.
The child’s scream ended in a wet gasp.
Rage flared white-hot in Matthias’s chest.
One of the robed strangers turned, startled, just in time to see Matthias’s sword come down through his collarbone. The blade bit deep, splitting bone, dropping the man in a spray of blood. Matthias wrenched it free and kept moving.
He cut down another invader mid-swing, steel tearing through flesh. He felt the impact up his arms. Smelled iron and smoke and shit. Heard ribs crack beneath his blade.
A third rushed him with a dagger. Matthias drove his shoulder forward, shattering the man’s nose, then finished him with a downward stroke that left the street slick beneath his boots.
The screams blurred together, becoming one long, terrible chorus of pain and terror and fury.
A nearby roof collapsed in flames, sending a wave of heat across him hot enough to scorch his skin.
He barely noticed.
“Run!” he shouted, his voice ragged. “Get to the river! Now! Go!”
A woman stumbled past him, clutching her wounded arm and thanking him through sobs as blood poured between her thin fingers. She made it three steps before an arrow struck her in the center of the back.
She hit the ground hard and did not rise.
Matthias roared and charged the archer, cutting him down before he could nock another arrow. He stood among the dead, panting, chest heaving, his sword dripping red.
This was no raid.
More crimson-robed figures poured into the square, moving with purpose, with discipline. Oakwind burned around them. The tavern roof was fully aflame now, fire spilling through its windows like living tongues of ruin. The chapel bell rang wildly, then stopped with one final, hollow clang.
Matthias turned slowly, taking it all in, blood slick on his hands and dripping from his fingers.
Roderick’s words echoed in his mind.
Villages like this one…
Matthias tightened his grip on his sword until his knuckles went white.
“No,” he growled. “Not this one.”
Then he stepped into the fire.
A robed figure lunged from the smoke, blade raised high. Matthias met him with a savage backhand cut that opened the man from hip to ribs. Hot blood sprayed across Matthias’s face as the body folded, the crimson robe collapsing into a soaked heap on the ground.
He did not slow.
Another came screaming at him, axe arcing down. Matthias caught the weapon with his sword, twisted hard, and drove his knee into the man’s gut. The sound was wet and final. He ended it with a thrust beneath the jaw, feeling steel scrape bone before the body went limp.
“Go!” he bellowed, hacking through the rope binding two villagers who had been dragged toward the square. “Run!”
They fled without looking back.
Matthias tore through Oakwind like a storm made flesh, charging down alleys choked with smoke, his boots slipping in blood and ash. Crimson robes fell around him. Some went quickly. Some screamed. Others begged for the mercy they had refused to show the innocent.
A woman in crimson tried to crawl away after he severed her leg at the knee. He ended her with a single downward stroke, jaw clenched, eyes burning.
There was no mercy left in him.
Only motion.
Only action.
Only fury.
Near the collapsed bakery, a group of villagers huddled with their hands bound, faces blackened by soot. Matthias slammed into their captors, his sword rising and falling in brutal arcs.
One attacker struck him across the ribs with a mace. Pain flashed white through his side, but Matthias answered with a chop that split the man’s skull like rotten fruit. Another blade bit into his shoulder when he turned to dodge. He barely felt it.
He waded forward, blood running down his arm.
Whose blood, he no longer knew.
Nor cared.
“Get out of the village!” he rasped as he cut the captives free. “Get to the river. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Keep moving. Anywhere but here!”
They scattered as the flames consumed what remained of the square.
The great oak at its center burned from within, fire crawling up its ancient trunk, leaves raining embers into the street. The heat was suffocating. Smoke clawed at Matthias’s lungs, turning every breath into a jagged knife.
Then the air changed.
The screams faltered.
The fire seemed to bend, leaning inward as if pulled by an unseen hand.
Matthias slowed, every instinct screaming at him.
From the far end of the square, a figure stepped through the smoke.
His robes were crimson like the others’, but darker, heavier, stitched with black sigils that seemed to drink in the firelight instead of reflecting it. The man beneath them was tall and gaunt, his face pale as old parchment, his eyes bright with a cold, knowing light.
He carried no blade.
“You are quite persistent,” the man said calmly, his voice cutting clean through the chaos. “I will admit, your spirit is impressive. For a human.” His mouth curved faintly. “Futile, of course. But impressive all the same.”
Matthias raised his sword, widening his stance even as his exhausted legs shook beneath him.
“Get the fuck out of my home.”
The man’s mouth curved into the faintest smile. “It was never really yours, imbecile.”
He lifted one hand.
The world warped.
Darkness poured from his fingertips, thick and slick as oil spilled into the air. It struck Matthias with bone-breaking force and hurled him backward through a burning cart. Wood burst apart around him. He hit the ground hard, the breath ripped clean from his lungs.
With a roar, Matthias pushed himself back up and charged. He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, blade driving for the man’s throat—
The ground buckled beneath him.
Black veins split the stone and shot upward, coiling around his legs like chains. Pain tore through him as they tightened, crushing him, burning cold and hot at the same time. He hacked at them, cutting one loose only for two more to twist into its place.
The sorcerer came closer, in no hurry at all.
“You cannot fight what you do not even understand,” he said. “This is far bigger than you, child.”
Matthias ripped himself free with a howl, tearing skin and leaving blood smeared across the stone. He swung his sword with everything he had. The blade cut through the man’s chest—
And met nothing.
The sorcerer dissolved into black smoke, only to reform behind him. He made a small gesture and spoke a word in a language that scraped against the inside of Matthias’s skull.
Agony.
It speared through him from the inside out, as if invisible hooks had sunk into his bones and were being dragged apart. He collapsed to one knee, vomiting blood onto the cracked stones. His vision blurred. Around him, the village burned. Homes folded in on themselves. Roofs caved. Screams rose into the night, then stopped one by one.
Still, Matthias forced himself to stand.
His teeth bared in a snarl, he swung again, wild now, desperation creeping in no matter how hard he fought it. The sorcerer lifted a hand, and the sword froze mid-swing, hanging inches from its mark. Frost crawled along the blade, then up Matthias’s arm, biting deep into his flesh.
“You cannot stop what is coming, Matthias,” the man said, his voice soft and terrible. “A new age of man will be born from the blood and ashes of war. All will bow before the reign of steel and flame.”
He closed his fist.
Something slammed into Matthias’s chest. An invisible hammer, shattering breath and thought alike. He flew backward and crashed into the stone steps of the chapel. Pain burst through his spine. Above him, the bell groaned, swaying in the heat-warped tower, before tearing free and crashing down beside him with a deafening clang.
Matthias tried to rise.
His body would not obey.
Firelight flickered across his fading vision. He saw Oakwind dying—his Oakwind. He heard children screaming. Men and women pleading to gods who did not answer. He smelled smoke, blood, burning oak. He tasted iron, salt, ash, and despair.
Sera’s face flickered through his mind.
“Live, Matthias,” she had told him. “That has always been enough for me…”
“I tried, Sera…” he whispered, coughing blood.
The sorcerer turned away, already done with him.
“Leave him,” he said. “Let him remember this, if he wakes. Let this be the flame that lights his vengeance. And let that vengeance usher in the era of blood and ash.”
Boots passed by. Crimson robes swept onward. The fire roared higher, clawing at the night with fingers of orange and red.
Matthias’s fingers twitched once.
Then they fell still at his side.
The world shrank to smoke, embers, and pain.
Then even those slipped away, and darkness took him.