Matthias woke to silence.
Not the soft hush that comes before dawn. Not the quiet of wind in the trees or birds stirring in the branches. This was something else—a dead, smothering stillness that sat heavy on his chest.
His eyes opened slowly. The world blurred, then swayed into focus. For a moment, he had no idea where he was.
The sky above him looked wrong. Dark. Ash-streaked. Smoke dragged itself across the clouds, and the sun hung behind it all like a dull red wound.
He drew in a breath and immediately coughed, pain tearing through his lungs.
The rest of his body answered a moment later. His ribs throbbed. His chest burned. Every muscle felt battered, as if he had been thrown, broken, and poorly pieced back together. With a groan, he rolled onto his side, his fingers digging into grit and charred stone. The ground beneath him was blackened—and in places, still warm.
Oakwind.
The memories hit him all at once.
Fire. Screams. Crimson robes. The sorcerer’s cold eyes fixed on him.
Matthias forced himself upright with a sharp breath, swaying as the village came into view.
Or what was left of it.
Smoke crawled through the streets, staining the morning sky black. Charred beams jutted from collapsed homes like broken ribs. In the village square, the great oak still smoldered, its mighty trunk split open and hollowed by flame. Deep inside it, embers glowed faintly, as though the heart of Oakwind refused to die.
There were no voices.
No footsteps.
No weeping.
Only the crackle of dying fires and the distant groan of ruins settling into ash.
Matthias stood on unsteady legs and began to walk.
Every step felt like a betrayal—of what Oakwind had been, of the people who had lived and laughed here only hours before. He passed the tavern, its roof caved in, its sign lying face-down in the road. The Battered Mare. He could almost hear its familiar creak in the wind, almost feel the warmth of a mug of ale between his hands, almost believe he had sat there last night pretending the world beyond Oakwind could never reach him.
He kept moving.
Near the square, an overturned cart lay burned and broken, its contents scattered beyond recognition. A little farther on, a pair of boots stuck out from beneath a fallen beam.
Matthias stopped.
His hands trembled as he crouched and lifted the timber just enough to see the body beneath. A young man. Barely grown. His eyes were closed, his face strangely peaceful, and the sight twisted something deep in Matthias’s chest.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
He didn’t know why he said it. He didn’t know who it was meant for.
Gently, he lowered the beam back into place.
The chapel still stood, though one wall had collapsed and the bell lay cracked and crooked in the dirt. Inside, the pews were scorched black, the altar burned almost beyond recognition. Matthias stepped over the threshold carefully, as though the place was still sacred despite everything.
His gaze moved past the ruin, to the graveyard beyond.
The stones were scattered now. Some split. Some toppled. Fresh earth had been torn open by fire and bootprints.
He found her marker at once.
He always did.
Sera.
The stone had cracked down the middle, splitting her name in two. Even so, it still stood. For that, he was grateful.
Matthias sank to his knees before it, all his strength leaving him at once. His breath came ragged and uneven as he pressed a hand to the broken stone. His thumb traced the letters of her name, as if touching them could ease the pain tearing through him.
“I should have been here,” he said, his voice raw. “I should have—”
The rest would not come.
He bowed his head. His shoulders shook. Grief moved through him in silent, shuddering waves—not only for Sera, not only for the dead, but for the lie he had spent so long telling himself.
That he could walk away.
That if he kept his head down, violence would pass him by.
That the world would leave him in peace if he simply refused to fight.
At last, Matthias rose.
He wandered the village as the hours dragged on, burning every ruin into memory.
The fields where farmers had once bent over their work now smoldered in long black rows, the crops reduced to ash. Near the scorched roots of an oak, a child’s wooden sword lay snapped in two. A ribbon stirred weakly from the frame of a burned-out window, its bright color swallowed by soot.
Everything was gone.
By the time the sun began to sink behind the smoke, Matthias stood once more in the heart of Oakwind.
Alone.
Breathing.
Still alive.
He clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms.
The peace Sera had given him in the dream felt far away now, but not entirely lost. Beneath the grief, beneath the guilt, something else began to stir. Not rage, he realized.
Not yet.
Resolve, perhaps.
“Those crimson-robed bastards will not do this again,” he said into the empty square, his voice low and steady. “I swear it by the gods. In time, they will know my vengeance.”
The wind moved through the burned oaks, carrying ash instead of leaves, almost like an answer. Matthias turned toward the road leading out of Oakwind, back into the world he had tried again and again to leave behind.
Then he heard someone cough nearby.
It was a wet, broken sound, dragged up from deep in the chest. A human sound. A dying sound.
Matthias went still. Every muscle locked. Then he turned toward it, his sword rising on instinct as he moved, boots crunching over ash and shattered stone. The road sloped down as it left the village, and the smoke thinned just enough for him to make out shapes ahead.
Bodies lay scattered near the bend.
Three wore crimson robes, torn and dark with blood. One had been pinned to the earth by a sword driven clean through the back of his neck, the point buried deep in the dirt beneath him. His body sagged there, mouth open in a silent scream, eyes already glassing over.
And beside him, slumped against a broken milestone, was Roderick.
He looked smaller somehow. Pale. His leathers were soaked through, one leg bent at an ugly angle, blood pooling beneath him and seeping into the road. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven pulls. One hand still gripped the hilt of a dagger, knuckles white with stubborn refusal to let go.
“Roderick,” Matthias breathed, relief breaking through as he ran to him.
Roderick’s eyes fluttered open when Matthias dropped to his knees beside him. A crooked grin tugged weakly at his mouth.
“Took you long enough,” he rasped. “I was starting to think you’d finally stayed dead this time.”
Matthias swallowed hard, already pressing his hands against Roderick’s side to slow the bleeding. “You damned fool,” he said hoarsely, a relieved smirk flickering despite himself. “You should have gotten out of Oakwind when I told you to go.”
Roderick coughed again, red flecking his lips. “I did leave,” he said between breaths. “Then I saw those robed bastards over there. Saw the flames. Came back to help.”
Matthias’s hands stilled. He looked sharply at him. “Never without honor, are you, Roderick?”
“We were knights once, Matthias,” Roderick said, his gaze drifting toward the village, where smoke still curled into the sky. “Or have you forgotten?”
“When has honor ever gotten us anything besides fresh scars?” Matthias answered, a bitter, broken laugh tearing from his chest.
Roderick gave a faint chuckle, then winced as his breath caught. “Funny thing, my friend,” he muttered. “Seems you may have saved my life again today.”
His laugh twisted into a choke, blood bubbling up from his throat.
Matthias shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ll be damned if I don’t try.”
He slid an arm beneath Roderick’s shoulders, careful but urgent, and began to haul him upright. Roderick cried out as his weight shifted, the sound raw and involuntary. His legs gave way at once, his knees buckling as fresh blood spilled from the wound in his side.
“Easy—easy,” Matthias said, straining to keep him steady.
Roderick sagged against him, strength draining with every heartbeat. His head lolled forward, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Matthias…” he whispered, suddenly thin and distant. “Matthias, listen to me.”
“You need to save your strength,” Matthias snapped. “Rest.”
Roderick smiled faintly, his eyes already beginning to lose focus. “If I don’t… say it now…” His weak grip tightened on Matthias’s arm. “This was only the beginning, old friend. Oakwind was the first of many to fall.”
Something cold twisted in Matthias’s gut. “I know. It’s never just one.”
Roderick’s body went slack.
“No… Roderick?” Matthias tightened his hold as Roderick collapsed fully against him, heavy and lifeless in his arms. He pressed a hand to Roderick’s neck, searching desperately for a pulse. For anything.
There was one.
Faint. Thready. Slipping away.
Matthias bowed his head until it rested briefly against Roderick’s blood-slick hair. His jaw clenched so hard it ached.
“Come on,” he muttered. “Stay with me, you old bastard. You don’t get to die yet. Not after all this.”
Suddenly, Roderick laughed.
It was rough and cracked, more breath than sound, but unmistakable.
“Try not to shed tears over fallen angels, Matthias,” he murmured, stirring slightly. “Surely it’s more fitting to weep for fallen gods.”
Matthias let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t broken halfway through. “I don’t believe even the gods have egos as large as yours, my dear friend,” he said. “Perhaps what keeps you alive is not divinity, but a curse.”
Roderick laughed harder, then choked, the corner of his mouth twitching as blood slipped down his chin. “Divinity, I say. The gods have shown me mercy yet again.”
“Careful,” Matthias warned, easing him back against the stone. “A man shouldn’t lean too heavily on the kindness of abstractions.”
Only then did he take a closer look at the wound. The cut along Roderick’s side was deep and ugly, torn rather than clean. Blood still seeped steadily despite the pressure Matthias had kept on it, and the angle of Roderick’s leg promised at least one break. His face had gone bone-white, sweat beading across his brow.
“Hold still,” Matthias said, already moving.
He rose and scanned the roadside, forcing his tired eyes to focus. The fire had not reached this far. It had come close—close enough to take almost everything—but not here. Matthias dropped to one knee near the ditch and tore up clumps of green with practiced hands.
Yarrow. Clean. Still fragrant.
Comfrey leaves, bruised but usable.
A strip of bark he knew by feel alone.
“Perhaps I’ve been wrong all my life, and the gods do exist after all,” he muttered under his breath. “Seems not every fool burns the same.”
Roderick cracked one eye open. “Since when the hell… did you become a healer?”
“Who said I did?” Matthias replied, already chewing the bark into a bitter pulp. “Any common idiot can make a simple remedy. All he has to do is pay attention when others don’t.”
He packed the pulp against Roderick’s wound. Roderick hissed, fingers clawing at Matthias’s sleeve as the sting hit.
“Don’t expect an apology,” Matthias said, not slowing. He layered crushed leaves over the wound, then tore strips from his own cloak and bound it tight. Firm, but not cruel. Enough to slow the bleeding. Enough to keep Roderick alive a little longer.
He hoped.
“There.”
Roderick breathed through clenched teeth until the worst of the pain passed. Then he sagged back, exhausted. “The whole battle falls apart, the world burns because of it, and you still somehow know exactly what the hell you’re doing.”
Matthias tied off the last knot and sat back on his heels. “Someone has to. It’s not magic, Roderick. It’s just what needs doing.”
Roderick looked at him then, his eyes clearer for a moment. “That’s why people follow you,” he said, grimacing as pain bit through him again. “Even when you don’t ask them to. They trust your instincts.”
Matthias said nothing.
He only helped Roderick sit up, slow and careful, bracing him as best he could. Roderick groaned, but stayed conscious, leaning heavily into Matthias’s side.
“Can you walk at all?” Matthias asked.
Roderick let out a weak snort. “Depends what you mean by walk.”
“Then we’ll fucking limp,” Matthias said, grunting as Roderick swayed.
He hauled him upright inch by inch, Roderick’s arm slung over his shoulders, his weight heavy but not impossible. Together, they turned their backs on Oakwind.
Behind them, the village smoldered in silence, broken and blackened, already slipping into memory and ash. Ahead, the road stretched empty beneath a smoke-darkened sky, leading anywhere but here.
Matthias did not look back.
With bloodied boots and bodies that ached with every step, the two men followed the road away from Oakwind—away from graves, away from ghosts—and into a countryside that, at first glance, looked untouched.
Rolling hills and wide pastures lay beneath a sky slowly fading from smoke-black to bruised gray. Wind combed through the tall grass in long, patient waves, and birds circled high overhead, indifferent to the ruin below. Dew clung to leaves and loose stones, catching the faint light wherever the smoke thinned. It was the kind of morning that should have felt like a beginning.
Instead, it felt obscene.
Matthias kept their pace steady, adjusting whenever Roderick stumbled. Roderick leaned hard against him, each breath strained, but he refused to stop. Pride, stubbornness—whatever name it wore, it kept him moving.
“It’s fuckin’ hilarious, you know,” Roderick muttered after a long stretch of silence. “The way the world keeps pretending there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Matthias glanced at him. “Perhaps the world doesn’t know yet.”
Roderick gave a dry, humorless huff. “It will soon enough, I reckon.”
They walked until the charred remains of Oakwind slipped behind a rise and disappeared. Matthias felt the loss like a blow to the chest. He fixed his eyes on the road, on the rhythm of boots and breath and wind, on the simple mercy of moving forward.
After a while, Roderick spoke again. “I saw their robes up close.”
Matthias said nothing, only listened.
“Crimson,” Roderick said. “Deep red, with black stitching. Sigils worked into the hems, careful-like.” He paused, gathering what breath he could. “That insignia they wore… it belongs to King Radavaar.”
The name settled between them like ash.
Matthias was silent for a moment. He had heard the name before—everyone in Crystarium had. King of Aethelgard, the capital city far to the east. A lawgiver, some called him. A tyrant, others whispered, if one knew which voices to listen for. Protector of order, if one listened only to the loudest.
And Matthias knew the insignia Roderick meant. He could see it clearly now, flashing across his memory.
The king’s insignia was a study in controlled brutality—elegant at first glance, but made to intimidate as much as inspire loyalty.
At its center was the sigil: a crowned beast hammered from darkened steel. It was not quite a lion, not quite a dragon, but something older than either, something dragged from the bones of myth. Its muscles were carved in harsh, unforgiving lines, every curve suggesting a strength held back only by will. The crown above its head was no delicate band of gold. It was heavy, square, and plain—less an ornament than a declaration.
A crown for conquest, not ceremony.
The insignia was usually set against weathered black and crimson. The colors had not been chosen for beauty. They were chosen for memory: black for the ash of defeated enemies, crimson for the blood spilled to rule them.
To look upon the mark of King Radavaar was to feel the full weight of his reign—unyielding, merciless, earned through iron, fire, and death. It did not ask for allegiance. It demanded it. And long after banners fell and walls gave way, that image remained, burned into the mind: power not granted, but taken.
The vision faded, and Matthias found himself staring out across the plains around Oakwind.
He sighed into the wind as the hills rolled away from him, low and wide beneath a sky that seemed incapable of forgetting war. At first glance, the land looked gentle enough: broad fields of wind-bent grass, dark fertile soil, hedgerows threaded with old stone. But Matthias knew better. The land remembered. It held its past deep in its bones. Every furrow had been cut and cut again by generations who learned to farm with one eye fixed on the horizon.
Oakwind had once stood proudly near the heart of those plains, a huddle of timber halls and thatched roofs gathered around the ancient oak. Its roots dug deep into the earth like claws, as if the tree itself refused to be torn free. Smoke had once risen there from hearths and kilns in thin gray streams, as though the village were forever signaling its survival to a world that would have preferred to forget it existed.
Matthias would never forgive the crimson-robed bastards for what they had done to Oakwind.
He swore his silent vengeance again, his gaze drifting north, where the plains hardened and began to rise. The grass grew thinner there, the soil stonier, scarred by old wagon ruts that cut pale lines toward the distant silhouette of the Shattered Peaks. On clear days, their jagged spines tore at the sky like broken teeth, black and merciless. Each evening, cold wind spilled down from the heights, carrying the scent of snow and steel.
Travelers heading north spoke less the farther they went. The land grew quiet there. Fields lay abandoned. Weathered scarecrows stood watch over farms whose owners had never returned. Beyond the last standing fences, the plains gave way to ash-dusted earth and the long shadow of Mount Vral, whose smoke sometimes stained the sunrise red.
Matthias followed the line of peaks eastward, where the plains opened wider and grew emptier still, flattened by ancient fires and the march of armies. The grass there was sparse and brittle, rattling underfoot like dry bones. In that direction lay the road to the Ashen Wastes, though no sign named it so plainly. Burned farmsteads dotted the land like blackened teeth. Their wells were poisoned. Their orchards had long since died.
The eastern sky often darkened before its time, heavy with low clouds, while the wind carried fine gray dust that settled in hair and lungs. Even Oakwind’s livestock had grown uneasy when turned that way, as if they sensed the slow, inevitable pull of ruin beyond the horizon.
Matthias drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.
He wondered how many had survived the raid.
If they had reached the river, they might have followed it south, where life seemed to linger a little longer. There, the plains softened into rolling green, broken by shallow streams and marshy lowlands that caught the afternoon light. The road would have carried them on toward the Black Bay, though the sea itself still lay days away.
Fisher-traders sometimes came to Oakwind from that direction, their cloaks smelling of salt and smoke. They brought stories of drowned towns, wrecked fleets, and things seen moving beneath dark water. At night, when the wind blew from the south, it carried the distant cry of seabirds and the faint, uneasy hush of waves—even this far inland.
His gaze drifted west again, following the slow rise of the Shattered Peaks, where the plains began to pinch narrow and the forests pressed in, dark and watchful, their borders tangled with twisted roots and leaning trunks. Beyond those trees lay the Wraithwood, a place where the land seemed to fold in on itself instead of stretching away. The grass there grew tall and bone-pale, always whispering, and the earth was soft underfoot, as if it had been turned over too often by too many graves. Old stones jutted half-buried along the western road—markers, maybe, or warnings no one remembered how to read. Few from Oakwind went that way unless they had no other choice. The forest had a way of keeping what it took, and even the plains seemed reluctant to let travelers come back.
By nightfall, the fields around Oakwind became something else entirely. Fog gathered in thick, low pools, blurring one field into the next, one road into another. Far-off farmstead fires glimmered like dying stars, and the wind carried sounds that might have been wolves—or something older, moving unseen through the tall grass.
“Radavaar doesn’t raid villages like this,” Matthias said suddenly, snapping out of his own dark thoughts. “Oakwind is a major trading hub for all of Crystarium. He’d be a fool to attack it.”
Roderick looked up, half-awake and startled by the sound of his voice. Then he shook his head. “Not openly, no. But those weren’t ordinary soldiers. They were fanatics, following strict orders from someone else. They had to be.” His expression hardened. “Radavaar’s moving pieces. Clearing roads. Breaking border towns. Making examples of them.”
“For what?” Matthias asked, though some part of him already knew.
“What else?” Roderick said. “War. He’s starting a campaign against his brother, Draylin. Don’t ask me why.” He spat to the side. “Two kings, one crown, same blood. Radavaar wants the whole world under one banner, if the rumors are true. His banner. And he doesn’t give a shit how much ash he has to wade through to get it.”
Matthias’s grip tightened around Roderick’s waist. Images came to him without warning: the sorcerer in the village square, the coordination of the attack, the clean precision behind so much slaughter.
“So this wasn’t random,” Matthias said quietly, more to confirm what he already suspected than to ask.
“No,” Roderick said. “Oakwind was a message. A loud one, considering how important it is to the realm.”
They crested a low hill together.
On the other side, the road dropped away, and Matthias stopped short.
The village below was far smaller than Oakwind. Fewer buildings. No great oaks. But the damage was unmistakable.
Blackened roofs. Smoke still curling from collapsed homes. Fields burned into ugly, uneven scars. The air carried the same stench of scorched grain, charred wood, and death left too long beneath the open sky.
Roderick sagged against him. “Fucking animals,” he breathed. “They’re moving fast.”
Matthias stared down at the ruin, something cold and hard settling in his chest. This was no longer one night of horror. This was a trail. Deliberate. Widening. Nearly unstoppable, as the first sparks of war began to catch.
“You should stay here, Roderick,” Matthias said. “Rest. I’ll go down there and deal with these bastards.”
Roderick shook his head, even as pain twisted across his face. “Not a chance, soldier boy.”
Matthias didn’t argue. He shifted his hold on him and started down the slope.
The closer they came to the village, the clearer it became that it wasn’t finished dying.
Houses stood split open like ribcages, their insides exposed to the sky. Smoke drifted lazily from smoldering beams and through streets slick with drying blood. Doors hung broken from their hinges. Flies swarmed in the warm air, already gathering where bodies lay cooling in the scorched earth.
Roderick drew in a sharp breath. “They’re too fresh, aren’t they?” he muttered. “Means the bastards are still here somewhere.”
As if in answer, voices drifted toward them through the smoke—casual, unhurried, almost bored.
Matthias eased Roderick down behind the low stone wall of a ruined garden and peered around the side of the house. Four men in crimson robes lounged near the village square, crouched around a broken fountain as though they had stopped there to rest. One of them kicked lazily at a corpse with the toe of his boot. Another rummaged through a nearby chest, tossing clothes and trinkets aside with open contempt.
“Look at this place,” one of them laughed. “Barely worth the torch, if you ask me.”
“Doesn’t matter,” another said, shaking something metallic in his fist. “Orders were orders. Make it hurt. Make it remembered.”
A third spat on the body at his feet. “They all scream the same. What’s it matter?”
Something inside Matthias went cold and still.
He stepped out into the open.
“Hey!” he shouted, his voice cutting through the smoke. “Get away from them.”
The men turned, startled to find anyone standing there. Then one of them barked a laugh. “What’s this, then? Another fucking ghost?”
Roderick forced himself upright beside Matthias, sword in hand despite the tremor running through his arm. “You missed a couple up the road,” he rasped. “Thought we’d come say hello.”
For one suspended moment, nobody moved.
Then steel flashed.
The nearest robed man lunged, his blade sweeping toward Matthias’s throat. Matthias met him head-on, parrying with enough force to numb the man’s arm. Before the man could recover, Matthias drove the pommel of his sword into his face. Bone cracked. Teeth scattered. The man dropped screaming, both hands clamped over what was left of his mouth.
Another charged Roderick, grinning when he saw the blood and the weakness in him. Roderick shifted just enough for the blade to skim his arm, then drove his dagger up beneath the man’s ribs. The man shrieked. Roderick twisted the knife and tore it free in a hot gush of blood.
Matthias was already moving.
He brought his sword down on the third man’s skull. The blade bit deep and stuck there for one sickening heartbeat before he wrenched it loose. Blood ran down his arms. The fourth man stumbled backward, wide-eyed now, fear finally breaking through the bravado.
“Please—”
Matthias did not slow.
He drove the man back into a burned doorway where flames still licked at the frame. The crimson sleeve caught first. The man screamed. Matthias shoved him deeper into the fire and pinned him there with a thrust through the chest. The scream broke into a wet gurgle, then faded beneath the crackle of burning wood.
Behind him, Roderick staggered and dropped to one knee, breath tearing in ragged pulls from his lungs.
Matthias turned just in time to see another crimson robe step out of a nearby alley, crossbow raised.
“Get down!” he shouted.
Too late.
The bolt struck Roderick high in the shoulder, punching through leather and flesh. He cried out and collapsed onto his side. The archer grinned.
The grin vanished when Matthias reached him.
He seized the man’s wrist and twisted hard enough to hear something snap, then drove his sword through the man’s belly. He ripped it free and shoved the body aside without looking. More movement flickered at the edge of the square. Two more figures burst from a looted house, blades already wet with red.
The fight broke apart into chaos—brutal, vicious chaos.
One man slashed Matthias across the thigh. Matthias answered with an elbow to the throat, crushing the breath out of him. Another came at him with an axe and nearly buried it in his shoulder, but Matthias stepped around the swing, caught the haft, and dragged him close enough to silence his scream with steel through the eye.
Blood soaked the village square all over again beneath the shadow of the broken statue at its center.
Roderick, teeth clenched, hauled himself upright and threw a knife one-handed. It sank into the back of a man’s knee. Roderick lurched after him, savage despite the wounds dragging him down, and sawed his blade across the man’s throat until the gurgling stopped in a fountain of red.
At last, there was only fire.
Fire, and smoke, and the sound of two men trying to breathe.
Matthias stood amid the carnage, chest heaving, sword dripping scarlet onto blackened stone. His arms trembled—not with fear, but from the sheer cost of holding himself together.
Roderick slumped against a wall and slid down until he sat in the ash. Fresh blood seeped around the crossbow bolt in his shoulder. He gave a weak chuckle.
“I suppose…” he breathed, “we made their victory a little less sweet, eh?”
Matthias was beside him at once, gripping his shoulder. “You have to stop fighting like that,” he said, and yanked the bolt free in one hard pull.
Roderick coughed, blood flecking his lips. “And you need to stop pretending… you still can, old man.”
They sat together in the ruined square, surrounded by bodies—some innocent, others having earned their end—while smoke climbed into the darkening sky and the village joined Oakwind in silence and decay.
Matthias stared down at his bloodstained hands. Heat still throbbed through his arms. Something sharp and brittle inside him finally cracked.
“None of this makes any sense,” he said suddenly, the words harsher than he meant them to be. “First Oakwind, now this place. Maybe others we haven’t even seen.” He kicked a loose stone, sending it skittering through a smear of blood. “I laid my sword down because of this. I walked away from all of it. I did everything they tell you to do when you’re done with killing, and it still came after me. It still found me.”
Roderick leaned his head back against the wall, eyes half-lidded, breath shallow. “It always does,” he murmured. “For men like us, there is no escape.”
“That’s a shit answer,” Matthias snapped. He ran a hand through his hair and left a dark streak across his brow. “Why villages, Roderick? Why farmers and children and peasants? If this is a war between kings—between brothers—then let them bleed each other dry in some field far from here. Why all of this?”
Roderick was quiet for a long moment. Around them, the fires crackled softly as dusk crept in, turning the light tired and gray.
“Because villages like this don’t fight back,” he said at last. “And because fear travels faster than any army. King Radavaar doesn’t just want to defeat his brother. He wants the whole world too terrified to choose a side.”
Matthias turned sharply. “So this slaughter is politics?”
Roderick let out a humorless breath. “This slaughter is power. Raw power. Radavaar sits on a throne that was never meant for him. He believes himself the rightful heir, but he doesn’t have the blood for it, and that truth is making him desperate. He and Draylin share a father in King Aethelwulf, yes, but Draylin has the stronger claim, the banners, and the sympathy of the people of Crystarium. So Radavaar answers the only way he knows how—with fire and blood. Order through terror. Peace through chaos.”
His eyes opened then, sharp despite the pain twisting through him.
“Burn enough villages like this—like Oakwind—and people stop asking who is right. They start begging for whoever can keep them safe.”
Matthias sank down beside him, his back against the scorched wall. The anger drained out of him, leaving only exhaustion and a hollow ache beneath his ribs.
“I didn’t want any part of this, Roderick,” he said, voice rough. “I’m tired of kings deciding how much their pride should cost the rest of us.”
Roderick looked at him sidelong. “Unfortunately, the world does not hand out mercy just because we are weary of war.”
Silence stretched between them, filled by the distant cry of a night bird and the soft collapse of a burning beam. Above them, the sky deepened toward violet, shadows lengthening across the ruined square.
After a while, Roderick spoke again.
“This is why I told you I needed you.”
Matthias did not answer. He only stared into the dying flames.
“You don’t chase crowns,” Roderick continued. “You don’t give a damn who sits where. You care about the people crushed beneath them. Men listen to that. Men follow that, Matthias.” He winced as he shifted his wounded shoulder. “This was never about whether you wanted to fight. The fight already wanted you. That’s why I came to find you. Come with me to Nyranthium. Join the Resistance.”
Matthias clenched his jaw. “You’re asking me to pick up my sword again. To break a promise I made years ago.”
“I’m asking you to use it for something that isn’t a lie,” Roderick said. “Radavaar is moving quickly. Draylin’s forces will answer this slaughter in kind, and when kings go to war, everything between them burns first. The world becomes kindling for their ambition.”
He met Matthias’s gaze.
“I’m asking you to stand with me where the fire spreads first.”
Matthias closed his eyes and let out a long, heavy sigh.
He saw Oakwind as it had once been: green fields rolling under the sun, laughter drifting on the breeze, Sera’s smile bright in the morning light.
Then he saw it burning all over again.
And this village too—nothing now but rubble, ash, and silence. In his mind, he saw dozens more just like it, waiting somewhere down the road.
When he opened his eyes, the sun had dipped low, and the first stars were beginning to tremble in the darkening sky.
“You were wrong to think I know how to stop any of this, old friend,” he said.
Roderick managed a tired smile. “You never knew before, either. You just showed up and refused to let it happen quietly.”
Night settled around them, cool and heavy, stretching its shadows over the living and the dead alike. The fires faded to embers. Somewhere beyond the ruin, the road was waiting.
Matthias let out a slow breath. This time, it didn’t shake.
“Then we keep moving,” he said. “But not for a king. Not for some fucking banner. We move for what’s left.”
Roderick nodded, and for a moment, relief flickered across his weary face as the darkness closed in.
The war had them both in its grip now.
The only question was how much blood it would take before it finally let go.