The forest was still again. Too still.
The silence after battle was never true silence, it was hollow, aching, broken. Blood had soaked into the earth until the soil itself smelled of iron and damp moss. The bodies of beasts and men alike lay twisted in heaps, steam rising faintly from their cooling flesh. Smoke from shattered torches curled low, acrid, stinging eyes and throats.
Above, black shapes gathered in the branches, waiting. The crows had come quickly, as if they had been circling long before the first blade struck.
Sofia stood at the center of the ruin. Her helm was tucked beneath one arm, her sword dragging in the dirt, its edge black with blood. Her scarred face was unreadable, carved from stone, but her shoulders sagged beneath the invisible weight of command. She had stood through countless dawns like this, but each left a mark deeper than steel could cut.
Around her, the survivors moved in broken silence. One guard knelt over the corpse of a comrade, shoulders shaking with muffled sobs. Another cursed under his breath; fists clenched so hard his nails carved bloody crescents into his palms. Their circle was smaller now. Too small.
Evelyn's hands glowed faint as she pressed them to a guard's torn chest. The light sputtered, her control fraying. She worked with desperate precision, muttering half-prayers through clenched teeth. Blood stained her sleeves to the elbows, and every time her healing faltered, her breath hitched like a knife had struck her own flesh. When she lifted her head at last, her eyes glimmered wet with tears.
"They won't all make it," she whispered, the words torn from her throat like confession.
Owen crouched nearby, his fingers blackened with ink and grime as he tried to mend a splintered shield, anything to keep his hands busy. His jaw was tight, his eyes hollow. The sigils he scratched into the wood wavered, lines breaking where his hand trembled.
Leo sat apart. His back pressed against a shattered cart, spear across his knees, still sticky with blood. The boy had curled against him, exhaustion finally dragging him into sleep. His breath rose and fell softly, fragile as a candle's flame.
But Leo's own eyes would not close. Every blink summoned memories like knives, jaws snapping shut inches from his face, the shock of spear piercing flesh, the warmth of blood spraying across his skin. The shard in his chest pulsed hot with each recollection, not in grief, not in shame, but in something that felt dangerously close to pride.
You see how weak they are, it murmured, its voice a velvet tide. How they falter, how they break. But you-
Leo pressed a shaking hand to his chest, fingers clawing against the fabric of his tunic. His teeth ground together. "Stop," he hissed, low, desperate.
The shard did not stop. It whispered against his bones, patient, unyielding. You are not prey. You are fire. You only need to let go.
His throat burned with the scream he held back. Instead, he forced himself still, every muscle rigid as if stillness alone might cage the thing clawing inside him.
Footsteps. A shadow fell across him.
Sofia stood there, silent, her face unreadable in the dim light. She studied him for a long moment before speaking. "You fought well."
Leo's head lifted. His voice rasped, raw. "I killed them."
Her gaze did not waver. "Better them than us."
He shook his head, knuckles white on the spear. "It didn't feel, right. It didn't feel like me."
For the first time, something softened in her scarred features. Not pity, never pity, but recognition. She lowered her voice, iron worn thin with memory. "The first time never does." She glanced to the boy, sleeping against Leo's side. "But you saved him. Remember that, when the rest won't leave you."
Her words were meant to steady, to anchor. They should have eased the knot in his chest. But the shard purred too loudly, drowning her out.
By dawn, the survivors had gathered their dead. No fire, smoke would draw the mob. Instead, they laid the bodies beneath a cairn of rough stones, each guard placing a hand upon it in silence. The sound of stones grinding together was louder than words.
Owen's voice cracked as he recited the old road prayer, the words trembling as if afraid to be heard. Evelyn wept openly, her tears dripping onto the stones she set in place. Sofia bowed her head at the edge of the cairn, lips moving in some older prayer, a whisper for the dead none but she had learned.
Leo hung back, the boy clutching his sleeve now that he was awake, eyes rimmed red but unblinking. Leo's feet felt nailed to the earth. He couldn't step forward. The shard's weight set him apart from the others, the whispers, the heat, the blood drying sticky on his hands. He stood apart even as dawn's pale light bled through the trees, turning the clearing into a grave of ash and gold.
The forest stirred again with birdsong, cruel in its indifference.
Sofia straightened, voice ragged yet steady. "We move. The mob will not give up, and now the beasts know our scent."
No one argued. There was nothing left to argue with. Exhaustion had carved them hollow, but hollow things could still march.
They gathered what remained, supplies salvaged, weapons bloodied, their own limbs bound with torn cloth. Every step was heavy, but they did not falter.
Leo glanced back once as they left. The cairn seemed so small against the endless wilderness, so easily forgotten.
The shard whispered, almost tender, curling its heat around his heart; But you will not be forgotten. You are meant for more.
His hand trembled at his chest.
And still, he walked on.