The sky was bleeding fire.
Screams tore through the blackened clouds, drowned only by the relentless clash of steel and the shriek of falling fireballs. Across the scorched fields of Axbrighin, the land was dying — choked by smoke, mud, and the stench of burning flesh.
Men, women, children they ran like broken shadows. Some were cut down mid-stride, their cries ending in red spurts. Arrows fell like rain, and swords sang their cruel songs against flesh. The ground trembled with every explosion, rupturing earth and bone alike.
Among the chaos, a boy standing there
He couldn't hear his own breath over the storm of war. Blood soaked his torn tunic not all of it his. He was sixteen, though war made him feel much younger. His black hair clung to his forehead, damp with sweat and someone else's blood.
Then it happened.
A man, arrow-lodged and gasping, crashed into him. The weight drove him to the ground. Before he could react, another fleeing body stepped on his ribs, knocking the breath and consciousness from his lungs.
Darkness swallowed him.
When he woke, silence reigned.
No screams. No fire. No war.
Only the hiss of wind against a ruined land and the distant crackle of dying embers.
His vision swam, everything a blur of color and ash. Blood had dried against his temple, crusted and warm. Two corpses pinned him in place, their weight as still as stone. With a groan, he shoved with trembling arms. One body slid aside, then the other. He crawled free, limbs heavy and skin streaked with soot.
The battlefield had become a graveyard.
Arrows jutted from broken backs. Limbs lay twisted in the dirt. Some were burned beyond recognition; others looked as though they had simply fallen asleep, peaceful amidst the carnage.
He stood. But part of him hadn't.
His mind felt distant, eyes hollow. A walking shell.
He wandered, not out of purpose but absence of it feet dragging him toward the shattered remains of a once-great gate, its iron hinges bent, its wooden doors thrown wide to a road lined with dead.
He stopped beneath the archway, tilting his head up.
The gate must've once held grandeur now it was nothing but another corpse.
Then came the sound, a sharp crack.
A barrel tumbled from a side street and rolled across the blood-stained cobbles.
He turned, slowly.
There, in the alley's mouth, stood a girl.
She looked no older than he sixteen, perhaps. Her golden hair was matted with blood and soot. Her clothes, once noble, now torn and stained by war. They locked eyes.
Hers were as empty as his.
They said nothing.
He turned back to the road and began to walk, not away from the ruin but deeper into it — toward the unknown.
Behind him, he heard her footsteps. Soft, steady. She followed without a word.
And so the story began.
Two broken souls. One path. A world of ash, blood, and the faint, flickering light of something lost or yet to be found.
The boy walked.
The world was silent now, not in peace, but in the aftermath. A silence that comes only when there's nothing left to scream.
Hours passed beneath the boughs of dark trees. The forest was thick and damp, but he didn't notice the thorns, nor the weight of ash on the wind. He walked like a ghost wearing skin, legs moving out of habit, not choice.
Behind him followed the girl.
She never spoke. Not once. Not even the sound of her breath rose to meet his ears. Her footsteps echoed softly, always two paces behind, as though tied to his shadow.
The boy stopped when he saw a low branch sagging under the weight of small, dark fruits. Without thinking, he reached up, plucked one, and slumped to the ground. He bit into it — bitter, but edible.
The girl stood nearby, motionless.
He looked up. Their eyes met.
Still empty. Still hollow.
He chewed once more, then stood. Slowly, he walked toward her — their first closeness since that war-scarred gate. She didn't move, didn't blink. She was like a doll left standing too long in the sun.
He took her hand small, cold, delicate and placed a fruit into her palm.
Then he walked on.
She stared at it, head tilted as if unsure what it was or why it had been given. Her fingers curled around it eventually, and when the boy was far enough ahead…
She followed.
This became their routine.
For two days, they did not speak. The boy would walk, and the girl would follow. When he ate, he handed her food. When he lay down, she lay nearby — always the same distance between them. As if some invisible law kept them from closing the gap.
It was not companionship. Not yet. It was survival, cold and instinctive.
Until, on the third day, his legs faltered.
The world tilted.
He stumbled, caught a branch, then collapsed into the earth. His vision swam, his heartbeat a roar in his ears.
Then darkness.