The night did not fall gently. It pressed down like a second battlefield, suffocating in its silence, suffocating in its memory. I sat at the edge of the fire, and though the flames cracked and hissed, licking upward as though defying the dark, they could not banish the shadows that clung to me. I had thought the duel had ended when my blade pierced the commander's heart. I had been wrong. The duel had only shifted—no longer fought with steel, but fought within me.
The camp around me breathed in shallow, uneven rhythms. Men slept restlessly, their bodies wrapped in cloaks, their dreams no doubt filled with the same screams and smoke that haunted mine. Some whispered in the dark, trading words the way dying embers trade sparks, fragile and fleeting. Others kept their distance from me, even as they remained near. I felt it, the invisible circle around where I sat. They feared breaking it, feared stepping too close, as though my silence might be contagious.
