The first thing Al remembered about war was how quiet it looked from the ridge.
From up here, Greyfall was small: a huddle of slate roofs and smoke trails pressed against the slow brown river, palisade like splinters around it. The late-afternoon light caught the cliff on the far side, turning it almost silver, but the ground below their boots was a flat, dead gray—old ash baked into the soil.
"Come on, Al! You're thinking again."
Arlen's wooden sword cracked against his own, jarring his arms. Al stumbled back, foot sliding in loose cinder. His older brother grinned, teeth bright against sweat-dark skin, eyes alight.
"You keep blinking like that and you'll lose your nose, not just your balance."
"I was watching your feet," Al muttered. "You always shift weight onto your right before you swing. If I step—"
Thwack.
The sword tapped his forehead. "If you step, you fall," Arlen said. "Like you just did."
Al scowled, rubbing the spot. "You're heavier. It's not fair."
"That's what you say every time someone's better than you." Arlen dropped into a looser stance, wooden blade balanced over his shoulder, casual. "Again."
They stood at the edge of the Memorial Ridge, where ancient stone markers jutted from the ash like broken teeth. Names from three languages had been carved into them and half erased by wind: Aurelion script, curling Xianwu characters, old Sula runes. No one in Greyfall could read them all anymore. Father Edran said that was fitting. The dead were beyond flags.
Al adjusted his grip and lunged. Arlen wasn't there. He pivoted, Al's blade passing through air, then—
Crack—wood bit his knuckles. Pain flared; the practice sword almost flew from his hand.
"Keep your wrist straight," Arlen said. "You're not scribing today."
"Selene says posture matters in both," Al snapped, flexing his fingers. "If you break them, I can't copy your glory ballads when you're dead."
Arlen laughed. "Who needs ballads? I'll come back and tell everyone myself."
"Assuming you don't trip over your own pride."
A voice drifted up from below, dry and amused. "If he trips, boy, it'll be over someone's corpse. Again! Only this time, try not to lead with your face."
Al glanced down. Daran "One-Eye" leaned against a memorial stone, one hand resting on a walking stick, the other shading his good eye. His scarred socket was covered with a leather patch, his gray-streaked hair tied in a short tail.
"You said you weren't watching!" Arlen called.
"I lied," Daran said. "Good practice. People lie a lot."
Arlen rolled his eyes and settled into stance again. "Ready?"
Al raised his sword. He knew the sequence by heart—Bren's basic forms, twelve steps, ten parries, three counterstrikes—but on Arlen they flowed, alive. On him they felt like borrowed clothes.
They exchanged a flurry of blows. Arlen pressed, Al backpedaled. This time, Al forced himself to stop thinking about Arlen's speed and watch the ground: loose ash, scattered stone, the way his own heels skidded while Arlen glided.
He needs friction more than I do.
So he shifted, deliberately stepping on a patch of harder soil, and when Arlen lunged he angled his sword not to block but to deflect, letting his brother's weight carry through.
Arlen stumbled one half-step. Just enough.
Al stepped in, put his shoulder behind his wooden blade, and drove—
Arlen twisted, barely. The thrust glanced off his ribs instead of driving into his gut. Both of them froze.
Daran gave a single, sharp clap. "Better."
Arlen blinked, then laughed and rapped his knuckles on Al's head. "See? When you stop staring at clouds and think about footing, you're not hopeless."
Al couldn't help it; he smiled. "That's you admitting I did something right."
"That's me saying if you keep practicing, you might not die immediately."
A gust of wind lifted ash from the ridge. It swirled around their boots, the fine gray dust that gave Greyfall its name. Once, long before either of them was born, this ridge had been another village's outer field. Then came one of Sula's endless wars. The fields burned. The name changed. It never really changed back.
Al's smile faded as he watched the ash dance.
"Do you think they're right?" he asked.
"About what?" Arlen wiped sweat on his sleeve.
"That it'll come here again. War." Al nodded at the stones. "Edran says the ash only falls like this when the world remembers."
Arlen shrugged. "War's always somewhere. Doesn't mean it has to find us today." He prodded Al's shoulder with his sword. "Today, we train so when it does we don't scream and run like Toren."
"Toren didn't scream," Al protested automatically.
"He made a noise." Arlen grinned. "Like a squeezed piglet."
Al snorted, then looked down at Greyfall. Smoke curled lazy from chimneys. The river glinted. From here, it looked safe. Almost peaceful.
Daran's voice, suddenly flat, cut through their banter. "Al. Arlen. Down."
They dropped automatically. Years of Bren's barking had forged that reflex into everyone. Al tasted ash as he hit the ground. Arlen rolled to one knee, scanning.
"What is it?" Al whispered.
Daran didn't answer. He was staring down at Greyfall, his one eye narrowed, his fingers tight on his walking stick.
Al followed his gaze.
At first he saw nothing different. Then—a darker smear against the road to the west. Dust rising. A line of shapes moving faster than wagons, but too irregular for a drilled column.
Riders. On mixed mounts—some horses, some smaller, leaner shapes. A glint of steel.
The village bell began to ring.
"Bandits?" Arlen breathed.
Daran's jaw tightened. "If we're lucky."
They heard other noises now: the distant bark of orders from the palisade, the clatter of gates, the sharper clang of Corin's voice as he took command.
Their father.
"Stay here," Daran said.
Arlen was already moving. "I'm not hiding while—"
"Arlen." Daran's tone hardened; he straightened, and for a heartbeat he looked like the man he had been, not the half-retired veteran who drank at the Grey Ember. "You're barely more than a boy. Your father drilled you to stay put until called. You—" he jabbed a finger at Al "—drag him back by the belt if he runs."
Al's throat was dry. "Who are they?"
Daran looked to the road again, then to the thin line of defenders forming at the gate. "People who think Greyfall is easy meat." He spat into the ash. "We'll show them they're wrong. Stay down. Watch. Learn."
Then he was gone, moving downhill with surprising speed.
The wind shifted again. Ash rose like gray snow around the boys. And for the first time, Al watched war come not from stories or Daran's jokes, but with his own wide eyes.