I woke to pain.

  It throbbed behind my eyes, deep and relentless, each pulse dragging me back into myself. My mouth was dry. My tongue tasted of iron and dirt. When I tried to move, the world tilted and threatened to spill me back into the dark.

  I lay still until the spinning eased.

  Then I pushed myself up.

  The ditch was shallow, its grass trampled flat. My head screamed as I climbed out, one hand braced against the earth.

  The other was wrapped tight around the box.

  I hadn’t let go of it.

  My fingers ached from gripping the iron bands, knuckles stiff and blood-crusted. I didn’t remember falling with it. I didn’t remember holding it through the fire.

  Only that it was there.

  Old Tumbledown lay before me.

  What remained of it.

  The town had been burned hollow. Roofs had collapsed inward. Walls stood blackened and split, their windows nothing but empty eyes staring back at the sky. Thin strands of smoke still rose from places that hadn’t finished dying, curling lazily as if even the fire had grown tired.

  The smell came next.

  Charred wood. Rotting flesh. Ash soaked deep into stone.

  Crows prowled the streets in loose packs, hopping from body to body. They tore patiently at what the flames had spared. When I moved, they only lifted enough to watch me, heads cocked, waiting.

  I walked.

  The box stayed pressed against my chest like a second heart.

  I passed homes I recognized only by the shape of their foundations. A well choked with debris. A cart burned where it had stood. No voices. No movement. Nothing left to save.

  The Verity block came into view.

  Or what was left of it.

  The street was scarred with black stains and broken stone. The houses there had not been spared. They had been made into warnings.

  I slowed.

  Then I saw her.

  My mother lay where she had fallen, still on her knees, her body slumped forward, face pressed to the stones. Her hands were folded beneath her, frozen mid-prayer. The white of her dress was dark with blood and ash.

  My breath hitched.

  James—

  My brother—

  What remained of him was scattered across the street, small and broken, splashed against the stones like something dropped without care. I could not tell where one piece ended and another began.

  The box slipped from my hands.

  It struck the ground with a dull, hollow sound.

  I dropped with it.

  A sound tore out of me then — raw and unshaped, something between a sob and a scream. My knees hit the stone hard enough to bruise, but I barely felt it.

  Uncle Callus lay nearby, his head caved in, his face ruined beyond recognition. His knife was gone. Or taken as proof.

  And my father—

  I didn’t see him at first.

  Then I did.

  His body lay apart from the rest, armor torn, sword missing. His head had been placed several paces away, turned slightly to the side, as if made to look back at what he had failed to protect.

  I collapsed fully then, palms scraping against stone, chest heaving.

  “Father,” I cried, the word ripping free of me. “Why did you come to judge us so?”

  My voice broke.

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  The sound echoed weakly off the ruined walls and vanished into the open sky.

  The box lay beside me, untouched.

  The crows watched.

  And the world did not answer.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there.

  The tears came until there were none left to give. Until my chest ached and my throat felt scraped raw, and even the sound of my own breathing began to irritate me.

  Then something emptied.

  The pain didn’t leave.

  It just… hollowed out.

  I pushed myself up from the stones and turned back to my father.

  I did not look at his head.

  I could not.

  I knelt beside what remained of him and set my hands beneath his shoulders. His body was heavier than I expected — dead weight in the truest sense. I dragged him a short distance, enough to give him some dignity, enough to place him flat.

  My hands shook, but they did not stop.

  The chest plate was still fastened over his tunic. Scorched. Dented. Familiar. I had watched him polish it on quiet evenings, rubbing at the same scratches again and again as if they might one day disappear.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I undid the straps.

  Each buckle came loose with a dull sound that seemed far too loud in the ruined street.

  I lifted the plate free.

  It was warm from the sun. From the fire. From him.

  For a moment, I held it against my chest without fastening it, feeling the weight press down on my ribs. It was too big. It hung wrong. It did not belong to me.

  That didn’t matter.

  I slid it over my shoulders and pulled the straps tight, fumbling until my fingers found their memory. The leather bit into my skin. The metal settled heavy against my heart.

  I stood there then — barefoot, blood-stained, wearing my father’s armor in the ashes of everything he had died for.

  I did not feel stronger.

  I did not feel braver.

  I felt empty.

  And for the first time, I understood that I would not be a boy again.

  I went back into the house.

  What was left of it.

  The roof had caved inward, beams collapsed across one another like broken ribs. Ash coated everything in a fine gray layer that puffed and shifted beneath my steps. The air inside was stale and bitter, thick with smoke that no longer rose.

  I covered my mouth and moved slowly.

  The hearth had split open, stones cracked from the heat. Pots lay warped and blackened, their contents long burned away. The table where I had eaten potato-skin soup was overturned, one leg snapped clean through.

  I stepped around it and froze.

  The satchel hung from a peg near the back wall.

  Singed. Smoke-stained.

  But whole.

  My breath caught. I reached for it with shaking hands, half-expecting it to crumble at my touch. The leather was warm, but solid. I pulled it free and opened it.

  Inside, nestled between scraps of cloth and dried twine, was Mara’s bag.

  Unburned.

  The same rough-spun cloth. The same simple cord, tied just as she had left it. I lifted it carefully, as if it might vanish if I moved too quickly.

  Don’t open it, she had said.

  I didn’t.

  I tucked it deep into the satchel and slung it over my shoulder. The weight was small, but it anchored me more than the armor ever could.

  Outside, the street was still.

  The box lay where I had dropped it.

  I hesitated only a moment before bending down and lifting it again. The iron bands were cool now, the wood darkened with soot. It settled against my chest as if it had been waiting.

  I turned away from the Verity block.

  The Feld homestead lay beyond the fields, past the tree line where the land dipped and rose again. If anyone had survived… if anyone could have—

  Mara.

  The thought steadied my steps.

  I walked out of Old Tumbledown without looking back, carrying what little the fire had failed to take.

  Toward the fields.

  Toward the silence.

  Toward whatever still lived.

  The Feld homestead stood in ruins.

  The longhouse had collapsed inward, its roof burned through, its beams reduced to blackened ribs jutting at the sky. The barns were worse — doors torn open, walls scorched and sagging, the smell of burned grain thick enough to sting my eyes.

  The fields beyond were unrecognizable.

  What had once been gold lay flattened and black, the earth scarred where fire had run unchecked. Stalks crumbled at a touch, turning to ash between my fingers. The wind moved through them anyway, whispering through what was left, as if the land itself hadn’t realized it was dead.

  I stepped carefully into the yard.

  Bodies lay scattered where people had tried to run.

  I recognized them.

  A farmhand who used to lift me onto the fence when I was too small to climb. A maid who always smelled of bread and smoke, who slipped extra portions into bowls when no one was looking. They lay where they had fallen, burned and broken, faces frozen in surprise or fear.

  I did not stop.

  I crossed the yard and entered what remained of the homestead, ducking beneath a beam half-collapsed across the doorway. The air inside was thick with soot. My boots crunched over shattered pottery, charred wood, bone.

  I searched everywhere at once.

  Under collapsed timbers. Beneath the blackened table where meals had once been shared. Past the hearth, split open like a wound.

  Then I saw it.

  A body.

  Charred nearly beyond recognition, curled in on itself near the back wall. Small. Too small.

  Beside it lay a satchel.

  Brown leather, scorched at the edges. One strap burned through, the other still looped as if it had slipped from a shoulder at the last moment.

  Mara’s.

  The one she always wore. The one she carried to the lake. The one she laughed about being too heavy for stones.

  My knees gave out.

  I collapsed onto the floor, the sound knocked from my lungs as if the ground itself had struck me. My hands clawed at the ash-streaked earth, shaking so badly I couldn’t close my fingers.

  “No,” I whispered.

  The word felt thin. Insufficient.

  I crawled closer, stopping just short of touching the body. I could not make myself cross that last distance. Whatever the fire had taken, it had taken completely.

  In that moment, there was no world left in which Mara still lived.

  And I believed it with everything I had left.

  Something raw and venomous snapped within me, my blood started to boil, my tears clouded my vision.

  I hate them.

  I hate what they took from me.

  I hate myself for standing there, rooted. Useless while my father fought and I did nothing. I hate myself for not moving, for not screaming, for not saving anyone. I was a coward. A disgrace. I let the world end while I watched it burn.

  Mara’s body lay in front of me.

  Charred. Still.

  Too small in the ruin around her.

  My knees buckled, and I didn’t care where I fell. The ground was cold beneath my hands, but I barely felt it. My world was gone. My home. My family. Her.

  The Church took them.

  They took everything.

  And all I feel now is the hate coiling in my stomach—hot, sickening, alive. It’s the only thing that hasn’t been burned out of me.

  Where are You?

  Where are you Father?

  Has my judgment already been made?

  Did You see this and turn away?

  The thought hits me like a blade:

  He must hate me.

  I did something wrong.

  I know I did.

  Maybe it was jealousy. The bitterness I felt over the First Calling. Maybe I questioned what I shouldn’t have. Maybe I wanted something You didn’t mean for me to have.

  This is punishment.

  It has to be.

  He hates me.

  He hates me.

  He hates me.

  The words pound in my skull until they’re louder than the fire, louder than the screams still echoing in my ears.

  I press my forehead to the ash-stained ground beside her and feel nothing—no comfort, no warmth, no answer.

  Just the certainty that whatever love once existed has been taken from me too.

  And in the silence that follows, something inside me hardens.

  I've lost everything.