The air burned with iron and smoke.

  Aros stood knee-deep in mud, his boots sinking into the bloodied earth that had once been the garden of the old Sanctum. The soil here had always been soft, nourished by years of quiet rain and the careful hands of acolytes who tended to the sacred plants. Now it had been churned into a pit of red water and trampled roots. The banners of the Valval Priesthood hung in tatters, their gold embroidery blackened by fire, the threads hissing faintly in the wind as if the flames had not fully released them.

  Screams echoed through the corridors, bouncing off the stone in jagged waves. They weren’t words anymore, not warnings, not prayers. Just raw noise, the kind that scraped at the nerves. Aros moved forward through the chaos, every step heavier than the last. The sky above was red and shivering, clouds trembling like thin fabric stretched over a wound. The Light pulsed faintly in every shattered window, like an echo that refused to die, flickering with the last breaths of those who had believed in it.

  Ten years ago, and yet he could still smell the same fear.

  The sword in his hand was heavy. Too heavy. It felt like holding the spine of a world in collapse. Each swing blurred into the next, arcs of light and sound colliding. Steel met bone. Breath met breath. Hot air clung to his face, stinging his eyes. He didn’t count how many fell; the numbers dissolved into a dull rhythm. He only felt the weight increase, his muscles screaming, his fingers numb around the hilt. Men cried for mothers, for saints, for mercy. None came.

  Then the noise fell away, abruptly, as if the world had closed its mouth.

  He reached the Sanctum’s core, the altar room where the marble floor had cracked open and swallowed what once was holy. The scent of incense still clung faintly to the air, mixing with ash. The pillars were fractured, the ceiling torn open to a sky that felt too close. The golden basin lay overturned, its surface dented like the skull of a fallen giant.

  There, standing in the middle of that ruin, was Jacobo.

  The High Priest looked smaller than Aros remembered. No guards flanking him, no crown of light circling his head, no choirs chanting his name into divinity. Just a man. A trembling man, arms limp at his sides. The man the war had been built to destroy.

  Aros raised his sword.

  Jacobo stepped back, hand outstretched, muttering prayers that clung to the air without traveling, as if the world itself refused to carry them forward.

  But Aros didn’t move.

  The wind stopped. The fire went silent. Even the collapsing stones seemed to hold their breath.

  And the world… vanished.

  He was standing in nothing, a void the color of ash stretching forever in all directions. No horizon, no ground beyond what held his feet, no sound except the faint breathing of something unseen. Then the voices came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Soft and cruel, curling around him like smoke.

  “Why didn’t you kill him, Aros?”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “What mercy could he deserve?”

  He turned in circles, trying to find faces, figures, anything. But there were none. Only whispers and the faint flicker of light across a surface that looked like black water, moving without wind.

  “Why did you let the war live?”

  “Why did you let yourself live?”

  Aros opened his mouth, but his throat felt scraped raw. The words came like sand, dry and reluctant.

  “I… couldn’t. I just... couldn’t.”

  And then she appeared.

  His mother.

  Standing barefoot on the void, wearing the same grey shawl she had worn by the hearth. Her hands were still scarred from years of labor, the same hands that had held him steady when the world was gentler. Her eyes were wet, and they held that exhausted kindness he had once thought endless.

  She smiled faintly.

  “Why didn’t you kill him, Aros?”

  He took a step forward, the movement sluggish in the dead air. “Mother… I tried. I swear I…”

  But before he could finish, a knife burst through her chest.

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  The body jerked. The shawl darkened. And the man who had murdered her stepped out of the dark, his face unchanged by time: bald head gleaming, thick mustache shadowing his lip, eyes dull and empty as stones. The memory of cruelty given form.

  Aros screamed and ran, sword drawn, feet slapping against the unreal surface.

  But the steel never met flesh.

  Both figures dissolved into smoke, curling away like burning parchment.

  He fell to his knees, breath shallow, chest heaving, hands shaking so violently the sword clinked against the void.

  From the shadows, Jacobo emerged again, alive, untouched, impossibly calm.

  “Why didn’t you kill me, Aros?” he asked softly.

  Aros raised his head. His voice cracked like old wood. “Because… Because I didn’t want it to end.”

  Jacobo tilted his head. “The war?”

  Aros clenched his fists. They dug into the void as if trying to anchor him. “All of it. The fighting. The screams. The fire. Every man I killed… I saw his face. The one who killed her. Every time I cut someone down, I thought maybe, maybe it would be him next. That if I kept fighting long enough, I’d find him again.”

  Jacobo’s expression didn’t change. The void shimmered behind him, a thin halo forming around his silhouette as if the nothingness itself bent toward him.

  Aros kept speaking, the words spilling like confession, too long buried.

  “If I’d killed you, it would’ve meant peace. It would’ve meant I’d have to stop. And if I stopped… I’d have to think about them.”

  His voice faltered.

  “My wife. My daughter. What I did to them. What I lost because of it.”

  The silence afterward was endless, a silence that weighed on his ribs.

  “So you wanted the war to go on,” Jacobo said.

  Aros looked down. The void blurred beneath him. “I wanted a reason to stay broken.”

  Jacobo stepped closer, his face calm now, almost tender, almost cruel in its gentleness. “Then we’re the same, you and I.”

  Aros looked up sharply. “We’re nothing alike.”

  Jacobo smiled faintly. “You think killing me would’ve changed what you are? You think peace forgives the things we do to feel alive?”

  Aros tried to move, but the void clung to his boots like tar, pulling him down.

  The light behind Jacobo brightened. Not holy, not pure. A burning white that swallowed color and shadow alike. It grew until it devoured everything, and the voices began again:

  “You could have ended it.”

  “You chose to stay.”

  “You wanted the blood.”

  He screamed, and the sound fractured the space. The void trembled. The sword in his hand melted away, liquefying into streams of light. The altar shattered again. The fire came back.

  He was on the ground now. Mud beneath his hands. Ash on his skin. Sweat cooling on his back. Blood dripping down his side where the wound from the real world had torn open again.

  Jacobo’s voice came one last time, close enough to feel the breath.

  “You didn’t fail to kill me, Aros. You chose not to.”

  And the smile that followed was not human. Not mockery. Not forgiveness. But recognition.

  Then the light vanished.

  Aros gasped awake.

  The ceiling above him was rough wood, the beams uneven and stained by age. His skin glistened with cold sweat, pooling along his collarbone. Every breath stabbed his side where the scar burned anew, throbbing with a pulse of its own. He reached instinctively for his sword, but his hand met only the coarse blanket of the cot and the faint flicker of lantern light on canvas walls.

  His fingers trembled. His mouth was dry as stone. He whispered her name, his mother’s, and then Gemma’s.

  No one answered.

  He pressed a hand against his abdomen. The pain was sharp and grounding, pulling him fully back into the world. He could still taste blood, metallic and sour. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, echoing the rhythm of distant footsteps that weren’t really there.

  “Still here,” he muttered to himself. “Still here.”

  The room was quiet except for the whisper of rain outside. But somewhere in the dark corners of his mind, the voices lingered like stains.

  “You wanted the war to go on.”

  The tent flap shifted. A gust of night air slipped in, carrying the smell of wet earth and iron.

  Aros turned his head weakly toward the sound.

  A man entered: a soldier, older than most but younger than Aros by a few years. His armor was worn from travel, his cloak damp, his face lined not by fear but by exhaustion, as if he had spent too many nights awake with nothing but regret to keep him company.

  When he saw Aros awake, he smiled, almost relieved.

  “You’re awake,” he said. “Didn’t think I’d see that again.”

  Aros frowned, his voice a rough whisper. “Do I… know you?”

  The man’s smile faltered. His shoulders lowered, his breath caught.

  “It’s Seren Dal,” he said quietly. “We fought together at the fall of Valeo. You saved my life that evening. We talked afterward, by the fire. You told me that if the Light ever turned its back on us, we’d make our own.”

  Aros blinked slowly, confusion tightening his features. “I’m sorry. I… don’t remember.”

  Seren Dal nodded, though the disappointment in his eyes was heavier than anger.

  “I figured. You’ve been through hell since then.”

  He glanced down at the bandages across Aros’s side.

  “I just came to let you know that someone was still fighting to save Gemma. Some of us owe you more than we can say.”

  Aros’s hand trembled over the edge of the cot. He clenched his fingers until the shaking steadied, if only slightly. “We’ll save her,” he said. His voice had iron beneath the weakness. “We’ll bring her back. I’ll bring her back.”

  Seren Dal watched him a moment, uncertain if hope was foolish. “You can barely stand, Commander.”

  Aros exhaled slowly, then managed a faint smile. “Doesn’t matter. I finally understand something.”

  Seren Dal tilted his head. “And what’s that?”

  Aros looked down at his scar, then up again. His eyes, once clouded by exhaustion, were burning with a sharp, grim clarity.

  “That fighting’s all I’ve ever been good at. It’s all I have left. So that’s what I’ll do.”

  The wind outside rose, flapping the tent’s edge. The lantern flame shook, casting shadows like trembling hands, but it didn’t die.

  Seren Dal stood a moment longer, then nodded and placed a hand on Aros’s shoulder. “Then may the Light keep you, Commander.”

  Aros met his gaze, and for a brief moment, the void from his dream flickered behind his eyes again.

  But this time, it didn’t frighten him.

  It welcomed him.