They left Brindlehollow at sunrise, boots wet from dew, backs stiff from barn straw. The village didn't wave goodbye. No one did. But Kael didn't blame them. People in places like that learned early that farewells were just invitations for grief.
Still, the silence stayed with him long after the rooftops vanished behind the hills.
By midday, the road sloped into a barren ridge scorched earth, splintered stone, nothing alive for miles. It used to be a border town. The kind with loud markets, bad ale, and kids who raced barefoot through alleyways.
Now it was dust and broken spires.
Kael stopped at the edge. "I fought here," he said. "Years ago. We held the line."
Liora slowed beside him. Her face softened. "What's left of it?"
Kael exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. "Me, I guess."
They stepped forward. Ash crunched beneath their boots. Everything smelled faintly of iron and forgotten prayers. There were bones, too half-buried, unnamed, uncared for. Some still wore bits of armor. Most didn't.
Kael knelt near a rusted blade sticking out of the ground, fingers brushing the hilt like it might remember something.
"Do you think they hated us?" he asked suddenly. "The ones we fought?"
Liora crouched beside him. "Some, maybe. Others were just following orders. Same as we were."
He nodded. "That's the worst part, isn't it? The idea that maybe none of us wanted this. That we all just… got pulled in."
She looked at him, then past him, to the ruins that stretched across the field like a grave no one bothered to mark. "It doesn't matter what they wanted. What matters is what we do now."
Kael stood slowly, wiping his hand on his cloak. "Right."
He walked into the center of what used to be the town square. There, half-hidden under rubble, was a burned post still bearing the