The village gate stood open. He had once cheered before a gate like it.
Ash. Silence. The well rope still swinging gently, as if the world hadn't noticed it should stop. In the square, the dead lay where they had fallen — the Order had left them unburied, as a lesson. There was no one left to learn it.
He found her at the forest's edge.
She had run for the old oak. She had almost made it. She had tried to shield something small with her own body, and it had not been enough, and it was never going to be enough, and she had known that, and she had done it anyway — and that was the thing Shizui would carry for the rest of his life: she had known.
He did not scream. He did not fall. He knelt in the wildflowers and did not make a sound, and the silence was worse than any scream, because it was the sound of the last of something leaving the world.
The old oak still stood, their initials carved into its bark, childish and crooked. Inside the hollow, wrapped in oilcloth, was a letter. The ink was long dry. She had hidden it there weeks before the end, when the first soldiers came asking questions.
She had known there would be no time to run.
Shizui —
If you are reading this, then I was right to hide it, and wrong to hope.
Men came weeks ago, asking about the hero of the Red Moon. I told them nothing. I am not brave like you. But I am brave like me.
They say the army is corrupted. They say no trace will remain. So I write fast, and badly, and you will forgive me, because you always forgave me everything.
Lilya has your eyes. May the world be kinder to hers than it was to ours.
I named her for the flowers where you first told me you loved me. Wherever you end up — plant some. Then it will always be spring somewhere, and we will be there.
Don't hate the world. It gave me you.
Come back to me.
— Your Diana
He dug until his hands blistered. Then he dug until they stopped hurting.
He dug two graves at the edge of the wildflowers — one under the old oak, one beside it, small as a cradle. Then he dug a third, larger, and left it empty.
Three graves. Two for his family. The third for the boy he used to be — the one who believed kingdoms kept their heroes.
That night, his hair went white at the temples, and in the dark behind his eyes, something old and patient asked him, softly, whether he was ready now.
Yes, Shizui answered.