Ashes of the Sun
Sir Darius had never heard the battlefield this quiet. Not after a loss. Losses were supposed to sound like wailing and rage and desperate orders. This was something worse. The silence settled over the Radiantian camp like soot, clinging to armor and skin, thickening the air until every breath felt like an apology. He moved among the wounded with his helm tucked under one arm, the other arm supporting a limping knight whose right leg was wrapped in bloodied cloth.
"Easy," Darius murmured. "Sit here." He eased the man down against a shattered shield that someone had stabbed into the sand as a makeshift marker. The lion sigil on its face was half-melted, the metal warped from stray light and shadow.
A healer rushed over, hands already glowing with soft, steady radiance. Nothing like the roaring light Commander Veralie had wielded. This was the quiet kind, the mending kind.
"What's his name?" the healer asked. "Sir Han," Darius replied. "Orb backlash. He caught it with his leg instead of his face."
The healer grimaced but said nothing, focusing on the wound. Darius moved on. All around him, the Radiantian Knights worked in grim formation. Armor dented. Cloaks torn. Shields cracked or missing entirely. They barely spoke, exchanging only the necessary words. "Brace him." "More water." "Prioritize this one."
She had fought under a sun that was supposed to favor her. It felt now as if it had looked away. Darius's gaze kept returning to the center of camp, to the knot of activity where the healers had clustered around a single still form.
Commander Veralie. He wanted to walk straight to her side. Instead, he forced himself through another circuit. Check the outer perimeter. Count the shields. Count who still held their weapons and who had let them slip from their fingers.
A knight's duty was not just to one person, no matter how bright her light. But each step closer to the edge of the battlefield made his jaw tighten. The sand still bore scars from the clash. Great swaths of it had been fused into glass by the collision of light and shadow. Footprints overlapped in frantic patterns, then cut off abruptly where a shockwave had flattened everything. In some places, the ground itself had been hollowed out, scooped away by explosive force.
Darius crouched near one of the glassy patches and rested his free hand on its surface. It was still warm.
He swallowed. He had watched it happen, all of it. He had watched their Commander move like the sun given flesh, and he had watched that thing catch her blade with its hand.
"Sir Darius."
He straightened at the sound of his name. A younger knight, visor up, face pale beneath streaks of dust and blood, stood at attention. "Yes?"
"They have stabilized the Commander," the young man said, voice low. "Captain Renn's light projection is here and is requesting all squad leaders at the central tent."
Darius tightened his grip on his helm. "Understood. See that the perimeter holds. Double the watchers to the east. That carriage may circle back if the Queen wants to gloat."
The younger knight's throat bobbed. "Yes, sir."
Darius strode toward the central tent, boots crunching over broken glass and churned sand. Radiantians stepped aside as he passed, some offering stiff nods, others refusing to meet his eyes at all. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same expression. Shame.
They had obeyed the Commander's order to fall back. They had watched her fall.
Inside the largest field tent, the air was thick with incense and the metallic tang of blood. Radiant banners hung limp along the support poles, their once-vibrant golds dulled by dust.
Commander Veralie lay on a low cot at the center, armor stripped away piece by piece. Her breastplate rested on a nearby stand, split and scorched, the lion sigil dulled to a smudge. Her saber lay sheathed at the foot of the cot, its usual soft radiance extinguished.
Darius forced himself to look at her face. She seemed smaller without the armor. Younger. A small lump swelled at the top of her head where the shadow-bat had struck her. Even now, faint threads of inky darkness pulsed under the skin, like veins running the wrong way.
A healer hovered close, both hands held inches above the wound, a steady glow pressing down as if trying to smother something that hissed and pushed back.
Captain Renn stood at the foot of the cot, arms folded, jaw clenched so tight a vein throbbed at his temple. A few other squad leaders were already there, armor still on, helmets tucked under their arms.
"Darius," Renn said, not taking his eyes off Veralie. "You saw more of the duel than most. You were closest to the line."
"Yes, Captain."
"Report."
Darius's mouth went dry. He set his helm down on a nearby crate and straightened. "She engaged the Shadow of the Queen directly," he began. "Initial exchanges favored her. His armor reacted badly to her light aspect. When she shifted to ranged orbs, his redirections caused… collateral damage." He did not flinch from that word. "Once she saw our injured, she tried to finish it quickly at close range."
Renn's eyes flicked to him at that. "The Queen's shadow? She was strictly there to retrieve Sister Adah. Did Queen Nandi and Big John intervene?"
Realizing that he referred to Adah as the Queen, Darius looked away and then added, "The fiend referred to Sister Adah as the queen of an unknown nation. Sister Adah was seated on a throne of shadow. The shadow fiend spoke for her as her champion. He refused to let Commander Veralie escort Sister Adah back to the kingdom. That's when Commander Veralie challenged him to single combat."
Darius gave the captain a detailed explanation of the battle, then met his gaze. "She fought valiantly, giving it all she had, but it was not enough. He was stronger. Faster, I think, but he hid it at first. He treated the duel like a game. When he grew serious, the gap was… obvious. The final exchange broke her stance, and she lost consciousness."
He did not mention the way the fiend had turned his blade into a bat mid-swing, the insulting little "boop" that had sent their Commander collapsing into the sand. It burned in his memory.
The others shifted, some with anger, some with disbelief.
"We should have ignored her order," one of the younger squad leaders muttered. "We had numbers. If we had rushed him...."
"And died," Renn snapped, not letting the younger squad leader continue. "All of you. Do not mistake courage for wisdom."
The tent fell quiet again.
Darius could feel the weight of their gazes. He had been seconds from disobeying that very order himself.
"We could not even protect our Commander," another knight said bitterly. "What are we, then?"
"Alive," Renn said. "You know very well the gap in power between the captain and the rest of you." He took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh before looking at Commander Veralie. "And look what that monster did to the commander. She saved our lives."
He looked around at each of them in turn, then finally turned fully toward Darius. "That thing called our Order dead," the captain said. "He called our Commander's light borrowed. I refuse to bring those words back to the Citadel without a plan attached. So." He took a breath. "The queen's carriage moves ahead of us with a monster at her heel and Sister Adah at her side."
The name hung unspoken in the air, but they all heard it. Adah.
Darius's jaw tightened.
"What do we have?" Renn asked. "Darius."
Darius drew in a slow breath, forcing his thoughts to line up. "We still have fifty knights who can stand," he said. "Twenty more who can ride but not fight at full strength. Our healers are drained but stable. Our supplies are mostly intact. The fiend did not need them." His voice hardened. "It was as if he wanted to break us."
"And did he?" Renn asked quietly.
Silence pressed in. Outside, someone shouted for more bandages. A horse whinnied, then fell abruptly silent.
Darius looked back at Veralie. Her fingers twitched. Just once. Barely a movement at all.
"No," Darius said.
The others turned to him.
"We are shaken," he admitted. "We are bloody. We are ashamed. But we are not broken. Not while she draws breath."
The healer glanced up at his words, as if afraid they might disturb the fragile balance over the Commander's wound.
Renn studied Darius for a long moment, then nodded once.
"Then here is what the next report to the Citadel will say," the captain said. "The Radiantian vanguard engaged an unidentified darkness user shadowing Sister Adah. We learned his capabilities. We measured the gap. And we will not charge blindly into that abyss again."
He turned to the assembled leaders. "Prepare the wounded for transport. At first light, we fall back to the last oasis outpost. We regroup, we send word, and we do not speak of this as a rout. Do you understand?"
Murmurs of acknowledgment answered him, some uncertain, others firming as they spoke.
Darius picked up his helm. "Captain," he said quietly. "Permission to stay with the commander until we move."
Renn's gaze softened by a fraction. "Granted. But when we move, you move."
"Just like that, sir."
The others filed out, leaving only the healer, Darius, and the soft, strained sound of Veralie's breathing in the tent.
Darius set his helm down again and stepped closer to the cot.
He clenched his fist. "We make it regret leaving her alive," he said softly. He knelt beside the cot, bowing his head until his forehead almost touched the edge of it. "Commander," he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear if any part of her floated close to waking. "You ordered us to fall back. We obeyed. I will carry that shame with me. But hear this, too. When you stand again, we will be ready. We will not face that fiend alone."
Outside, the last light of the sun sank toward the horizon, bleeding gold across the desert still scarred by its failed champion.
In the dim tent, the healer's glow flickered. Veralie's fingers twitched once more.
Darius lifted his head. For a heartbeat, stubborn radiance pulsed from somewhere deeper than flesh. He allowed himself the smallest of smiles. "The light has not lost," he said under his breath. "Not yet."
Then he straightened, hand on his sword hilt, and stood watch as the night closed in.