You don't remember the war. But you will always remember the wave that ended it.
You remember clutching tightly to a stuffed doll as you are awoken in the dead of night in the palace of the southern capital, huddled in darkness beside your still grieving mother as servants burst the door open into your room to rouse you from your dreams just in time to face a nightmare. They tell you both to dress yourself and flee while you still can. All across the gleaming city of Antium, people are holding their loved ones close or in a panic to move farther inland before it's too late. Away from the sea. That is all they tell you over and over again.
Away from the sea. Away from the sea. Like a silent prayer to the ethereal ancients they hope will save them.
"We're safe this far inland, your nanny nok'oya tells you with a reassuring smile, away from the coast, but it wouldn't hurt to take extra precautions." But it won't matter. Behind her warm brown eyes you can see that she is lying to you. You see that she is deathly afraid. Trying and failng to lock away her own terror so as not to worry you. She is a kind old walrus who has seen emperors come and go whom you love more than all the world dearly, having played with her under the dining table many times with more toys than you can count. More toys than you deserve. Acting as your greatest caretaker the past year while your mother has isolated herself, refusing to eat or even come out of her room. Yet despite the old woman's promises to the both of you that all will be well and decades of living on this earth, she couldn't be more wrong. She will not live beyond this day. So few will.
Far to the north, your father is dying.
You do not know this.
While your mother drags you through the palace halls, he bleeds into the snow beneath a broken banner with a spear through his neck and watches the sun rise for the last time.
Neither of you will see tomorrow.
Your mother dresses you both in nightclothes, not wasting precious time you don't have on extravagance. She packs quickly, taking jewels and wealth, and anything she can to help start a new life. She may not have much to live for anymore. But she will live to ensure you do. Her only daughter. You're tired and groggy and still not understanding of everything around you that is happening. All this chaos. You ask question after question as you rub your weary eyes. Why are we awake? Why is everyone scared? But she can't waste time on an answer. Bored, you wind your favorite music box of two birds and watch as it plays its soft simple melody, arms folded atop a nightstand while the adults work. The last sliver of happiness as the world burns around you. The gentle song is soon drowned out by air raid sirens.
Your mother drags you by the arm in a final desperate dash for life across a grand hall to reach the shuttle in time or at least the bunker with more soldiers than you've ever seen before accompanying you both. As you sprint, still half dazed from being roused, you can see the familiar towering stained glass windows of past emperors staring down at you both. Towering, larger-than-life men who resemble your father. Your winged ancestors glare down in disapproval from beyond the grave at their dynasty coming to an end due to the incompetence of their descendants.
The stained-glass emperors tower above you.
Their wings brush the ceiling.
Their eyes seem to follow you as your mother drags you beneath them
Everything they worked so hard to maintain will come crashing down today. It is inevitable. Inescapable. There is no avoiding what is coming. The reckoning that is due. No matter how far you run or fly, safety will elude you by just a feather's breadth. So close, and yet not nearly close enough. If you even had a chance at salvation to begin with at all.
Suddenly, you are all knocked to your feet as a sound like thunder rattles the world beneath you and sends cracks to seep throughout the white marble walls. It rattles your very bones. You hear the air raid sirens begin to blare even louder in the distance. You stare, confused and frightened, beyond the cold glass monarchs as they shake from the impact out across the vast icy city landscape, which pales in comparison to what is coming. Far away, a lone speck is dropped from a passing plane and is swallowed into the sea. Hardly anybody sees it.
The air raids go silent. There is no point any longer.
The crater is formed, revealing the ocean floor in a sinkhole that can be seen from space. In an instant it sends shockwaves and moves faster than the speed of sound in every direction without mercy or consideration, pushing seawater up and outward as far as it will reach until it casts everything in its shadowed veil. It covers miles in mere seconds. There is no outrunning it now. It is a force of nature perfected and everyone and everything is just an obstacle in its path. Warships patrolling the harbor are tossed like toy boats. Skyscrapers are blown apart and obliterated into dust. Tectonic plates break away to be carried by a current like they are pitiful fragments and tossed about like meteors to crash back down. Nothing like it has ever been seen before on this planet. Your mother and the soldiers rush to shield you with their bodies and wings just as the hammer is finally brought down upon you all as punishment for your hubris. The brief moment before you are cast in this final darkness, you just stare in confused awe at why this is happening. Why it had to happen. You watch frozen in place as the wall of water swallows your entire world and blankets it in darkness, before finally hitting its intended target. You feel. Scarred.
Everything that has been built must come crashing down. Everything must go with it. And that includes you.
It all happens so fast, yet to you it seems eternity as all time freezes and your world crumbles around you. The wave is etched into your memory forever, and there it will remain forever still. You and your mother were both sent here for your own protection, but even here is not safe. She has realized this only too late when nothing can be done. Nowhere is safe in war.
You hear your mother scream your name for what she thinks is the last time as the water rushes in through the windows to engulf and food the palace halls you've played through a thousand times like a torrential dispassionate beast, filling every room, every bedchamber, every crevice it can reach as your muisc is carried out to sea still playing it's last song. What has taken decades to meticulously build is washed away like it was never there to begin with. One of the greatest cities in the world will fall today. It is destined. Thousands die for the crime of wanting something more than what they were given. The ceiling collapses in on itself as your maid, with her last breath, is crushed to death by a pillar beside you after pushing you out of the way, telling you to look away from the window. In one final cruel act, the sheer impact sends the broken stained glass shards of your family legacy to hurl through the air towards you like a thousand reflective knives. You can see your own fear staring back at you.
It is the last thing you ever see before your eyes are lost to you forever.