A thin sun hung low above Valemire, dulled by a cloak of gray clouds that never seemed to break. Its light did little to warm the crumbling stone terraces of the mountain capital. Wind swept across the battlements, sharp with cold and carrying the faint scent of old ash, echoes of a firestorm long since passed.
The city no longer bustled. Its streets, once lined with hawkers and silver-robed scholars, lay quiet beneath a layer of dust. No song floated from the balconies. No bells rang for celebration. Time moved, but life seemed to pause, holding its breath between what was and what would never be again.
Daima Ryuji stood alone on the southern watch-tier.
The wind tugged at the hem of his cloak, worn thin from travel. He gripped the stone railing with both hands, the rough surface scraping his gloves. Below, the valley of Wyrmshade spread out in folds of frost-bitten earth and rusted steel. The skeletal remains of siege towers leaned like broken teeth toward the sky. Tents had once filled the plain, an army raised in the name of loyalty. Now, only empty ground remained.
His eyes followed the line of mountains in the distance, jagged and ancient, their peaks shrouded in mist. Somewhere beyond them lay the northern breach, an open wound in the world. Few spoke of it now. Fewer still remembered why it mattered.
Ryuji remembered.
Bootsteps echoed faintly behind him. He knew them before the man spoke.
"You come here more often than the priests do", said General Kaelris, voice low.
Ryuji did not turn. "The priests look up. I look back."
Kaelris joined him at the edge. The old soldier's cloak was patched, his left pauldron dull where once it bore the sigil of the Twin Hawk Court. He stood with hands behind his back, stiff from years of service and injury.
"The High Council speaks again of peace", he said. "Of ending what remains."
"They mean surrender", Ryuji replied.
Kaelris gave a small nod. "They speak carefully. The people are tired. The city is emptying by the day. Most just want to live quietly."
"And forget what they allowed", Ryuji said, more to himself than the general.
A pause. Then Kaelris asked, "Will you stand with them, if they vote it through?"
Ryuji's fingers tightened on the railing. "Would it matter?"
"It would mean something. Even now."
For a long time, there was only the wind, whispering over the high walls.
"I was thirteen when I swore my first oath beneath the Citadel's altar", Ryuji said. "They placed a blade in my hands and told me truth was something worth bleeding for. Not surviving, believing."
"And what do you believe now?"
"That they used our belief to hide what they feared".
Kaelris didn't argue. His silence said more than words might have.
Below them, the training yard lay abandoned. Swords still hung on their racks, untouched. The once-polished statues of the Nine Shields stood in shadow. Their faces, carved with pride and promise, now looked hollow.
Ryuji remembered standing there, young, defiant, full of hope. He remembered the scrolls of history, the lectures on valor, the books that whispered of glory.
None of them mentioned how the world ended, not with fire, but with forgetting.
A black shape passed overhead, a raven, its wings wide against the dim sky. It circled once and vanished beyond the western roofs.
"They say the breach in the north is growing again", Kaelris said quietly. "Unstable. Wild."
"It was never closed", Ryuji replied.
"They said it was sealed by the Dominion Pact."
"They lied".
Kaelris studied him for a moment. "You've been reading the old records".
"I've been remembering them. There's a difference."
A long silence followed.
Then Kaelris said, "If you go looking for ghosts, Ryuji, be ready to become one."
Ryuji's voice was soft. "Maybe I already am."
The bell tower rang once, slow, deep, tired. The sound rolled through the stone streets like a heartbeat no one wanted to hear.
Night would come soon. And with it, dreams he no longer trusted.