The evening air tasted like copper and old memories as Avian made his way to the informal training grounds. Every step brought echoes — not of this peaceful courtyard, but of mud-slick battlefields where the ground squelched with things better left unidentified.
Blood always tastes the same, he thought, tongue finding the spot where Marcus had split his lip. Doesn't matter if it's yours or theirs or some demon's. Copper and salt and the promise that someone's not walking away.
The memory hit without warning, as they always did.
Rain hammered down like the gods themselves were trying to wash away the sin of what was happening below. It turned the battlefield into a hellscape of mud and gore, where you couldn't tell where the earth ended and the bodies began. Dex's boots squelched through something that might have been soil or might have been what was left of Private Corren — hard to say after a demon had turned him inside out.
The air reeked of shit and sulfur and that particular stench of opened bowels mixed with demon ichor. It coated the inside of your nose, your throat, made every breath taste like death. Visibility was maybe ten feet through the downpour, but that was enough to see the carnage. More than enough.
"Brick!" Dex's voice cracked as he screamed over the storm. "Where the hell are you, you massive bastard?"
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the battlefield for one horrific instant. Bodies everywhere — human and demon tangled together in their final moments. Some still moving, crawling through the muck, trying to hold in organs that wanted out. The smart ones stayed quiet. The screaming ones drew the attention of things that fed on suffering.
A laugh, rough as gravel and twice as welcome. "Still breathing, you worry-wart! Takes more than a few demons to put Big Brick down!"
The relief that flooded through Dex was almost painful. Brick emerged from the melee like a titan from legend, his massive frame making other soldiers look like children playing at war. Blood streaked his face — his own from a gash above his eye, and something black and viscous that definitely wasn't human. His war hammer dripped with chunks of things better left unidentified.
They'd grown up together in the slums, two orphans who'd learned early that you either got tough or you got dead. Brick had been the first person to have Dex's back in a street fight, the first to share stolen bread without asking for payment. They'd made a pact at age seven — wherever one went, the other followed. Even if it meant following each other into this nightmare they called a war.
"Thank fuck," Dex gasped, stumbling over what he really hoped was a tree root. "Thought that last wave got you."
"Nah, just got turned around. This rain's making everything look the same — wet, bloody, and full of things trying to kill us." Brick wiped gore from his eyes, grinning despite everything. "Remember when we thought joining up would be an adventure?"
"We were fucking idiots."
"Still are, probably. We need to push through to the—"
Time slowed to nothing.
The spear came from the left, silver-bright through the rain. Not a demon's weapon — human steel, human hands. Some conscript who'd broken ranks, young face twisted with the kind of terror that made men do impossible things. Maybe he thought Brick was a demon in the chaos. Maybe he just wanted to kill something, anything, to feel like he had control.
The reasons didn't matter.
The spear took Brick through the throat with a wet, meaty sound that Dex would hear in his nightmares for however many years he had left. It punched through flesh and cartilage, emerged red and dripping from the back of his neck.
Brick's eyes went wide with surprise. His mouth opened, but only blood came out.
"No." The word tore from Dex's throat, raw and primal. "No, no, NO!"
He moved without thinking, pure instinct and rage. His blade found the conscript's gut before the boy could even pull his spear free. Not a clean kill — Dex twisted the blade, pulled it sideways, made sure the little shit felt every inch of steel parting flesh. The conscript screamed, high and thin, hands trying to stuff intestines back where they belonged.
But it was already too late. It had been too late the second that spear flew.
Brick dropped to his knees with a splash, massive hands going to his throat like he could hold the wound closed through sheer will. Blood poured between his fingers, mixed with the rain, turned the mud around him into a spreading pool of crimson.
"Brick, you're fine, you're fucking fine," Dex babbled, dropping beside him, hands joining Brick's in a futile attempt to stem the flow. The blood was so warm against the cold rain. "We'll get a healer, we'll fix this, you're not allowed to die on me, you hear me?"
Brick's lips moved, blood bubbling with each attempt at words. His hand left his throat — more blood, always more blood — and found Dex's shoulder. Squeezed with fading strength.
"Can't..." The word was more gurgle than speech. "Can't feel... my legs..."
"That's just shock, you're in shock, it's fine—"
"Dex." Brick's voice was weaker now, eyes starting to glaze. But he smiled — actually smiled, the mad bastard. "Least I got to see you... in that stupid... hero outfit..."
"Shut up. Don't talk. Save your strength."
"Always... always knew you'd be... something special..." Blood frothed pink at the corners of his mouth. "Even when we were... stealing bread... knew you were meant for... more than the slums..."
"We both were. We're both getting out of this, we're going to—"
"Tell my sister..." Brick's grip tightened for a moment. "Tell her I wasn't... wasn't afraid..."
"Tell her yourself, you massive prick!"
But Brick's eyes were already going distant, looking at something beyond the rain and mud and horror. His hand found Dex's one more time, squeezed with the last of his strength.
"Give 'em hell... little brother..."
The light went out of his eyes between one heartbeat and the next. One moment Brick was there — all that strength, all that laughter, all those shared memories — and then he was just meat. Just another corpse in a field full of them.
Dex sat there in the mud, cradling his best friend's body, rain washing away the blood but not the weight of it. Around them the battle raged on. Demons shrieked. Men screamed. Steel met flesh with sounds that would haunt survivors for decades.
But for Dex, the world had shrunk to this moment. This loss. This failure.
He'd saved the world, they'd tell him later. Held the line when everything seemed lost. A hero's work.
But he hadn't saved Brick.
And that truth cut deeper than any demon's claw ever could.
"You coming or not?"
Avian blinked, yanked from the memory so violently he almost reached for a weapon that wasn't there. Kai stood at the entrance to the training ground, head tilted in question. The concern in his eyes made Avian's chest tight — when had anyone last looked at him with genuine worry?
"Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking."
"Dangerous habit," Kai said with a grin that didn't quite hide his uncertainty. "You looked like you were somewhere else entirely. Somewhere bad."
You have no idea.
"Come on," Kai continued, clearly deciding not to push. "We've got about an hour before anyone important notices. Less if Master Corwin decides to do surprise inspections again."
The informal session was already in progress. A dozen students, mostly from tertiary branches or low-ranking secondaries, working through forms with the easy camaraderie of those who had nothing to prove. No Masters watching with critical eyes. No formal hierarchies demanding deference. Just people trying to get better, trying to survive in a world that valued strength above all else.
It should have been relaxing. Should have been simple.
Instead, it reminded Dex of another argument, another time when formality got in the way of survival. When pretty words and prettier protocols cost lives that didn't need to be lost.
The command tent stank of fear-sweat and denial, expensive perfumes doing nothing to mask the reek of cowardice. Maps covered every surface, marked with impossible defensive positions and imaginary reinforcements that existed only in the fevered dreams of strategists who'd never held a line.
Dex had stopped trying to clean the blood from under his fingernails three days ago. What was the point? There'd just be more tomorrow. Instead, he stood there in armor still caked with dried gore, watching lords and ladies play at war like it was some grand game of chess.
"We need to hit them now," Dex had argued, slamming his fist on the war table hard enough to make the little wooden soldiers jump. One fell over — appropriate, since that's what the real ones were doing out there. "Every hour we waste, they dig in deeper. Every minute we sit here debating, more soldiers die."
Lord Commander Thaine — all polish and privilege, with armor that had never seen a real battle — sneered down his nose like Dex was something he'd scrape off his boot. "And this is why commoners shouldn't be given command. You think like a brigand, not a general. There are procedures, protocols—"
"Protocols?" Dex laughed, ugly and sharp. "Tell that to the fifty men who died yesterday because your 'protocols' said we couldn't attack without the proper forms filed in triplicate."
"Those men knew their duty—"
"Those men trusted us to lead them, not send them to die for paperwork!"
"Language," another noble chided. Lady Corvel, whose main contribution to the war effort was looking decorative at strategy meetings and occasionally deigning to tour the medical tents for morale. Her dress probably cost more than a soldier's family would see in a lifetime. "Really, Dex, just because you were raised in squalor doesn't mean you need to bring that... crudeness to civilized discourse."
The tent went quiet. Even the other nobles seemed to sense she'd crossed a line.
"Squalor," Dex repeated, tasting the word like spoiled wine. "Is that what you call it when children fight rats for scraps? When you learn to hold a knife before you can properly walk because if you don't, someone takes your food? Your blanket? Your life?"
He'd stepped closer, close enough to see her powder-caked face crack with unease, close enough to smell the rosewater she'd bathed in while his men bathed in blood.
"You want to know what squalor taught me, my lady? It taught me that pretty words don't fill empty bellies. That protocols don't stop a blade between your ribs. That the only difference between a brigand and a general is that one admits what they are."
"How dare you—"
"I dare because I'm still breathing." His voice dropped, dangerous. "I dare because every victory you claim, every mile we take — it's bought with blood. Not yours. Never yours. But mine, and men like me who you sneer at for our 'crudeness.'"
Lord Commander Thaine stood, hand moving to his ceremonial blade — pretty thing, probably never tasted blood. "You forget yourself, hero. Whatever gutter spawned you, you serve at the pleasure of the crown. You follow orders, not give them."
"Orders?" Dex barked a laugh. "Your last 'order' got three hundred men killed. Good soldiers who died because some noble wanted to wait for the stars to align just right before we moved."
"The auguries clearly showed—"
"The auguries can suck my cock." He didn't care about their shocked gasps anymore. "You want to know what the auguries show? Nothing. Because they're just pretty patterns you use to justify cowardice. The demons don't check star charts before they attack. They just kill."
"This is treason—"
"This is truth." Dex's hand had found his sword hilt — not ceremonial, this one. This one had work to do. "But you wouldn't recognize truth if it cut your throat. Which, incidentally, is what the demons will do if we don't move. Tonight."
The tent erupted in outraged voices. Twenty nobles, their attendants, their guards — all squawking like offended chickens. Only Vaerin stayed quiet, watching from his corner with those careful eyes that saw too much.
Thaine's voice cut through the noise. "You dare threaten a Lord Commander? Hero or not, you're still just—"
"Just what?" Dex stepped into the man's space, close enough to see sweat beading on his perfect brow. "Just the guy keeping you all alive? Just the 'crude' commoner who does the bleeding while you do the talking?"
He'd turned, addressing the room at large. "You want to know the difference between us? When this tent catches fire — and it will, because the demons aren't stupid — you'll run for your horses. Your guards. Your escape routes planned in advance. Me? I'll run toward the screaming. Because that's where I'm needed."
"Get out," Thaine hissed. "Get out before I have you arrested."
"Arrest me." Dex spread his arms wide. "Please. I'm begging you. Throw me in chains. Execute me for insubordination. See how long you last without your 'gutter rat' clearing the path."
The silence stretched taut as a bowstring. Nobody moved. Because they all knew the truth — they needed him. Needed his sword, his experience, his willingness to do what their noble sensibilities wouldn't allow.
"That's what I thought." Dex turned on his heel, pausing at the tent flap. "I'll take the eastern position. Try not to get anyone else killed while I'm gone. My lady, Lord Commander — when you're washing your hands for dinner tonight, remember that the water runs red because better men than you are dying for your hesitation."
He'd left then, returning to the bloodshed where things made sense. Where enemies tried to kill you honestly, without pretty words to dress it up.
Three hours later, the eastern line had held because Dex and twelve volunteers did what the nobles wouldn't — they'd attacked first, hit hard, turned defense into offense.
Eight of those volunteers didn't make it back.
Their names weren't recorded in any official history.
"Good!" Kai called out as Avian completed a complex disarm, bringing him back to the present. "Where'd you learn that variation? I've never seen it in the standard forms."
From a demon that used four swords at once. You learn to disarm creatively when your opponent has more weapons than you have limbs.
Aloud, he said, "Just came to me. Sometimes your body knows things your mind doesn't."
They'd been drilling for nearly an hour, sweat darkening their training clothes despite the evening cool. The other students had gradually drifted away — to dinner, to duties, to softer beds than soldiers ever knew. Those who remained worked with quiet intensity, pushing themselves without the pressure of formal evaluation.
"You know," Kai said, wiping sweat from his brow with a sleeve already soaked through, "you're different than I expected."
"How so?"
"Most nobles who get their asses kicked either sulk for weeks or immediately plot elaborate revenge. You just... moved on. Like it didn't matter. Like you had bigger things to worry about."
Because I do. Because I've lost fights that actually meant something. Because the real enemy was never the one holding the sword — it was the system that decided who was worth saving and who was expendable.
"Getting angry doesn't change what happened," Avian said carefully, working through a cooling-down form to give his hands something to do besides shake.
"No, but it's human." Kai sheathed his practice blade with the easy motion of someone who'd been handling swords since childhood — but safely, always safely. "My grandfather used to say something. 'The scariest fighters aren't the ones who get angry. They're the ones who've been angry so long it's turned cold. Frozen. Patient.'"
The words hit closer than Kai could know. Avian's form stuttered for just a moment before he recovered.
"Smart man," he managed.
"Strange as it sounds, my family has records going back to the Demon War — five hundred years ago." Kai's expression grew distant, looking at something beyond the training ground. "My ancestor, one of the first in our line, was just a foot soldier. Nothing special. But he kept a journal, and we've preserved it all these centuries."
"Oh?" Avian's voice came out steadier than he felt. Five hundred years. I've been dead for five hundred years.
"The things he wrote about the real Dex — the Demon King, I mean — that's what they call him now..." Kai shook his head. "My ancestor said he fought like he was trying to die. Not suicidal, just... like death was an old friend he kept expecting to meet. Like every sunrise was a surprise and every sunset might be the last."
Because it was. Because when you've buried enough friends, you stop expecting to be the exception.
"He wrote something else, too." Kai's voice dropped, like he was sharing a secret. "Said Dex saved his unit once. Held a bridge alone for twenty minutes while they retreated. Just him and whatever demons were stupid enough to try crossing. My ancestor lost his leg that day, but he lived. Because of Dex."
Avian's hands stilled completely. "That's not... that's not in any history."
"No. It wouldn't be, would it?" Kai laughed, bitter. "Demon Kings don't save people. They don't hold bridges so conscripts can run. They don't scream at commanders to value soldiers' lives over protocol. That doesn't fit the story they've been telling for five centuries."
"What does your family think happened? Really?"
Kai was quiet for a long moment, watching shadows lengthen across the training ground. "We think somebody needed a villain. And dead men can't defend themselves. Especially not after five hundred years of lies calcifying into truth."
He left with a casual wave, unaware he'd just shattered and rebuilt Avian's world in the span of minutes. That somewhere out there, people remembered. Not many, maybe. But some.
It wasn't enough. But it was something.
Seren closed her notebook with a snap, drawing Avian's attention. He'd almost forgotten she was there, tucked into her corner like a particularly studious gargoyle.
"I should go too. Early archives duty tomorrow." She stood, brushing dust from her robes. "The old histories won't misinterpret themselves."
"Find anything interesting today?"
She paused at the door, looking back with those too-sharp eyes. "Always. Did you know there are seventeen different accounts of the Demon King's final battle? All official. All contradictory. Almost like nobody actually saw what happened in that throne room."
Avian's pulse jumped. "Maybe it was chaos. War often is."
"Maybe." She tilted her head, studying him like a particularly fascinating text. "Or maybe the person who could tell us the truth isn't talking. Yet."
Then she was gone too, leaving Avian alone with the practice dummies and his ghosts.
The wooden figures stood in neat rows, patient as grave markers, waiting for violence that would mean nothing. In the growing twilight, they almost looked like soldiers. Like friends. Like all the people he'd failed to save.
He selected a practice sword — solid wood, well-balanced, utterly inadequate for what his hands remembered doing. The weight was wrong, the texture was wrong, everything was wrong. But it would serve.
The first form came without thought. Not Veritas style — older, harder, born from necessity rather than tradition. Created in blood and desperation when the choice was innovation or death. His body remembered even if history didn't.
Strike. Pivot. Channel aura through dead wood until it sang with potential.
The movements pulled him back, always back, to moments that mattered more than any heir trial ever could.
"We're going to make it," Vaerin had said, that last night before everything ended. They'd sat around a dying fire, just the two of them, the rest of the camp lost in exhausted sleep or standing watch against things that hunted in darkness.
The fire crackled, shooting sparks into a sky that couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or just loom threateningly. They'd been pushing toward the Demon King's stronghold for three months. Three months of blood and mud and watching their forces dwindle from an army to barely a regiment.
"Sure," Dex had replied, staring into the flames. They reminded him of cremation pyres. Everything reminded him of death these days. "Question is whether there'll be anything left of us on the other side."
"Don't be so grim." Vaerin's smile was bright even through the dirt and exhaustion, like he'd been born to inspire people even at the edge of the abyss. That was his gift — making others believe in tomorrow even when today was trying to kill them. "Think about it — when this is over, we'll be heroes. Real heroes. They'll tell stories about us."
"I don't want stories."
"Then what do you want?"
Dex had been quiet for a long time, poking at the fire with a stick that might have been a rib bone. Hard to tell anymore. Everything eventually became fuel or weapons or grave markers.
"To stop waking up wondering who I'll lose today," he said finally. "To not know everyone's name who won't see tomorrow. To eat something that doesn't taste like ash and necessity."
"Well, you won't lose me." Vaerin had bumped his shoulder, companionable and warm in a world gone cold. "We're family now, you and I. Blood of battle and all that noble nonsense."
"You're the only noble here."
"Technically. But you're the one they'll remember." Vaerin's expression had grown serious, firelight dancing in his eyes. "You know that, right? When they write the histories, you'll be the one who mattered. The commoner who rose up and saved the world. Living proof that birth doesn't determine worth."
"Assuming I live that long."
"You will." Vaerin's certainty had been absolute, the kind of faith that made you want to believe even when experience said otherwise. "And when you do, I'll make sure everyone knows the truth. About who you really are. What you sacrificed. What it cost you."
They'd sat in comfortable silence, the kind that only comes from bleeding together, fighting together, watching each other's backs through hell and worse. The fire popped, sending more sparks skyward. Somewhere in the distance, something howled — demon or wolf or soldier having nightmares, impossible to tell.
"Hey Dex?"
"Yeah?"
"When this is over — when the Demon King is dead and we can finally breathe — what's the first thing you'll do?"
Dex had actually smiled then, small but real. "Sleep. For about a year. Without one hand on a sword."
Vaerin had laughed, rich and warm. "Fair. But after that?"
"I don't know. Never thought that far ahead. Never seemed much point."
"Well, think about it now. Dream a little. We're so close, Dex. Tomorrow we breach the outer defenses. A week at most and we'll be at his throne. This nightmare is almost over."
And for just a moment, sitting there with his best friend — maybe his only friend — Dex had allowed himself to imagine a future. Nothing grand. Nothing heroic. Just... quiet. A place where screams didn't echo in his dreams. Where his hands didn't always reach for weapons that weren't there. Where the faces of the dead stayed properly buried instead of visiting every time he closed his eyes.
"Maybe I'll learn to do something else," he'd said quietly. "Something that doesn't involve killing. Something that builds instead of breaks."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Farming, maybe. Can't be that different from fighting — things trying to kill you, never enough resources, everything covered in shit."
Vaerin's laughter had filled the night, pushing back the darkness for just a moment. "Only you would make agriculture sound like warfare."
"Everything's warfare if you're doing it right. Or wrong. Depending on your perspective."
"You'll be terrible at it," Vaerin said fondly. "You'll try to form tactical formations with the vegetables. Treat weeds like an invading force."
"Sounds about right."
They'd stayed up talking until dawn, planning futures that would never come. Vaerin painting grand pictures of the world they'd build — fair, just, where heroes were remembered and sacrifices honored. Dex just hoping to see it, to wake up one morning without the weight of necessary violence pressing down on his chest.
Three days later, Dex had stood alone in the Demon King's throne room, surrounded by the dead god's essence, victory ash in his mouth.
A few seconds after that, still swaying from exhaustion and triumph and the impossible weight of survival, Vaerin had put an arrow through his heart.
"I'm sorry," his best friend had whispered as Dex fell. "I'm doing this for you, so you're at peace."
The last thing Dex saw was tears on Vaerin's face.
The last thing he thought was that he should have known better than to dream.
The dummy exploded.
Avian stared at the destruction, breathing hard, sweat stinging his eyes. The wooden figure hadn't just broken — it had been bisected, top half spinning away while the bottom toppled over. Wood splinters hung in the air like frozen rain. The practice sword in his hand was cracked down the middle, held together only by splinters and rage.
He'd channeled too much. Let too much through. The aura that had coated the blade was the deep, ugly color of old blood — nothing like the clear light the Veritas style promoted. This was the color of survival at any cost, of victories that tasted like poison, of a hero who'd never learned to fight pretty because pretty got you dead.
"Well," he said to the evening air, voice rough with memory and fury. "Shit."
The truth crystallized in that moment, sharp as winter air and twice as bitter. He couldn't keep playing this game. Couldn't keep pretending to be weak while the lie of his legacy spread like poison through the world's veins. Couldn't stomach one more prayer to Saint fucking Vaerin while his name rotted in history's garbage heap, while good men like Brick were forgotten entirely, while Kai's grandfather had to whisper the truth like heresy.
"I'm going to find out what happened," he said, words falling like hammer blows on an anvil of resolve. "Why they turned me into the villain. Why Vaerin..." His voice cracked like the sword in his hand. "Why my best friend killed me. Why he looked me in the eyes and called it mercy."
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers, clattering on stone.
"And when I know the truth — all of it — I'm going to make sure history remembers. Not as the Demon King. Not as the monster in their stories. But as Dex. The commoner who saved their worthless world and got murdered for the crime of being too broken to make a good story."
He laughed, harsh and bitter as old medicine. "They want a legend? I'll give them one. But this time, I'll make sure they can't rewrite it. I'll carve it in stone, in steel, in the bones of anyone who tries to bury the truth again."
The practice ground was silent except for his ragged breathing and the settling of destroyed wood. Somewhere in the distance, bells tolled the hour. Late. He should return to his chambers, maintain his cover, play the dutiful noble son who knew his place.
Instead, he stood among the wreckage of his restraint and made a promise to ghosts.
"I'll make them remember us right this time. All of us. Brick. The volunteers at the eastern line. Every common soldier who bled while nobles debated. Even if I have to carve the truth into stone with my own hands. Even if I have to become the monster they painted me as to do it."
High above, hidden in shadow and silence that bent light around him, Aedric Veritas allowed himself a rare smile.
"I knew it," he murmured, voice barely a whisper on the wind. "A goddamn genius."
The boy had destroyed a training dummy with a wooden sword. Not just broken it — obliterated it with aura so dense it had weight and color and killing intent. The kind of technique that took decades to master, wielded by a twelve-year-old who was supposed to be unremarkable.
But it wasn't just the power that confirmed Aedric's suspicions. It was the style. That brutal, efficient movement. The way the boy's aura clung like old blood rather than shining like light. The economy of motion that spoke of someone who'd learned to fight when losing meant dying, not disappointment.
He'd seen that style before. Long ago. In techniques they'd banned after the war because they were too effective, too honest about what combat really was.
In the movements of a dead hero they'd renamed a demon to make the story cleaner.
"Interesting," Aedric breathed. "Very interesting indeed."
The boy was already moving, trying to hide the evidence of his outburst. But it was too late. The secret was out, even if only one person knew it.
Aedric vanished between one heartbeat and the next, leaving only questions and the lingering scent of ozone. Below, Avian began the slow process of cleaning up, unaware that his secret had already escaped its cage.
The game was changing.
And somewhere in the distance, history held its breath, waiting to see if this time, the truth would prove stronger than the lie.