The gunfire fades, leaving behind the eerie quiet that only war understands. Ashes drift like snowfall, touching the shoulders of men who've survived when so many did not. The scent of iron, smoke, and scorched earth lingers heavy in the air.
Rowen Hale walks among the scattered ruins with a rifle slung over his back, though his fingers no longer curl around it with urgency. The battle is over. His unit — bruised, worn, barely stitched together — has claimed victory. But it doesn't feel like triumph. It never does. War doesn't reward. It just subtracts less on some days.
He doesn't speak. Doesn't cheer with the others. He simply walks, his eyes scanning the ground as if searching for something more than silence.
A jeep rumbles to a stop nearby. Orders are shouted. Their presence is needed back in Doverhill — a quiet town veined with cobblestone streets and political shadows. Windmere Mansion awaits, the estate that houses both resting soldiers and the man who arranges their war as if it were a chess game. Rowen doesn't care for politics. But he obeys. Not because he trusts, but because that's what they've trained him to do.
By noon, the mansion rises before them — a towering structure of stone and secrets. Its beauty is a lie. Inside, the air is sterile, and the walls feel colder than the battlefield. Rowen finds himself in the dormitory, changing from blood-stained fatigues into crisp formals for the strategy meeting scheduled in less than an hour. The others laugh. Talk of the next plan. But Rowen stays quiet. His mind is elsewhere, even if he doesn't know where.
Across town, behind the heavy drapes of Grace Manor, a girl refuses to eat.
Evenlyn Grace sits at the end of a long table, the untouched plate before her a symbol of resistance. Her dark hair is braided neatly, her posture perfect, and yet everything about her radiates defiance.
"I said no," she mutters, her voice sharp, almost rehearsed.
Vivienne, her mother, tries once more. "Just a few bites, Eve. Please."
Elira, her friend since childhood, leans forward with gentler words. "You'll feel faint again. You haven't eaten properly in days."
Evenlyn frowns. Her eyes, empty of sight but full of fire, stare into nothing. "I'm blind. Not fragile. Stop treating me like I'll shatter."
No one replies. Not because they agree — but because they're afraid any more words will only drive her further into herself.
Finally, with a breath that feels like surrender, she lifts the spoon.
Elira gives her a small smile. "That's my girl." It feels like victory. A quiet one.
But it doesn't last long.
Elira is called back to her home. She presses a kiss to Evenlyn's temple and says she'll return by evening. The moment the door closes behind her, the air in the house stiffens again.
Her mother is called next — not by love, but by command. Colonel Gideon Grace's voice echoes down the corridor, demanding Vivienne's presence in the strategy meeting at Windmere Mansion.
"She's not well," Vivienne protests. "Let me stay with her—"
"She's not dying," he snaps. "And even if she were, that wouldn't change a thing. You're my wife, not her nurse."
And with that, Vivienne is pulled away.
Evenlyn sits in silence. The house creaks. The wind whistles past the window. The untouched plate of food is now just a reminder of her own weariness.
She stands. The world sways.
Her hand reaches for a wall she cannot find.
Then — nothing.
Her body crumples to the ground.
Frida, a maid who has always cared more like a mother than a servant, runs in just as Evenlyn collapses. Panic claws at her throat. She doesn't think. She runs — all the way to Windmere Mansion.
Inside the mansion, voices are sharp with discussion. Maps lie sprawled across the table, red markers dotting potential threats. Colonel Gideon points at routes, speaks of reinforcements, timing, and tactics. His tone is hard, his expression harder.
When Frida bursts through the doors, her dress soaked in sweat and her voice trembling, all eyes turn.
"Miss Evenlyn… she fainted. Please… she needs—"
Vivienne doesn't wait. She leaves without permission, without breath, without apology.
Colonel Gideon glares at the door. "She always ruins everything. That girl is a curse."
The meeting dissolves. Silence returns.
That evening, the doctor arrives. His hands are steady, but his voice is not.
"She has a neurovascular degeneration," he says grimly. "Something rare. Aggressive. Her blindness was only the beginning. If we don't operate soon, she may not survive."
Vivienne's lips quiver. "Is there hope?"
"The surgery is high-risk. Unpredictable. We can't say what the outcome will be."
And in the stillness of that moment, the Colonel speaks without a flicker of emotion.
"Let her die, then. I won't waste another second or cent on her."
Vivienne breaks. Frida weeps silently.
In her room, Evenlyn stirs. The touch of a cool cloth against her forehead makes her blink once, then twice. Her lips part in a whisper so soft, it sounds like a sigh.
"Is this how silence ends… with no one left who wants to hear you?"
Later that night, long after the noise has died and the doors have closed, Rowen stands near the grand corridor of Windmere, watching the hallway that leads to the guest quarters — the wing that belongs to the Grace family.
He doesn't know her.
But he saw the way her mother ran. The way the Colonel didn't.
And somehow, in the vastness of all the battles he has fought, this silent war — this invisible pain — tugs at him differently.
Just a flicker. A shift.
Not sympathy.
Not care.
But something… like an echo of something not yet born.
A seed of emotion buried so deep it cannot even name itself. Not yet. Not now.
But it lingers — quietly — like a story just beginning.