Victory was the last lie I ever believed in.
The sky cracked open. Ash rained from the heavens, soft as snow, black as sin. The kingdom below, once a proud thing, was crumbling in silence, with the men I led as a commander. Towers folded in on themselves. Flames licked out through broken rooftops like serpents set loose from hell.
My men, young, old, middle-aged, whatever their years, never seemed to understand the weight of it. The cost of killing. Of taking a life that was still breathing, still feeling. It was never easy, even when it left you no choice. Because the aftermath, it stayed. It buried itself in your chest and whispered through every moment after the war, until you died and joined the dead, in heaven or hell or whatever waited.
In the stillness that followed their final warcry, I knelt.
The battlefield groaned. Somewhere in the distance, stone shattered. A roof caved in. Still, I didn't move. Just listened. Just watched.
My sword was planted deep in a crack of the stone beneath me. I stood high, on a scorched tower near the keep. From here, the whole kingdom stretched before me like a dying beast. My hands rested on the sword's hilt. They were soaked in blood, but none of it was mine. Some of it had dried. Some was fresh. Some still warm.
It started to rain.
At first, the drops whispered, like mourning. The sky crying for the fallen. For the innocent. For those forced to stand against a kingdom with more power, more men, more steel, more everything. What could they do? Nothing. And I was never proud of it.
When these sieges came, I only wished they'd end quickly. Because it was pain, watching the unfinished life and unfulfilled dreams leave someone's eyes, . Watching the expressions of the people I struck down, both inside and out.
Then the storm grew bold.
It washed the soot from my armor. It traced dark rivers through the dried blood on my pauldrons, through the cloth beneath, and across the skin that still breathed underneath. I watched the red spiral down my fingers like something alive. The sword did not shake. I did not shake. But something in me had already given way.
I looked up.
Smoke rolled across the sky like bruises blooming on skin. The rain hissed against the fires still clinging to rooftops. The taste of ash hung on my tongue. And for a moment, I felt like the last man alive, despite the cries, despite the clash of steel, despite the ruin. The war was won. The world was still burning.
The last killer left standing.
Or rather, kneeling.
Beneath my boots, the stone of the tower hadn't gone soft. It stayed solid, scorched black. Beams jutted from the rubble below like ribs from a corpse. A helmet rested nearby, cracked down the center, half-buried in ash. Its owner lay a few feet away, face down in the mud, one hand curled toward his sword.
I didn't recognize him. Maybe I never would've, even if I tried.
But he fought, that much I knew. Fought hard enough that it cost him everything. And like so many others, he'd never be remembered. Not by the kings. Not by the dukes or barons or generals. Not by the princes or princesses he bled for. He'd vanish, like smoke, like he never even existed.
How many faces had passed under my command?
As the one leading this army? As the one ordering thousands to their deaths? Men. Women. With titles or none. With land or none. With gold or none. With food or none. With voices or silence. They blurred together now, like embers scattered on the wind.
Is this what it was all about?
To live the life you were told to live? By people wrapped in robes and crowns, chosen by gods or claiming to be made in their image? To kill, so they could feel eternal? So they could build something they'd never have to die for?
Once, when I was young, bold, arrogant, untested, I called it duty. Honor. Glory. I wanted praise. Recognition. Power. I thought I wanted it.
Now I know better.
Now, I know the silence it leaves behind.
A crow landed nearby. It picked at something, black eyes unbothered by the storm. I didn't stop it. Let the birds eat. Let the worms have their share. It was the least I could offer, after doing so much damage to my own kind.
The dead didn't care anymore. And neither did I.
"Commander!"
A voice.
Clear. Young. Too young, like a boy throwing stones into a still lake.
"Commander Eron!"
I took off my helmet and let the rain soak through my hair. Still kneeling, not because I lacked the strength to stand, but because I no longer had the strength to reclaim whatever humanity I had left.
I didn't turn when I heard the footsteps behind me. They were light. Hesitant. He wasn't wounded. His voice still carried youth.
"We won!" he said, stopping at my side.
I said nothing. Not because I couldn't. But because I had no words left.
He was young. Too young. Blonde. No cracks in his voice. Maybe twenty. Maybe less. His armor barely fit him, too polished, too clean for someone who had truly lived through a siege. His hands were spotless. His sword was already sheathed at his waist.
"I was at the front gate," he continued, proud, trying again. "At the backline. When the siege broke through, I saw it. The enemy's front line fell. They're all dead. Fled or dead. Mostly dead. The only reason some of them escaped is because our archers ran out of arrows to punish the cowards."
"Cowards?"
I rose slowly. My knees ached under me. The sword came free from the stone with a wet sigh, and I sheathed it at my side. I looked at him, silent. Not angry. Not pleased. Just disappointed.
Not in him.
In the memory of myself. Because I had once been like him.
Rain ran down his face like tears he didn't know he'd earned.
"You call them cowards?" I said, voice low, steady. "If being afraid to die with an unfinished life, with unfulfilled dreams is cowardice, then what does that make you? Standing at the backline, watching the front burn?"
He blinked. Confused. Not yet hurt. Just unsure if I meant what I said.
"At least spare them the insult," I continued. "Don't add hypocrisy to your pride."
My voice broke slightly at the end. Not with volume. Not with rage. But with weight.
I had spoken more harshly than I should have. He was still a boy, not by age, but by soul. And I knew, with cruel certainty, that I would regret saying it.
But I also knew I couldn't take it back.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. I just watched his eyes, eyes I once had. A soul full of cruelty, violence, pride, ego. No shame. No remorse. No guilt. No regret.
No nothing.
He stood in it now, the very thing we'd raised him to seek. Victory. And all around him was rot.
Beneath where we stood, the remains of the main gate sagged inward. A wall had collapsed over a dozen bodies. Limbs stuck out from beneath the rubble like weeds in stone. The rain would bury the rest. A flag still fluttered there, caught on a broken spear.
Not ours. Not theirs. Just color now, meaningless and wet.
"Do you know this kingdom's name?" I asked him.
He hesitated. "Nareth."
"No. Nareth fell months ago. This," I looked down over the ruin. "This is its corpse."
He glanced around, unsure if it was a riddle. "Then what?"
"This place had a name. Streets. Bread markets. Blacksmiths. Keeps. Farms. Tailors. Fishers. Farmers. Gardens. People. We don't know it anymore because we were never meant to. We came to conquer, not to remember."
"I—" he started, then stopped. He shifted on his feet. The ground squelched.
I stepped past him.
The mud clung to my boots. Ash swirled in the air. The wind carried the scent of burned bread, of iron, of piss and smoke and the end of things. Somewhere, a child was crying. Somewhere, someone still called out for a mother who couldn't answer.
We'd broken through the north wall at dawn. The enemy had retreated, fled, toward the south. What followed wasn't a battle. It was a purge. A fire fed by names we didn't know and wouldn't ask. And now the fire was dying.
What remained would last longer than any anthem.
I descended the stone staircase of the tower.
I passed a woman's body, half-covered by a collapsed signpost. A doll was pinned under her hand. Too clean. Untouched. It must've been dropped before the fire reached them. Or perhaps someone placed it there afterward.
It didn't matter.
The sword at my waist felt heavier than it ever had.
Behind me, the boy stayed still. Waiting for something. A speech, maybe. A blessing. I gave him none.
Let him hold onto whatever hope he still had. Let someone walk away from this with fire still in them.
As for me, I had given enough to the fire.
And it had taken more than it ever returned.
I made my way through the kingdom's husk, past the remains of the temple plaza. Statues of the gods these people once praised lay broken. One figure's face had melted in the heat, its eyes warped in agony.
I wondered if the gods would recognize themselves in the images we made.
A boy knelt in the mud, crying. He clutched the body of a man, maybe his father. No older than twelve. His breath rattled. He coughed blood.
Not a soldier.
Just another life caught in the wrong place.
The rain kept falling.
I found a stone bench near what might've once been a garden. Only the blackened stubs of hedges remained. I sat, letting the sword rest beside me.
War had a rhythm.
A rise. A break. A silence.
But the silence grew longer every time. It stretched between the beats now, heavy as death. There would be another war. There always was. A different banner. A different kingdom. A different city. A different village.
But the cost?
The cost never changed.
Footsteps approached again.
The boy had followed. He stood beneath what little remained of a portico. Rain dripped off his hair and shoulders. His hand rested on the pommel of his sword, but he didn't grip it. He didn't speak.
This time, that was enough.
I looked up at him.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Tarin," he said.
"Do you want to be a soldier, Tarin?"
His brow furrowed. He didn't know if it was a trick. "I already am, sir."
I nodded slowly. "One day, when the next war comes and they tell you it's for honor, or gods, or land, remember this."
I said nothing. My silence, at least, was honest.
The fire behind us hissed as the rain smothered it, one coal at a time. And in the quiet that followed, I mourned. Not for the dead, but for the living, who'd still call this a victory.
Tarin didn't ask anything.
He stood still beneath the shattered portico, water dripping from his shoulders, pooling at his feet. His eyes didn't leave mine, but I could see the shift, not in his face, but behind it.
That boyish certainty, the polished steel pride, the bright-eyed hunger to be part of something bigger, it faltered. Just enough.
His hand dropped fully from the pommel of his sword.
And for the first time since he arrived, he looked at the kingdom. Not as a place we'd taken. But as a place that had been lost.
He took a breath, shallow. His lips parted like he meant to speak, but no words came. None that would matter. None that would hold.
Good. Words would've ruined it.
He blinked rain from his lashes. His jaw set again, this time without defiance. Just effort. Effort to stay upright.
To not be seen breaking.
But I saw it anyway. A hairline fracture. Not enough to crush him. Just enough to remind him he was still made of flesh.
And not stone.
He looked down. Not in shame. Not in fear. Just down. At the rubble beneath us. At the colorless flag half-buried in blood and ash. At the ruin we had made.
And in that moment, he grasped something, not everything, not yet. But something.
He looked back up, slower this time. Not searching for orders. Not needing praise.
Just waiting to see if he was allowed to carry the silence with him.
I gave him a nod. Small. Barely there.
It was enough.