The battlefield was a graveyard long before the dying stopped.
Smoke crawled across the torn earth, clinging to broken spears and shattered shields. The stench of iron and blood hung heavy in the air, a sickly perfume that only warriors ever came to know. Crows circled overhead, waiting for silence.
Brax stumbled through the carnage, his warhammer dragging a trail in the mud. His armor was cracked, his body bruised, but none of it weighed more than the emptiness gnawing at his chest. Around him lay the men who had marched at his side—friends who had laughed with him by the fire, who had raised their cups after victories, who had sworn that they would live and die together.
They had kept their oath.
He alone remained.
The enemy had fled hours ago, leaving only silence in their wake. Yet Brax knew the battle was far from over. Because when the shouting ceased, when the clash of steel ended, the real war began—inside his head, inside his heart.
He lifted his eyes to the horizon. No banners waved for him, no home waited. The only sound was the creak of his warhammer's leather strap as he slung it across his back.
That night, he made himself a vow: never again would he seek bonds he could not keep, never again would he fight for anything but coin. A mercenary needed no cause, no love, no ties.
But deep inside, beneath the armor and scars, something still whispered that he was wrong.
Years later, on the edge of a quiet lake, that whisper would return—in the shape of a girl who saw him not as a monster of war, but as a man.
And nothing after that would ever be the same.