The silver light was the first thing to fade. It bled from Kael's blade like mist retreating before the dawn, leaving behind the dull, grey steel of the sword itself. The ethereal shield on his arm dissolved into a shower of faint, glittering motes that vanished before they touched the ground. The divine energy that had filled him, that terrifying and exhilarating torrent, receded like a tide, pulling back into the deep, silent well of his being. What it left behind was not peace, but a profound and aching hollow.
The sudden silence was deafening. Without the roar of battle-madness and the goddess's voice in his head, the sounds of Emberwood's suffering rushed in to fill the void: the crackle and hungry roar of the fires, the low, desperate moans of the wounded, the shattered, disbelieving sobs of those who had lost everything. The air, once clean with the scent of earth and bread, was now a thick, acrid cocktail of smoke, blood, and the peculiar, foul odor of ozone and goblin-ash.
Kael stood motionless for a long moment, his sword hanging loosely from his hand. His body, moments ago a vessel of incandescent power, now felt leaden and old. Every one of his fifty years, and the fifty more he seemed to carry, settled back onto his shoulders with a crushing weight. He became acutely aware of the sweat cooling on his skin, the tremor of overworked muscles in his arm, and the dull, familiar throb in a knee he'd injured long ago on a forgotten battlefield.
A movement from the bakery door drew his eye. Brenna, the baker's wife, her face streaked with soot and tears, peered out. Her eyes, wide with a terror that had not yet subsided, flickered from his face to the sword in his hand, to the three piles of greasy ash that were all that remained of the goblins by her door. There was no gratitude in that look. Only a deep, primal fear.
"Kael…?" she whispered, the name a question and an accusation.
He could not find his voice. He merely gave a short, tight nod before turning away, the dismissal feeling like a physical wound. He was no longer the quiet, slow-aging farmer who traded tips on potatoes. He was the man with the sword that burned with a strange, harsh light. He was the bringer of dust and silence.
He moved through the village, a ghost at a funeral he had caused. The work was grim and familiar. He helped Old Man Hemming and a few other shaken men shift a collapsed beam off a storage shed, freeing a terrified goat. With each heave, the weight of the ordinary wood felt more real, more substantial, than the phantom shield he had borne. He carried buckets of water from the well, forming a chain with the villagers to douse the stubborn flames licking at the smithy's roof. The water was cold and heavy on his tunic, a grounding sensation.
He found young Liam, his eager student, crouched over his father, who had taken a deep gash to the leg defending their chicken coop. The boy was trying to staunch the flow with a torn strip of his own tunic, his hands slick with blood, his face pale.
"Press here," Kael's voice was rough as he knelt, guiding the boy's hands to the right pressure point. "Harder. You won't hurt him. You're saving him." The instruction was automatic, a paladin's triage knowledge surfacing through the farmer's facade. He fashioned a proper bandage from a clean cloth offered by a neighbor, his movements efficient and sure. Liam watched him, his fear momentarily overshadowed by awe.
"Your sword… it was like a star," the boy breathed.
Kael's hands stilled for a fraction of a second. "It was a tool, Liam. Like a hoe or an axe. It did what was needed." He finished tying the bandage and stood, avoiding the boy's searching gaze. "Get him to Brenna's. She has yarrow for the pain."
He walked on, and the faces of his neighbors were a gallery of conflicting portraits. Some looked at him with that same awestruck fear as Liam, seeing a legend stepped from a fireside tale. Others, like Brenna, looked through him, as if he were a dangerous storm that had passed, leaving wreckage in its wake. A few, the pragmatic and the grateful, met his eye with grim nods of acknowledgment. He had saved them. But what he was, what he had brought back with him, unsettled the very foundations of their world.
The memory of Lysander's light was a gentle, painful ache—a phantom limb of grace. It had been a warmth that promised healing, a balm that sought to mend. Theron's power was a scalpel, cold and sharp, that cut away the infection without regard for the scar it would leave. It was necessary, the village still stood because of it, but it left a chill in the soul.
He found himself back near the watchtower. The body of Tommen, the sentry, had been covered with a rough blanket. His mother was on her knees beside it, her body rocking back and forth in a silent rhythm of grief. Kael stood a respectful distance away, the weight of the sword at his hip feeling like a ton of stone. This death was on him. He had been too slow, too lost in his past. He had been a farmer when he should have been a paladin.
"He was a good lad," a calm voice said beside him.
Kael turned. It was the traveler, Elian. The man's clothes were dusty, but he seemed unruffled, his keen eyes taking in the scene of destruction with a scholarly detachment that felt both out of place and strangely comforting.
"He was," Kael replied, his voice gravelly.
"They focused on the tower first," Elian observed. "A tactical move. To silence the alarm and gain a vantage point. This was not a mere raid for food and plunder. This was a strike of terror."
Kael looked at him, really looked at him for the first time. The man's gaze was direct, intelligent, and completely devoid of the fear or awe the other villagers had shown. "What do you know of it?"
"I know that goblin packs are cowardly. They prey on the weak and scatter at the first sign of real resistance. What you did here…" Elian gestured with his chin towards the ash stains near the bakery, "…was more than resistance. It was annihilation. It will make them think twice. But it will also make them remember."
Before Kael could respond, a commotion arose from the edge of the green. A cry of relief. A child, the one Kael had heard crying from under the beam, was pulled, coughing but alive, from the rubble of the hut. Her mother swept her into a crushing embrace, sobbing into her hair. The small victory was a spark of light in the gloom.
The village elder, Orwin, a stout man with a face usually creased with laugh lines, now grim and smudged with soot, approached Kael. He placed a hand on Kael's shoulder, the grip firm.
"We owe you our lives, Kael," Orwin said, his voice carrying so others could hear. "Emberwood stands because of you."
Kael met his gaze. "Emberwood burns because of me, Orwin. They came for me."
Orwin's brow furrowed. "What nonsense is that? Goblins raid. It is what they do."
Kael shook his head slowly, his eyes drifting back towards the dark line of the Murkwood. "No. Not like this. They were a spearpoint. And I am the target." He unbuckled the sword belt, the leather seeming to hiss in protest. He held the sheathed weapon out to Orwin. "I should go. I bring only death to this place."
Orwin stared at the offered sword as if it were a venomous serpent. He did not take it. Instead, he closed Kael's hands around the scabbard, forcing him to keep it.
"You are a part of this village, Kael. Your past is your own. But today, you are our shield. What you bring is not just death. It is a chance." He looked around at his wounded, grieving, but still breathing people. "And we will take any chance we can get. Now, put that thing away. There is work to do."
Orwin turned and began barking orders, organizing a proper watch and a team to gather the dead. Kael was left standing alone, the weight of the sword once again in his hands, the elder's words a shackle keeping him bound to the very place he feared to destroy. The hollow inside him remained, but now, a new, grim purpose began to stir within it, taking root in the blood-soaked soil of his home.