...The screams began before the fires reached the gates. I remember the sound — not of war, but of disbelief. Those weren't strangers storming our walls. They were men who had shared our bread, prayed in our hall, laughed at my father's table.
I was seventeen, old enough to hold a sword but too young to understand betrayal. My father burst into my chamber, armor half-fastened, face streaked with soot. In his hand — not his sword, but the small chest, bound in iron, that he'd unearthed weeks before. The treasure.
"Take it, Alaric," he said, voice raw. "And run. No one must find it. Not them. Not ever."
I didn't ask what was inside. I only saw the terror in his eyes — a terror greater than death itself.
Through the window I watched the courtyard burn. Soldiers — our soldiers — cut down servants who begged for mercy. My mother tried to flee through the orchard, her white dress swallowed by the smoke. They caught her before she reached the trees.
The sky bled red that night.
I remember the way my father's sword sang once — just once — before the mob overwhelmed him. He turned to me as he fell, lips forming a single word: Go.
I ran. Through the orchard. Through the bodies. Through the smoke that still clings to me in dreams. Behind me, our home — our world — collapsed into flame.
The night smelled of smoke and blood. Every step I took sank into the ash-strewn ground, my ears ringing with the clash of steel and the screams of people I once called friends. Fire danced across the sky, painting the trees and walls in a hellish orange. My chest heaved as I ran, carrying the small, wrapped parcel my father had pressed into my hands hours earlier. "Protect it… no matter what," he had said, his eyes haunted, almost pleading.
And now he was gone.
I stumbled over a fallen cart, my fingers brushing against Alex's small hand. "Alex!" I shouted, panic cutting through the ringing in my ears. My younger brother's wide eyes shone with terror, his lips trembling. He clung to me without a word. I pulled him behind the wreckage, trying to shield him from the chaos, but even the shadows seemed alive with malice.
We were not alone. Figures moved like wraiths through the fire, men we had trusted—neighbors, soldiers we had fed, even the baker who had handed me bread each morning. Their faces were twisted in cruelty I couldn't recognize. And in their hands, swords gleamed under the burning sky.
I froze. One of them stepped forward, blocking our path. My stomach lurched as memories of laughter and shared meals clashed with the sight of blood-stained blades. "Stay behind me," I whispered to Alex, though my voice shook. I gripped the parcel tighter; it was more than a package—it was the last tether to my father, the key to everything we had lost.
Smoke burned my lungs, but I forced myself to move, ducking beneath fallen beams and leaping over bodies. The world had dissolved into chaos. I could hear my own heartbeat, frantic and uneven, as if it were trying to warn me of some distant, greater danger.
We emerged into the forest beyond the village, the firelight fading behind us. The smell of burning timber gave way to the damp scent of pine and wet earth. Alex shivered in my arms. I didn't speak, didn't dare breathe more than necessary. Every rustle of leaves sounded like an ambush, every snapping twig a threat.
And yet, beneath the terror, a spark ignited in me—a raw, burning resolve. We had survived tonight, but this was only the beginning. Those who had betrayed us would not go unpunished. My father's treasure—whatever secrets it held—was my burden now, and I would carry it through fire, blood, and shadow.
I glanced at Alex, his eyes wide but trusting, and I whispered, more to myself than to him: We endure. We survive. And one day… they will pay.
And somewhere beneath the ashes of that night, a boy died…
…so that a commander could be born.