Footsteps.

  I froze.

  They came from outside the homestead — slow, careless, accompanied by low voices and the scrape of metal. I pushed myself to my feet and stepped back into the yard.

  Three men moved among the bodies.

  They laughed as they worked, stripping rings from fingers, tugging boots from scorched feet. One knelt beside a fallen farmhand I had known since childhood, prying at a belt buckle with a knife.

  My stomach twisted.

  The man who seemed to lead them straightened when he saw me.

  He was broad-shouldered, his beard matted with soot, his sword already half-drawn. Over his armor he wore a tabard marked with the sigil of the Church — stained, wrinkled, but unmistakable.

  He pointed his blade at me.

  “Ay, kid,” he said. “Give me everything in your bag.”

  I did not answer.

  My eyes burned as I looked at him — not with tears, but with something hotter. He wasn’t the one who had killed my family. I knew that.

  It didn’t matter.

  My hand moved on its own.

  I set the box down, fingers clumsy, and opened it. The iron caught the light as I drew the weapon free, its weight settling into my palm with terrible familiarity.

  Heat radiated from it — not like fire, but like pressure, like standing too close to something that should not be touched.

  The man hesitated.

  “What in—”

  The sound tore the air apart.

  A single, deafening crack.

  The man’s body jerked as if struck by an invisible hand. He fell backward, sword clattering from his grip, his tabard darkening as he hit the ground.

  Silence followed.

  Not peace.

  Not relief.

  Just silence.

  The other two looters stared — first at the fallen man, then at me. Their faces drained of color as understanding crept in too late.

  My ears rang. My hand shook. Smoke curled faintly from the mouth of the weapon.

  I did not feel powerful.

  I felt hollow.

  And the world would never sound the same again.

  The other two moved at once.

  One rushed me, shouting, blade flashing in his hand. The other broke to the side, scrambling for something on the ground — a spear, a fallen sword, anything.

  I gritted my teeth.

  The weapon bucked in my grip.

  Another crack split the air.

  The first man staggered mid-stride and collapsed face-first into the dirt, skidding to a stop at my feet. The second turned, eyes wide, and tried to run.

  I fired again.

  He fell hard, rolling once before going still.

  The silence rushed back in, thicker than before.

  My breath came fast and shallow. My hands shook so badly I had to tighten my grip just to keep hold of the weapon.

  I looked down at the leader’s body.

  He lay where he had fallen, chest rising no more, the Church’s sigil on his tabard smeared and torn but still visible.

  Something inside me snapped.

  I stepped forward and fired.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Again and again.

  The sound came too fast now — overlapping cracks tearing through the air as I emptied the chamber into his chest. Each shot drove the body back against the ground, cloth shredding, metal buckling. The sigil vanished beneath holes and blood until there was nothing left of it but rags.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  I didn’t know when I stopped.

  My ears rang like bells struck too hard. Smoke curled around my hands. The weapon felt unbearably heavy now, like it was dragging something out of me with every breath.

  Then the pain hit.

  It tore through my skull without warning, white and blinding, as if something inside my head had been wrenched loose. I cried out and dropped to my knees, the world pitching violently around me.

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  My vision narrowed.

  The ground rushed up.

  I clutched my head, teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached, fighting the scream as the pain pulsed again — deeper this time, colder.

  The pain took me.

  Not all at once — it pulled me under.

  I blacked out.

  Faces surfaced in the dark.

  Men and women he had never met, their features unfamiliar and yet unmistakable. The same eyes. The same set of the jaw. Verity faces, one after another, drifting past like reflections on black water.

  Some looked afraid.

  Some looked tired.

  None spoke.

  They faded as I reached for them.

  Then there was light.

  A flat, grey sky stretched overhead when I came back to myself. Clouds hung low and unmoving, as if the world had been scraped clean of color.

  I lay still, listening.

  Nothing screamed.

  Nothing burned.

  Slowly, I sat up.

  The bodies were still there.

  Just as I had left them.

  The looters lay scattered across the yard, their blood dark against the ash. The leader’s tabard was ruined beyond recognition — the symbol torn apart, meaningless now.

  I got to my feet.

  My head throbbed dully, like a bruise pressed from the inside, but it no longer blinded me. I moved among the dead with shaking hands and no ceremony.

  Coins first.

  I took what I could find from belts and pouches, dropping them into my satchel until it clinked with a sound that felt too loud. Then a small sword — serviceable, nicked, but balanced well enough. I slid it into its sheath and strapped it at my waist.

  A pair of gauntlets lay near one of the bodies.

  I hesitated.

  Then I took them too.

  They wouldn’t need them anymore.

  When there was nothing left worth taking, I returned to the homestead steps and sat heavily, armor creaking as I lowered myself down. The ruin loomed behind me, silent and spent.

  My hands found the satchel.

  I opened it slowly.

  Inside was Mara’s cloth bag.

  The same rough weave. The same simple knot. Untouched by fire, untouched by everything that had come after.

  My breath caught.

  For a long moment, I only held it there, resting in my palms, afraid that opening it would finally make everything real.

  The grey sky watched.

  And I sat among the dead, holding the last thing she had given me, knowing that whatever was inside would have to wait — because I did not yet know who I was without her.

  My hands shook as I loosened the knot.

  It took me longer than it should have. My fingers felt thick, clumsy, like they no longer belonged to me.

  It was Mara’s name day today.

  The thought hit late. Useless. I winced as if it were a fresh wound.

  I opened the cloth bag.

  Inside was another wrapping — smaller, carefully folded. When I pulled it free and unrolled it, the smell reached me first.

  Salted pork.

  I stared at it for a long moment.

  Then I laughed.

  The sound surprised me — short, cracked, half-choked — but it came anyway. I could almost hear her voice, clear as the lake on a good day.

  Better to feed you than those pigs of the clergy.

  I pressed the cloth to my face and breathed it in, my shoulders shaking as the laugh faded into something dangerously close to a sob.

  Beneath the pork was a small wooden box.

  Handmade. Rough at the edges. The lid fit a little crooked, like it had taken a few tries to get right.

  I opened it.

  Inside lay a necklace.

  Wood beads smoothed by hand, strung together with colored stones she must have saved for, one by one. At its center hung a small gold pendant — a bird, wings half-spread, intertwined with a piece of clay worked into its body.

  It was imperfect.

  It was beautiful.

  I could see her in it — the patience, the care, the quiet hope pressed into every curve.

  Beneath the necklace lay a folded scrap of paper.

  My breath caught as I opened it.

  Will you live for my dream, my beloved Thomas?

  The words blurred.

  I tried to swallow the tears. I tried to breathe. I tried to hold myself together the way my father had taught me.

  I failed.

  The sound tore out of me — raw, broken, uncontrollable. I folded over myself on the steps of the ruined homestead, clutching the necklace to my chest as I sobbed until my ribs ached and my throat burned.

  Above me, the grey sky did not move.

  But somewhere inside, something did.

  Time passed.

  Not cleanly. Not evenly. It came in pieces — measured by the ache in my shoulders, by the way my hands learned where the blisters would form, by how many times the sun rose before I noticed it again.

  I buried them myself.

  My parents first. Then James. Then Uncle Callus. Then the rest of our kin — cousins, aunts, names that once filled a block with noise and argument and laughter. I worked until my arms trembled and my back screamed, until the earth beneath Old Tumbledown felt like it knew me.

  There were no markers.

  Only stones I stacked where I buried them.

  Only places I would never forget.

  I did not pray.

  I did not curse.

  I dug.

  When the graves were finished, I stayed.

  I survived on what I could find — dried grain missed by the fire, root vegetables unearthed from cellars that hadn’t fully collapsed. I hunted in the woods beyond the fields, learned which paths were still safe, which streams ran clear. The small sword rode my hip now, not as comfort, but as habit.

  My fathers armor never left my chest.

  At night, I slept lightly, wrapped in my cloak, the box close enough to touch. I never opened it again. I did not need to.

  Old Tumbledown did not recover.

  No carts returned. No voices followed the roads. The wells went quiet. Smoke never rose again. Even the crows thinned out once there was nothing left worth picking.

  What remained was silence.

  A deep one.

  I walked the streets sometimes, stepping over places where walls had fallen, where doors hung open to nothing. I knew where every sound used to be. Where James had laughed. Where my mother had stood in the doorway. Where my father had waited after service, adjusting his spectacles.

  Now there was only wind.

  And ash.

  And memory.

  When I finally stood at the edge of town, looking back one last time, there was no ceremony to it. No promise made aloud.

  Only the knowledge that nothing here would ever call my name again.

  And even the silence did not follow.