The wind picked through the ruin, lifting ash in slow spirals and scattering it across the Thomas River banks. The dragon’s carcass lay split open beneath the low sun, a desecrated cathedral of rib and scale. Steam rose from blackened wounds. Charred meat and melted leather filled the air, and each breath coated Leeonir’s throat, thick and greasy. A taste like burnt copper settled on his tongue.

  Leeonir dropped to his knees. The impact jarred his left forearm and the blisters there split open, weeping clear fluid. White pain shot to his elbow when he tried to close his hand. His legs trembled and threatened to fold. Around him, tents were nothing but glassy stumps, and poles were warped and fused by heat. Banners that had once gone to war with color now sagged in gray strips. Along the riverbank lay the ruined shapes of men and beasts. Helmets were welded to skulls and shields were twisted into shallow bowls that still smoked. A helmet turned toward him, where empty sockets revealed only bone.

  Leelinor moved through the field, and his feet did not seem to feel the ground. His boots sank into layers of ash and churned mud, leaving prints that filled instantly with dark water. His armor was streaked with old blood and fresh soot. Dried tears had carved pale lines down his face. He had killed something vast and ancient, but there was no triumph in him. Only the shrill, hollow echo of loss rang in his ears.

  The thought arrived like a blade under the ribs, twisting slowly. They had trusted him, and he had brought them to this. "They trusted me," he said, his voice raw and small. "They trusted me, and I brought them to this."

  He found what remained of Claamvor near what had once been a supply cart. The wood was gone, eaten to black vapor. Only a warped metal spine remained, curved like the ribs of some smaller carcass. The body lay curled close by, and skin was charred tight against bone while ribs were exposed like the teeth of a comb. One hand still clutched a half-melted hilt, and fingers were fused to the metal.

  For a heartbeat Leelinor did not recognize him. His mind supplied another field, another fire, and another friend. It took effort to drag the name back into this ruin. He fell to his knees and drove both fists into the sodden earth beside the corpse. His fingers dug so deep into the mud that his nails tore. Cold water seeped through his gloves. "I told you to come back," he whispered. The words were a confession. "I promised I would bring them home."

  The dragon’s cooling bulk creaked in the distance as its flesh settled, and the sound crawled up his spine. Leeonir reached him with boots heavy from mud and blood. His face was a map of burns and black streaks, and his hair was stiff with soot. He lowered himself beside the fallen man, and his fingers closed around a strip of scorched cloth.

  "We did what we could," he said. His voice came hoarse and thin. "We tried."

  "It was not enough," Leelinor breathed. "Not for Eldoria."

  The words hung between them. It was not enough for Hiiuf, not for the villagers, and not for the dead who would never know why. They moved through the wreckage together.

  Isaac lay half-buried near a snapped spear, and his body was thrown into a shallow crater. His breath came ragged and wet, bubbling in his throat. Blisters covered his neck and jaw. The smell of burned clothes and flesh wrapped him like a shroud. When Leeonir touched his shoulder, Isaac’s eyes rolled white and his back arched. A scream caught in his ruined throat and came out as a hiss.

  Hajeel was found nearby, curled tight as if shielding himself from a blow. His armor was fused in places and melted against his skin. When they tried to move him, the armor shifted and Hajeel’s mouth opened in a silent cry. The flaming stone sword lay a few feet away, cold and gray. He was alive, but his breath was a fragile rasp.

  Two elves leaned back-to-back against a shattered tree. Their mouths were parted. Their hands still clutched broken blades, and their knuckles were white against blackened leather. Leeonir reached out and touched one’s shoulder. The body tipped sideways and hit the ground with a wet sound.

  A child’s wooden toy floated in a puddle of ashen water, and it was a small wagon with one wheel missing. It bobbed gently against a half-submerged helmet. Leeonir looked past it, across the river. Abundance Village was a bruise on the landscape. Charred beams clawed at the sky while fields lay black as dried blood. Smoke smeared itself against the clouds in thin lines. Bodies rolled in the current, villagers and soldiers alike, and pale limbs reached for a surface that kept sliding away. The Thomas River carried them past, indifferent. Something in his burned arm twitched each time another body bumped against a rock and turned. He lost count and kept counting anyway.

  Behind him, someone spoke with a shaking voice. "Six of us. Six soldiers from tens of thousands." Leeonir did not correct him. The number was wrong, but the feeling was right.

  Leelinor’s gaze dragged to the ridge where Rakaa’s reinforced cart had stood. Nothing remained except a twisted iron frame fused into the ground, and chains were melted into a single black tongue of metal. The earth underneath was glazed as if the dragon’s breath had turned the valley into glass. Rakaa’s last words rasped back at him. If he were Leelinor, Rakaa had said, he would kill himself. They would not let him live. They had burned the warlord and the only living witness who knew which voice had ordered Eldoria’s slaughter. A cold, thin wire of understanding tightened in Leelinor’s chest. This was deliberate.

  "Governor," one of the surviving elves asked. "What do we do?"

  Leelinor looked from the scorched corpses to the melted chains. "We take who we can carry. We lift the wounded and gather the remains of our fallen. We mark the ground for our dead, and then we go home."

  "With what strength?" the elf asked. "With who?"

  Leelinor met his eyes. There was no softness in them, only a tired focus. "With the truth," he said. "And with blood, if it comes to that."

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "And with fire, if they rise against us again," Leeonir said quietly. The words tasted like metal on his tongue.

  They could not bury everyone. There were too many, and the dragon had already done most of the burning. They worked until their hands shook, lifting bodies away from slag and stacking shields over skulls. For their general, it was different. Hajeel, half-conscious, showed them how to pry bone from the fused mass of armor. His hands trembled while tears cut clean lines through the soot on his face.

  Isaac, teeth gritted against the pain, fashioned a makeshift urn from a metal drum. The sound of his hammer against the iron was a slow, steady pulse in the silent clearing. They lined it with the last scraps of banner.

  Leelinor gathered the remains himself. He knelt and removed his helmet. His fingers were reverent as he worked. Every fragment of bone and every pinch of ash was placed as if laying the man down one last time before he sealed the lid. "A good commander comes back with fewer regrets than victories. You taught me that," he whispered. "I failed that lesson."

  Then they turned their backs on the ruined valley. The dragon’s corpse still steamed behind them, a black mountain split open. They left behind markers and unmarked dead, a scar Eldoria would remember long after grass dared grow there again.

  The march began without ceremony. There was no trumpet and no call. They walked because there was nothing else left to do. Isaac was lashed to a litter while Hajeel lay unconscious. Two soldiers limped alongside. A wagon carried an urn and an empty chair. The chair had been built for their fallen general’s weight, and now it rocked with every rut, answering to absence instead of flesh. The dry creak of the wood sounded like an accusation.

  Leelinor walked beside it, his helm tucked under his arm and the urn cradled against his chest. Every creak of the chair sounded like his own failure. On the second day, rain thinned into a cold drizzle. Mud clung to boots and exhaustion sank into bone. Leeonir approached quietly. "You need to ride." Leelinor kept walking.

  "I do not know if I will be the same after yesterday," Leeonir said. "I feel empty. I understand now what it means to give your life for your people. And I am angry that someone would do this deliberately."

  Leelinor turned. His eyes were hollowed by grief. "The anger only grows," he murmured. "And you will never truly know if you succeeded. We have spent hundreds of years trying to unite the races, and still they do not thank us."

  "Then do not ask for their forgiveness," Leeonir said. "Show them who leads them again. Grandfather said we do this so our children will not inherit the same wars."

  Leelinor stared at him, seeing a painful echo of Ecos in the angles of his son’s face. He nodded once. Leeonir bowed and took point beside the wagon. Leelinor mounted Arcanjos. The pegasus’s wings hung low and ragged, and feathers were charred where dragon fire had kissed them. Still, he walked. He was as stubborn as his rider.

  Late on the third day, the Thomas River narrowed. Eldoria’s walls rose through the mist like dark stone teeth. Eldoria had watched the Second Company return not long ago, and now it watched what remained of the Third. Silence weighed heavier than banners.

  Two riders, a wagon with an urn, and an empty chair moved forward. A handful of survivors looked more like ghosts than soldiers. The city held its breath. Mothers searched the procession for faces they feared were gone while fathers clenched their jaws. The crowd became a sea of whispered names and trembling hope.

  The sight of the urn silenced the crowd until a woman screamed. She slammed her fists against the wagon and the wood splintered. Blood welled from her knuckles and mixed with the dirt. "Where are they? Where are our sons and our brothers?"

  A man clawed at the rear rail. "My boy was with you! Where is he?"

  Guards stepped in with shields up, and their voices were tight. The crowd surged forward and stones arced out of the mass to crack against shields. "You promised victory!" someone shouted. "You sent them to die!"

  The smell of sweat, unwashed bodies, and fear thickened the air. A woman fainted and was trampled. Guards hauled her out by the arms while another stone flew. The Third Company passed through a corridor of grief and rage, held apart from their own city by steel and desperation.

  Guhile, ABhoof, Zeeshoof, Caroline, and Karg stood before the plaza. Five councilors stood carved in dread. They had expected losses, but they had not expected this. Leelinor pointed toward the wagon, toward the torn cloth where scorched fingers still clutched a melted hilt. A hush swept the plaza.

  Caroline took a trembling step forward. "We felt the surge. We warned the outposts, but the smoke came too fast."

  "They were ashes," Leelinor said. "Abundance Village is gone."

  ABhoof paled. "That was our granary."

  "And our supply chain," Karg added. "Whoever used that creature did not just kill; they starved us."

  Guhile’s eyes sharpened. "Was it a dragon?"

  Leelinor’s jaw tightened. "Yes. But it was not a wild one." The crowd stilled as if the air itself froze. He stepped forward. "It wore a collar of pale blue energy, and runes were carved directly into light. It tightened when the dragon resisted. I have seen wild dragons and I have fought one. This was not nature."

  Zeeshoof stiffened, and something ancient flickered behind his eyes. "Collars of binding," he whispered. "They are not of this age."

  Guhile turned sharply. "Explain."

  Zeeshoof inhaled a thin breath. "When your father, Ecos, ruled here, he swore before Council and gods that Eldoria would never chain a dragon. Dragon riders once existed, but the stories do not tell the truth. They were tyrants. Runes of domination drove dragons mad and stripped them of reason. The Founders vowed to end that era forever. I told Ecos the legends were warnings, not maps. He believed me."

  He looked to the urn and the empty chair. "If someone forged such a collar again, they have broken more than a pact. They revived a curse."

  A ripple of fear swept the crowd. Zeeshoof shook his head. "Such work requires only knowledge, not wealth or labor. It requires someone ancient and learned. No lone mage makes a dragon bow."

  Murmurs surged through the crowd. Caroline clutched her chest. "If someone inside our walls commands such a weapon…"

  "Then gentleness will kill us," Leelinor cut in. "We hunt them and we expose them. If the traitor sits among us, we carve them out like rot."

  A woman cried out, asking why their sons were taken. A farmer shouted about the ashen fields. The crowd swelled and desperation became fury. Someone shoved a guard and a bottle shattered against stone. Guhile’s voice cut through the chaos. "We must move carefully. We will ration stores and find who forged that collar before more of our people walk into fire."

  Leelinor’s voice lowered with exhaustion. "We will bring them answers and blood if we must. But we will not let fear tear Eldoria apart before we have taken the traitor down."

  He turned Arcanjos toward the healers’ wing. Leeonir lingered only a moment, eyes lifted to the gray sky. "How many of us remain?" he asked quietly.

  Leelinor did not turn. "Too few. But it is enough to name the guilty."

  When the wagon reached the Hall of Heroes, the empty chair was carried in first. It was placed at the end of the long table, a space claimed by absence. The urn was set behind it among carved names and old banners. Leelinor stood there alone, helmet in his hands. He would bring that chair to the Council chamber and set it where every voice had to look at it. He would force them to face what had happened. Outside, the city exhaled a weary breath. Inside, beneath stone and banner and an empty chair, the hunt for the traitor began.