Ashes of Rivaria

The bar smelled of rotting wood and regret. Jay Boron’s cheek clung to the sticky countertop, the grain of the wood imprinting itself into his skin like a brand. Somewhere beyond the fog in his skull, a glass shattered. Laughter erupted—sharp, guttural, wrong. It slithered into his ears and coiled there, morphing into the wet, choking coughs of men drowning in their own blood. Tom’s cough. Tom’s laugh. “Get up, you dumb oaf!” A meaty fist slammed down beside Jay’s head. He flinched, the barstool screeching like a shell whistling overhead. His eyelids peeled open, crusted with sleep and something darker. The face looming over him was a ruddied moon, pockmarked and sneering. Nikolai. The butcher from the market, reeking of cabbage and cruelty. “You’ve been hogging the bar spot since sunrise,” Nikolai spat, flecks of spittle glinting in the greasy lamplight. “Some of us actually work for our drink.” Jay’s tongue felt like a corpse in his mouth. He tried to speak, but his throat closed—gunpowder, always gunpowder—and instead, he gagged. ----‐-------- In the smog-choked underbelly of a city scarred by war, Jay Boron—a veteran drowning in the spectral echoes of battle—fights a silent war against his own mind. Haunted by the death of his brother-in-arms, Tom, and tormented by voices that claw at the edges of reality, Jay seeks refuge in bitter ale. But when he is contacted by an unknown person. Jay is thrust into a deadly game of survival. To uncover the truth, he must retrace his fractured history. But as the line between what he remembers and the cold reality of the truth clash together, Will the survivor still be truly him?.