The water was cold, even colder now that the sun had begun to rise. Arlen stepped out of the stream, drops running down his chest and legs, soaking into the torn remnants of his shirt. He blinked against the pale morning light, quiet and raw, as if the world was still deciding whether it should go on spinning.
He didn't feel cleaner.Not really.
His arms were scraped and bruised, one rib ached every time he moved, and the wound on his side was beginning to throb again. But none of it mattered.
"You killed him.""He would have killed you.""You wanted him to."
He clenched his jaw and shook the thoughts away like water from his hair. They always came back.
The sword leaned against a rock nearby, still stained with blood at the guard. He took it, wiped the blade on the grass, and strapped it to his back. It felt heavier today.
He didn't know where he was going. That wasn't new. He just knew he couldn't stay.
The field beyond the stream was quiet, burned and blackened in places. What had once been farmland was now a graveyard without names. Bodies half-covered by ash. Flags torn down and trampled into the earth.
Arlen walked.
Not fast. Not slow. Just forward. His legs knew the pace. His mind was still somewhere in the water, floating, drifting.
Then he heard it.
A voice.Faint. Fragile.A name, whispered like a prayer.
"Father…"
Arlen stopped.
He turned his head slightly, listening. Another whisper. Closer now. And then the sound of someone stumbling through mud.
He crept toward it, quiet as always, steps practiced through ruined earth.
And then he saw him.
A boy. No older than ten, maybe. Brown-blond hair, face smeared with dirt, eyes red from crying. He was lifting a shattered helmet from the ground, peering underneath it, then moving on to the next. His small hands trembled.
"Father? Are you here…?"
Arlen stood still. Watching.
The boy didn't see him. He moved like he didn't even notice the dead anymore. Only what he hoped to find among them.
He's not a scavenger, Arlen thought.He's searching.
The boy tripped over a broken spear, hit the ground with a soft grunt, but didn't cry out. He just sat up again, wiping his face with his sleeve, and reached for the next body.
That was when he saw Arlen.
He froze, breath catching in his throat.
For a second, they just stared at each other.The boy looked terrified. Not of Arlen — not exactly. Just of being seen.
Arlen said nothing. He knelt slowly and picked up a waterskin from his belt, then tossed it gently onto the ground in front of the boy.
"Drink," he said. His voice was rough from disuse.
The boy blinked. Then nodded and crawled forward. He drank in small gulps, careful not to waste a drop.
When he was done, he wiped his mouth and looked up.
"Did you see him?""Your father?"The boy nodded."No. I didn't."
Silence again.
"What was his name?" Arlen asked."Tomas. He was a soldier. I saw him march with the others.""You were with the army?""No. I followed from far. I just… I needed to make sure he'd come back." The boy looked down at his hands. "He promised."
Arlen's throat tightened.
Promises don't mean anything once the blade sinks in.
But he didn't say that.
Instead, he asked, "What's your name?"
"Elyas.""You shouldn't be here, Elyas.""I know."
Arlen sat down on a broken piece of cart wheel. The wood creaked under his weight. His gaze drifted over the field—over the dead. The silence between him and Elyas stretched, but it didn't feel awkward. Just… hollow.
After a while, he asked:
"Do you know why they fought here?"
Elyas looked up, surprised by the question.
"You mean… this place?"
Arlen nodded.
"This field. This blood. What was it for?"
Elyas was quiet for a moment. His fingers played with the wooden token that hung from his neck. He seemed to think hard, like he was trying to remember something important.
"My father said the king wanted the bridge," Elyas said finally."The one over the river. It's near a town. I think it's called Holn."
Arlen frowned.
"A bridge?"
Elyas nodded.
"He said it's made of stone. Big enough for wagons and horses. The enemy held it. So they came to take it back."
A bridge.Stone and mortar.And hundreds of dead.
Arlen's lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"All this," he muttered, "for a bridge."
He looked down at the mud caked on his boots. At the blood that had already started to dry in the cracks of his knuckles.
"They died for a thing that doesn't bleed. Doesn't cry. Doesn't bury its dead."
Elyas didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
Arlen didn't speak for a long while. The cold breeze tugged at his damp shirt, and the morning mist clung to the air like breath held too long. Elyas sat in the dirt a few paces away, hugging his knees to his chest, eyes fixed on the horizon—where the hills curved like old scars in the earth.
Arlen stared past him. Past the bridge neither of them could see.
And then it came.A memory.
"This land was never worth the blood they spill for it,"his father had said once, sharpening his sword under the red dusk of some long-forgotten evening."It's dry in summer, frozen in winter. No gold in its rivers. No glory in its soil."
Arlen had been young then. Maybe seven. Maybe eight. He remembered watching the sparks fly from the whetstone, thinking the words sounded like treason.
"Then why fight for it?" he had asked.
Gareth had looked up at him. Just for a second.
"Because someone richer told someone poorer that dying for dirt makes you brave."
Arlen ran a hand through his wet hair, eyes unfocused.
"My father said this place wasn't worth a damn."
Elyas blinked, unsure if Arlen was talking to him or to the wind.
"They bled for a bridge," Arlen said again. "But the land beneath it's the same as anywhere else. It doesn't care who owns it."
he wind had quieted. Even the birds had stopped circling.
Arlen stood, brushing dust from his trousers. He looked down at Elyas, still sitting small and quiet among the wreckage of war.
"Come on," Arlen said.
Elyas looked up, surprised.
"Where?"
"Away from here. Away from the dead."
Elyas hesitated. His eyes searched Arlen's face like he wasn't sure if this was a trick.
"Why?"
Arlen shrugged. He didn't have a reason he could explain. Not one that made sense.
"Because I didn't stop you," he said. "And you didn't run."
That was enough.
They walked for a while in silence, keeping to the edges of the field where the bodies were fewer, where the smell wasn't so thick. Elyas kept close, his steps short but steady, as if he'd decided he wasn't going to fall behind no matter what.
Eventually, Arlen asked:
"What was he like? Your father."
Elyas was quiet a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
"He was loud," he said finally. "Always talking. Always singing when he worked. People in the village said he should've been a bard instead of a soldier."
Arlen nodded slowly.
"He ever fight before?"
"No. He was a tanner. Made leather boots. The army came through and took the strongest men. He didn't even argue. Just kissed my mother, packed his knife, and said it would be over fast."A pause."He lied."
"Where was your village?" Arlen asked.
Elyas kicked a rock from his path. It tumbled down into a dry ditch.
"North of Holn. A place called Orensford. It's small. No walls. No market. Just cows and mud and bad bread."He glanced up."You wouldn't like it."
Arlen gave the faintest smile.
"I might."
Elyas didn't laugh, but his shoulders loosened just a little.
"You got a family?" he asked.Arlen hesitated."Had."
They didn't get far.
Elyas stopped suddenly. His feet froze in the dirt, and he stared at something half-buried under a collapsed tent and a pile of broken shields.
"Wait," he whispered.
Arlen turned.
Elyas stepped forward, slowly, like each movement weighed more than it should. He crouched beside a motionless shape—a man, face-down in the mud, a dented helm still barely clinging to his head.
With shaking fingers, Elyas reached out. He touched the edge of the armor. It was simple leather, cut and patched. There was a mark sewn into the shoulder—two stitched lines in the shape of an "O".
Orensford.
Arlen stepped closer but didn't say a word.
Elyas leaned in, hands trembling now, and turned the man's head gently to the side.
Time stopped.
There was no scream. No cry. No gasp.
Just silence.
Then Elyas sat down. Not suddenly. Not with force. He just… folded. Knees in the dirt, arms limp at his sides. His eyes never left the man's face.
"It's him," he said.
Arlen lowered his gaze.
The man's eyes were still open. His mouth slightly parted, as if trying to say one last thing. A streak of dried blood marked his temple. His hand was curled around nothing.
"He told me he'd be back by winter," Elyas said, voice flat. "Said we'd build a fence around the goats. He promised."
A long silence.
Then, almost without sound, Elyas reached into his coat. He pulled out the small wooden token—the one he'd kept close since Arlen first saw him.
He placed it in his father's hand and closed the fingers around it.
"Here," he whispered. "So you won't be cold."
Arlen looked away. Not out of discomfort, but out of respect. The kind a soldier shows when a better man dies.
After a minute, he knelt beside the boy and said softly:
"We should bury him."
Elyas wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat. There were no tears. Just dust, and blood, and something older than grief.
"Not here," he said. "Not in this place."
Arlen looked at him.
"Then we carry him."
They had barely begun to shift the weight of Tomas's body when it started.
A sound.Distant. Steady. Rhythmic.
At first, it was just a tremble in the dirt beneath their feet. Then it grew. The low thump of boots on earth. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
Arlen froze.
He turned his head slowly toward the eastern ridge, where the mist was thinning.And there—emerging through the haze—came flags. Metal glinting. Armor clanking. Lines of soldiers, spears upright, helmets down.
"No…" Arlen whispered.
Behind them, to the west, another sound began. Different cadence. Heavier. Cruder. The clash of shields. War cries.
He turned—and there they were too. Another army. Marching fast. Red banners, ragged and stained. Many on foot. Some on horseback.
Both forces were coming.
And this cursed field... is in the middle.
Elyas stared, wide-eyed.
"Why now? Why again?""Because they never finished," Arlen said, voice grim. "And they never will."
He glanced down at Tomas's body, still lying in the dirt, the token still clutched in his hand.
"They'll trample him."
He looked to Elyas.
"We can't carry him."
The boy opened his mouth, then shut it. He shook his head violently.
"No. No, I won't leave him—"
"You'll die if you stay."
"I don't care!"
"He would."
That stopped him.
That stopped him.
Elyas stood there, fists clenched at his sides, breathing hard. Arlen could see it—the war inside him. The desperate, childlike refusal to let go. And the hollow, growing knowledge that he had no choice.
The ground began to shake.
Arlen didn't wait for permission.
He grabbed Elyas by the arm and yanked him back, away from the body, away from the stones, away from everything.
"No—Arlen, stop!" Elyas screamed."We can't leave him!""We already did."
Behind them, hooves thundered.
Two charges—one from the east, one from the west—galloped straight for each other, and for the field between. For them.
The air filled with the roar of horses and men. The glint of lances. The war drums beating like a second heartbeat.
Arlen didn't stop. He pulled Elyas down a slope, feet sliding in the mud, past a crumbled trench, into a shallow depression in the earth. It wasn't shelter—but it was low. Maybe low enough.
"Get down!" he barked, throwing the boy to the dirt and covering him with his own body.
And then—
Chaos.
The cavalry collided like storms, steel crashing into steel, bone into iron. Arlen risked one glance upward—
—and saw it.
Horses trampled over the dead. Over the flags. Over Tomas.
Elyas saw it too.
He pushed against Arlen's weight, screaming, clawing, but the sound was drowned out by the clash of war. One black horse rose up, hooves kicking in the air, then slammed down—
—right on the body.
Tomas's form vanished beneath hooves and mud and fury.
The two sides met in the middle like a wave crashing into stone. Swords flashed. Men screamed. Armor splintered. And still the horses ran.
Arlen held the boy down, teeth clenched, blood pounding in his ears.
"Don't look," he hissed. "Don't. Look."
But it was too late.
Elyas saw everything.
And in that moment, whatever was left of his childhood broke.
When it was over—when the first wave had passed and the battlefield moved on without them—Arlen lifted himself off the boy.
Elyas didn't move.
He just lay there, shaking, fists clenched in the dirt, eyes wide and blank.
Arlen reached out, unsure what to do.
But no words came.
Only silence.
And the scream of war, still echoing in the distance.