When I wake, the world is noise.
Not sound — just noise. The low groan of wood, the hiss of something burning far away, the ache in my chest that hums like it wants to crawl out through my ribs.
Light leaks through torn canvas. I try to move my right arm, but it doesn't answer. I forget for a heartbeat that it's gone. Then the memory floods back — the smell of blood and salt, the sound of a scream that might've been mine. My father's voice cutting through it all.
"Weakness has no place in this house."
The echo of his words still rattles somewhere deep in my skull.
I sit up, or try to. The world sways. My vision flickers between dark and light — the ruined edge of a tent, muddy boots, something shifting outside. My left hand presses against my ribs; the bandages are damp. The air smells of boiled leather and human sweat.
"Alive," a voice mutters. Someone steps closer — a soldier with half his face hidden under a cowl. "You're the Count's son, right? Kaelen, was it?"
My throat is dust. "Was."
He snorts. "You nobles all talk like poets when you're half dead." He tosses something on the ground — a piece of bread, hard as stone. "Eat before they drag you out."
I stare at the bread. I don't move.
He doesn't wait for a thank-you. He leaves, and I hear him spit outside before the tent flap falls shut again.
For a long while, I just breathe. In. Out.
The sound of war is far away now — muffled, like the world is holding its breath. But underneath, there's still that faint vibration. The one I started noticing since the night my father branded me. Like something in the soil is awake.
I don't tell anyone.
The order comes by noon.
"Up, cripple," someone growls as they pull the tent flap open. Two soldiers — neither older than twenty — grab me by the shoulders and haul me up. I almost vomit when my leg gives out, the pain shooting white through my head.
"Easy," one says. "Don't want him dead yet."
They laugh. I don't.
Outside, the camp spreads in uneven rows of tents, the kind that sag from rain and neglect. Horses snort nearby, their ribs showing. Fires smolder in shallow pits. The sky is a dull, colorless sheet.
The column is forming — hundreds of men, all bearing the red insignia of the collapsing empire.
"Move," one soldier barks, shoving me forward.
I limp into place near the back. Every step grinds through my bones. I hear mutters — voices low, but sharp enough to cut.
"That him? The Count's boy?"
"The coward who couldn't lift his own sword?"
"I heard his own father took his arm."
They don't even lower their voices by the end.
The column starts to move.
Mud sucks at our boots. The wind smells like iron and rain. Somewhere behind us, the sea whispers against the cliffs — the sound of home, or what used to be. I want to turn back and see it one last time, but I know I won't survive if I do.
Every few paces, I hear someone coughing up blood.
Every few paces, I think I hear whispering from beneath the ground.
Maybe it's just the wind through broken helmets.
Maybe not.
I keep my head down and walk.
Hours pass — or days. The light doesn't change much anymore. Time in war loses color, like everything's painted over in mud and memory.
The men around me talk to stay sane.
Or maybe to prove they're still alive.
"Five months and still no reinforcements," one says. "The emperor's bones must be dust by now."
Another laughs bitterly. "If he's still breathing, it's because he's feeding on the rest of us."
I don't speak.
Then a voice behind me — rough, older. "You Kaelen, right? The little noble from the coast?"
I turn slightly. The man has scars running down both arms, like rivers cut into his flesh.
"Yeah," I whisper.
He spits to the side. "Knew your brother. Fought under him in the Third Siege. Brave bastard. You?"
I say nothing.
He chuckles, low. "Didn't think so."
The others laugh with him. For a moment, the sound feels almost human.
But when the laughter dies, the silence feels heavier.
Somewhere ahead, a horn sounds — long and low. The column halts. We've reached the "line," or what's left of it.
It's not a battlefield — it's a graveyard still pretending to fight. The trenches stretch out like open veins, filled with men too tired to stand and too stubborn to die.
A man waits on the ridge above — the commander. Commander Moloch, they call him. He's not large, but everything about him feels carved from granite. His armor is cleaner than the rest, his expression a study in contempt.
He looks down at me as if inspecting an insect.
"So this is the boy the Count sends," he says. "Half a man and half a disgrace."
The soldiers laugh again — more hesitant this time.
I meet his gaze and don't look away.
"Speak, boy," he says. "Your father's name carries weight here. Even his filth should have a tongue."
Something burns in my chest, old and deep. "If you mean to kill me," I say quietly, "get it over with."
He smiles — slow and cruel. "Oh, not yet. Your father wants you humbled, not dead. Said you needed to learn what the front tastes like."
He steps closer. His boots crunch in the mud. "On your knees."
I don't move.
He raises his voice. "I said, kneel!"
The nearest soldier slams the butt of his spear into the back of my knee. Pain explodes down my leg and I drop, gasping.
The commander crouches, his voice soft enough that only I hear it.
"Do you know why the Empire bleeds, boy?"
I stare at him through the mess of my hair.
"Because of people like you," he says. "Born into silk, raised to believe mercy is virtue. But war doesn't want mercy. It wants teeth."
He stands, draws his sword — not to kill, but to humiliate. The flat of the blade smashes across my face. My head jerks sideways; blood fills my mouth.
The soldiers laugh again.
I taste mud. Salt. The same taste I remember from home — the sea wind, the storm, the moment before lightning hits.
Something breaks in me then. Not courage. Not rage. Just the thin layer of silence that's kept me sane.
I lunge.
I don't think. I grab for the nearest weapon — a rusted dagger at a soldier's belt — and swing. The blade barely cuts through air before someone grabs my arm. I'm thrown down, boot pressing into my throat.
Moloch laughs. "That's it. There's the Count's blood."
He stomps once, hard. Something in my leg cracks. The sound is small, but the pain is infinite.
"Remember this," he says. "When you beg for death, remember that this is your father's mercy."
The world starts to dim.
I hear voices fading, fading — laughter mixing with something else. A whisper. Deep, like the earth itself sighing through me.
Kaelen...
I open my eye, but there's only mud and sky.
The whisper again — not words this time, just sound. Almost like a pulse. The ground beneath me trembles.
The soldiers step back. One mutters, "The hell was that?"
"Quake," someone says. "Just the ground settling."
But I know better. The earth doesn't settle like that. It breathes.
Moloch sneers down at me. "Get him to the ditch. Let him watch what a real war looks like."
They drag me. My leg screams with every jolt. The world is fog and blood and dirt.
We reach the edge of a trench — a pit filled with bodies and water and what used to be men. They drop me there like trash.
"Welcome to the front, noble," one says. "Try not to die before dawn."
Their laughter fades as they leave.
I lie there, staring up at the colorless sky. The taste of iron and rot fills my lungs.
Someone groans nearby — another soldier, face half gone. His eyes find mine.
"You new?" he whispers.
I nod.
He tries to smile, but it's more a grimace. "Don't sleep. They come when you sleep."
"Who?"
"The ones under," he says softly. "The ones that dig."
Then his eyes roll back, and he stops breathing.
I stare at him for a long time. I don't know if I'm crying or if it's just the rain.
The night crawls in slow. I can still hear them — the soldiers above, laughing, drinking, pretending this isn't hell.
Somewhere beneath me, the soil shifts again.
And for the first time, I whisper back.
"Then take me."
But nothing answers — not yet.
Just silence.
Just the war.
Just me.
Hours later — or maybe a lifetime — the first scream cuts through the fog. It's not mine this time. Someone shouting, "They're breaching! Shields!"
Figures rush past the trench's rim — silhouettes against the pale dawn. Arrows whistle. Fire lights the edges of the mist.
I drag myself upright, one arm and one leg. The pain blurs everything into one long heartbeat.
"Kaelen!" someone yells — the scarred soldier from earlier. "Get up! They'll cut through us!"
I don't know how I move. I just do. Crawling, gasping, clutching the dagger I never dropped.
The world becomes noise again — the clash of metal, the hiss of fire, the sound of men praying between screams.
I stab once. I think I hit someone. Or maybe I just cut mud.
Then the blast — a wall of force that tears through the trench, knocking me back into the pit.
My head hits something hard. For a moment, I see light — not firelight, but something cold and deep, shining up through the cracks in the earth.
Whispers again.
Kaelen... rise.
Then darkness.
When I wake again, it's quiet.
Too quiet.
The trench is empty. The air tastes different — older. The sky is darker than it should be for dawn.
I try to stand. My leg holds, barely.
There's no one left. Not Moloch. Not the soldiers. Just footprints and the faint smell of smoke.
I look down at my hand. The dagger's still there. The blade hums faintly — like it remembers something I don't.
Somewhere far off, the sea roars. Or maybe it's the sound from beneath the soil again.
I start walking.
Not because I know where I'm going.
But because I don't want to be still.
Stillness is death here.
And I've died enough.
That night, I dream.
Not of my father, or Elyra, or the home I lost.
But of the trenches breathing — slow and steady, like the world itself is alive.
And beneath that breath, a whisper that isn't cruel or kind. Just inevitable.
Before you hurt a good man, it says, remember the devil was once an angel.
When I wake, I whisper back,
"I'm not sure which I'm becoming."
And somewhere in the distance,
the earth answers with a heartbeat.