PART X: A Lonely Death
As Nex and Varya moved through the road, taking no breaks, after two hours they reached the cave, tired and without food or water. They saw the cave from a long distance and found remaining food and water supplies left outside by the Death Company as they took their last rest here. They ran over and downed water and food as fast as they could without missing a beat, and while still holding Amal in her arms, Varya took it upon herself to give the better food to Nex and the cleaner water as well.
After a short while of eating and drinking, they caught their breath while sitting on the ground as they looked at each other's state and chuckled a bit... Varya, once a noble woman, now covered with dirt and blood while caring for a child she never even knew after losing everyone she loved and cared about... Nex, a prince who was forced into slavery, then now covered with blood, bruises, and dirt as his ribcage grew more blue with each passing hour.
They laughed and laughed at finally having a safe place to rest in then came Varya's cries at losing her father and brother and her entire village.
Then followed by Nex's for his inability to protect his people for his weakness...
After a while Varya calmed down and asked
"Well, what now?".
Nex wiped his eyes and looked toward the dark cave entrance. They both knew what they might find inside - or what they might not find.
"Now we head inside and look for Tazan and Actaeon."
Varya nodded, adjusting her grip on Amal.
"Well then, you first, my prince."
"Of course I am," Nex added while faintly smiling, then the smile faded again.
They stood up and walked into the cave, making their way after following the torches set up by the ones who came before them, and on the way Nex noticed something strange.
"There aren't many footsteps... there should be the footsteps of at least seventy people, yet I can only spot like ten."
"Yeah, and I swear I overheard you tell Actaeon not to use lights in the caves."
They both looked at each other, then turned around and started running, and as they got out, their worst fears became true.
At the entrance of the cave was Andras's squad with swords dripping blood and some with injuries, heading inside the cave as they spotted Nex and Varya.
"Hey, who the hell are you two? Get over here!" a guard yelled as he started running towards them.
Nex picked up a torch and threw it at him and ran the other way with Varya carrying Amal in her hands
They're running when they hear the clash of steel and familiar shouts from the other side of the cave. Nex's heart leaps - "Over there, the death company" They change direction, hope flooding through them as they rush toward the sounds of combat.
As the light of the sun hit their eyes coming out from the cave's darkness, the smell of blood, piss, and gore hit their noses. Shielding their eyes, they looked ahead through the trees and bushes only to see Imperial soldiers beneath the banner of Andras—a hunting dog carrying a leg in its mouth. Atop the banner, held highest of all, was a familiar face with a scar over his eye... Leto. Beneath him lay the bodies of villagers who had died surrounding him, protecting him with their lives.
Varya's eyes widened, her lips trembling as recognition struck like a physical blow. Her hands went slack, her knees buckling beneath her as the world tilted sideways. Nex froze, then lurched forward to catch her as she collapsed, his arm wrapping around her waist as she crumpled against him.
A sound escaped her throat—not quite a sob, not quite a scream—but loud enough for the soldiers to hear.
Nex looked up at the banner, then back at Varya shaking against him, unable to hold still. Even though she had accepted her brother's death, she had never wanted it...
The realization hit Nex as heavy as the pommel of the sword that followed, crashing down on his skull. He did this. He sent her brother instead of himself. He broke her—shattered an innocent life. Leto had died because of his decisions, his actions, his weakness... His inability to kill.
"There they are!" The soldiers who had chased them finally caught up. The first one swung his sword with brutal power but little precision, the blade arcing upward from Nex's waist across his torso.
Nex sidestepped easily. Not nearly as fast as Sarah's blade... or even my sister's, he thought, dashing left as the wild slash missed him entirely. He scooped up a large rock and hurled it at the soldier's helmet with a satisfying clang, buying himself precious seconds to draw his sword.
But as he lunged forward to finish the stunned soldier, another blade came screaming toward him from behind. Nex spun, parrying desperately to deflect the strike away from Varya and Amal.
The pursuing soldier swung again, wilder than before. Nex twisted away, but his legs—heavy from hours of running—betrayed him. The blade caught his shoulder, tearing through cloth and flesh with a wet slash.
He gasped, stumbling as warm blood ran down his arm. His body wasn't responding like it should, dulled by exhaustion and terror, nothing like the controlled movements from his training sessions.
A spear thrust from behind pierced the back of his thigh, the iron tip grinding against bone. Nex collapsed to his stomach with a strangled cry, blood pooling beneath him as more soldiers closed in around them.
Varya's eyes finally left the banner. Her trembling stopped. She pulled out a knife.
Nex knew what the knife was for—he saw it in her eyes. That certain look. The same he'd seen in the eyes of war slaves who'd given up. The same he'd witnessed in the deserter Bewolf. The same that had flickered across Chief Oryin's face just hours before. The same that sometimes slipped through his own uncaring mask when he caught his reflection.
The look of someone starving for death. Yielding to it. Wanting it.
Now burning in the eyes of an innocent woman.
Because of him.
"No, Varya, NO!" Nex screamed as soldiers pinned him to the ground.
Varya carefully placed Amal beneath her, shielding the infant with her body before raising the blade to her own throat. The steel bit deep, and she collapsed backward, her blood spilling over the child she'd tried to protect.
Her eyes found Nex's across the few steps that might as well have been an ocean. She reached toward him with her left hand, her lips moving soundlessly—her severed throat allowing only the shape of words. Nex read them through his tears:
I am sorry, young prince.
Her body went still. The light in her eyes dimmed like a candle snuffed out, and she stopped breathing.
Varya of Lif became nothing more than another name Andras and his men would scribble on paper—collateral damage from their war with the Kingdom of Stella.
The soldier pinning Nex down seized his white hair and yanked his head back, leaning close to whisper in his ear: "Your father says goodbye, Prince Nex."
The blade sliced across his throat. Nex gasped, blood flooding his windpipe as he choked on his own life. Amal's cries grew louder, piercing the air.
Nex's eyes widened. He knew his father didn't care for him, but hiring someone to kill him was something he never expected.
The soldier released him and stepped back to watch. Nex crawled toward the infant, leaving a crimson trail with each desperate breath. Blood poured from his throat, pooling beneath him as his vision blurred. Just as his fingers reached for her tiny hand, the soldier snatched Amal away.
Nex's hand fell short, grasping only empty air.
In the distant sky, his fading eyes caught a familiar sight—an eyeless crow hovering above the trees, dozens more gathering behind it. Slowly, they began their descent.
Nex understood. His time in this world was ending. He let his hand find Varya's lifeless fingers, their eyes meeting one final time across the void between life and death.
The light left his eyes.
..............
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....................................
WAKE UP
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Wake up.
..............
Wake up.
.........
WAKE UP.
And breath shot back to him as his eyes regained their light.
Nex gasped, his hand flying to his throat. Where the blade had carved through flesh and windpipe, he found only a scar—smooth and old, as if healed over months, perhaps years.
His vision cleared to reveal the eyeless crow standing on the ground directly in front of him, head tilted in silent observation. When Nex startled, the crow spread its wings and took flight. The others followed—dozens of them lifting from the corpses of soldiers and villagers they'd been feeding on, trailing behind their leader like a dark procession.
What year is it? The thought struck him unbidden. His wound was completely healed, bearing the kind of scar that should take months to form. Yet he never questioned what had healed him—as if, deep down, he already knew.
He looked ahead to where Varya lay, her body showing no signs of decay. He reached out to touch her hand, hoping against hope for warmth.
But Varya's body had only just lost its heat.
Nex was devastated. His eyes couldn't empty tears fast enough—waterfalls streaming down his cheeks as he reached for her with trembling hands. He wanted to speak, to tell her he was sorry, but he had just died and returned to life. His body felt like a corpse—and perhaps it was.
Thirst clawed at his throat from all the blood he'd lost. His thigh wound still bled as if freshly torn. His mind... his mind was missing pieces.
His death had felt eternal. In that void, he'd done something. Spoken to someone. But every time he tried to grasp the memory, his brain drew blank pages—nothing but emptiness and a sharp ringing in his ears that wouldn't stop.
He was alive, but wrong.
As his tears finally settled, he thought about his next step. Immediately, one thing came to mind.
"Amal." He forced himself to whisper, the single word burning his throat inside out.
He tried to stand but collapsed again—his right leg and left shoulder refusing to bear his weight. Tearing a strip of cloth from his shirt, he bound his thigh wound tight the way his aunt had taught him, then grabbed a sturdy stick from beneath a nearby tree to use as a walking staff.
Limping toward the battlefield, he saw the twenty villagers who had volunteered as fake hostages, all dead. Their hands were still bound with ropes—they'd been tied up as planned, presenting themselves as prisoners to infiltrate Andras's camp. But instead of being taken to free the real hostages, they'd been executed on the spot.
Even with their hands bound, the scattered weapons and defensive wounds showed they'd fought desperately before dying. One question echoed in his mind: "Where are they? Where are the striking force and where is Actaeon?"
He searched among the corpses for anyone from the striking force—young men, capable fighters, Actaeon's familiar face. Nothing. The Death Company had numbered seventy-nine men, yet only about twenty villager bodies lay scattered before him. Fifteen dead soldiers, six he remembered seeing alive.
The numbers didn't add up.
He remembered the intelligence they'd gathered from the Chief's trusted sources—Andras supposedly held eighty men or less in total, keeping about thirty guards around him at all times, leaving roughly fifty to guard the hostages.
But the reality was far different. Andras had left behind fifty soldiers and brought more than that to raid the village. Plus the nine guards that had chased them into the cave.
Someone had sold them catastrophically false information. Someone had betrayed them to Andras, delivering not just the fake hostages into that pig's waiting hands, but intelligence about their entire battle plan.
"Who was it."
The voice came again, but now he could tell where it originated—somewhere above him in the darkness. As he tilted his head toward the star-scattered sky, he realized how much time had slipped away. Midnight had claimed the world.
And in that moment of clarity, he finally understood whose voice had been guardian him.
The eyeless crow sat motionless on a gnarled branch overhead, its empty sockets fixed on him. Though its beak remained closed, the words formed directly in his mind a communication meant for him alone.
Then he pondered on the words of "Thing." He called the crow he thought to himself who could it have been that gave away the plan for Andras there was no one that knew except for the people that are dead here, in the village or missing with Tazan and Actaeon.
But he quickly gave up on the thought and started looking around for a clue or a person to ask. He looked between the bodies, committing the dead villagers to his memory while looking around for anyone faking death, and yet... nothing but his sword given to him by Sao and the sigil of the black sun covered in mud and blood while stuck in the ground next to Leto's body.
Nex slowly walked over and picked it up, then took a look at Leto's body—his hood, his clothes. "It should have been me fighting here, dying for my people with my people... Witness me, you Thing." He looked up to the sky, holding the circling crow in his gaze. "I swear on Amal's life and my name—I shall never command a battle from the back. NEVER again. If I die, I shall die fighting here in the mud and dirt and blood with my people that I asked to die for me."
The crow said nothing, just looked back down at him and tilted its head before flying away to the north.
Nex turned and started moving south, passing by Varya's body with a quick glance, then continuing toward where the hostages were held by Andras's soldiers. He headed there alone—without friends, without advisors, without Varya, and without hope.