The rain softened into a mist as dusk crept over the battlefield. Hiraeth could barely stay conscious, but Oren kept talking, as if the sound of his own voice kept the horrors away.
"Don't pass out on me," Oren muttered, tightening his grip on Hiraeth's limp arm. "I didn't crawl through hell just to lose you now."
He tried to lift Hiraeth again—his battered muscles trembling—but the weight was too much. They fell back into the mud with a wet thud.
Oren winced."Okay… maybe we do this in pieces."
He tore strips of cloth from a dead soldier's tunic, wrapping them around Hiraeth's twisted leg to stabilize it.
His hands were clumsy, shaking from hunger and exhaustion.
"Damn… I used to be good at this." Oren forced a weak laugh. "Three weeks stuck under corpses turns your fingers into stiff twigs."
Hiraeth watched him silently."Three weeks…? How did you last that long?"
Oren paused, eyes drifting toward the horizon, remembering.
"The Rustborn aren't like other tribes," Oren said quietly. "We grow up scavenging. We learn to move unseen, survive on scraps, sniff out danger before it bites."
He tapped the chain of metal charms around his neck—gears, nuts, and fragments of broken weapons.
"Everything breaks. Rustborn learn to live in the breakage."
Oren looked back at Hiraeth, his one eye filled with a strange mixture of pride and pain.
"But even we aren't built for what happened here."
He gestured at the endless plain of corpses.
"When the two armies clashed… the Rustborn were caught between them. We came to scavenge after the first wave of fighting. We didn't expect a second wave."
His voice cracked.
"My family… friends… I watched most of them fall. The rest scattered."
Hiraeth opened his mouth to speak, but Oren cut him off with a shaky grin.
"Save your breath. You look like a boiled potato. The talking is my job right now."
Oren grabbed the long blade he'd dragged—a Rustborn scythe forged from welded scrap metal. Its edge was chipped; dried blood clung to its serrations.
"I wasn't just hiding," Oren admitted. "I was hunting supplies. Water. Rations. Anything."
He patted his blood-covered bandages.
"The eye? Lost it to a Vulkrad berserker who wasn't as dead as he looked. I stabbed him first, but he took the eye as payment."
He grinned darkly.
"Guess he thought I'd look better with a matching battle scar."
Then his expression softened, trembling.
"But the worst part wasn't the beasts. Or the rain. Or the hunger."
Hiraeth frowned. "Then what?"
Oren's voice lowered.
"The loneliness. Being alive when everyone else isn't… it eats you from the inside."
He turned away, pretending the rain had gotten into his eye.
"When I crawled out… I thought I was the last Rustborn left."
Silence fell between them, thick as the fog rolling over the corpses.
Oren stood and adjusted his grip beneath Hiraeth's shoulders.
"I was going to leave. Head north. Find any trace of our caravans."
He paused.
"But then I saw a light."
Hiraeth blinked. "Light…?"
"That cloth on your arm," Oren said, pointing. "It was glowing. Even through the rain and the dead."
He shook his head slowly.
"At first, I thought I was hallucinating. But when I got closer…"
He smiled—real, soft, relieved.
"…I recognized you. And suddenly the battlefield didn't feel so empty."
Oren lifted Hiraeth again, grunting with effort.
"Rustborn law says we never abandon one of our own. Doesn't matter if you're friend, enemy, or just someone who once shared a meal."
He smirked.
"And you, Hiraeth? You saved my life eight years ago when an Asterra patrol tried to cut my hands for 'stealing metal.' You didn't even know my name."
Hiraeth remembered. Vaguely. A scruffy boy, frightened but defiant. A young soldier stepping in front of him.
"You owed me a debt?" Hiraeth murmured.
Oren shook his head.
"No. This isn't debt."
He tightened his grip.
"This is gratitude. And maybe… maybe holding onto someone familiar keeps me sane."
His voice cracked again.
"Please don't die, Hiraeth. I already lost too many."
With staggering steps, Oren dragged Hiraeth across the field.Every few meters, he stopped to breathe.
Rain turned the ground into sludge.
Crows watched from broken spears.
The world smelled of rust, blood, and endings.
But one thing kept moving:
Two survivors—one broken in body, the other in spirit—leaned on each other as they crawled toward a future neither believed they'd see again.