The ground beneath my boots still smelled of iron, smoke, and blood. No matter how the wind moved through the scarred fields, no matter how much the banners burned to black husks or the earth swallowed its own ash, the air clung to me as if it remembered. My chest rose and fell with each slow breath, but the rhythm was ragged, off-beat, as if my own heart had begun to resist the burden of being alive when so many others no longer were.
I carried the weight of their silence with me. Every corpse that lay unburied behind me seemed to press into my spine, a hand clawing down my back, reminding me I had not merely survived the duel—I had made survival costlier than death. It would be easier if my memories blurred, if the circle of the duel dissolved into smoke and became nothing more than shadowed impressions. But I could still hear every clang of steel, every howl of defiance, every desperate cry as blades carved through the barrier and blood poured out.
The duel had ended, but it had not ended inside me.
I told myself I would walk forward, that the circle would not define me, but my steps carried the echoes of a battlefield that refused to stay buried. My magic flickered faintly around my hands, unbidden, as if even it remembered the raw strain of channeling all that violence.
And in the silence after the storm, my thoughts betrayed me. They dragged me back into the fight, forcing me to relive the moment my opponent's eyes widened—not from fear, but from recognition, as if in the instant before my blade struck, he had seen something in me I refused to acknowledge.
I had sworn that I would not falter. That I would not hesitate. That if the South demanded my strength, then blood was the price I would spill until the throne was carved from certainty. And yet—when the killing blow landed, I was not only executioner. I was heir to a truth too bitter to speak aloud: that every enemy I cut down was a reflection of myself in another shape, another life, another possibility.
The ash underfoot crumbled as I tightened my grip on the hilt still sheathed at my side. The sword had been quenched in blood so deep that even its steel seemed darker now, as if scarred permanently by what it had consumed.
The South's warlock. That was the title they whispered for me now, and it felt less like honor and more like a shackle.
I lifted my gaze to the horizon. Smoke lay thick where villages once stood. The duel might have been mine, but the war itself was never only mine. The North would not stop because one champion fell. They would send another, and another, and the circle would demand I step back into it until there was nothing left of me but the ash I tread upon.
Yet as the thought dug deeper into me, so too did the ache of something more private, more raw than strategy or throne. Faces flickered behind my eyes: not just foes, but the women who walked beside me, tethered to me by bonds of blood, magic, or love twisted into war. Their voices had called out during the duel, but inside the circle, I had silenced even them. Their cries had not reached me through the roar of steel. And now, outside it, their silence pressed heavier than their words ever could.
I wondered if they looked at me differently now. If they, too, had seen the same recognition my enemy had glimpsed before his final breath. Did they fear me? Did they grieve me even as I still stood?
The thought made me stumble, and I hated the weakness of it. My enemies could cut my flesh and I would bleed willingly, but this—this invisible fracture in the bond between me and those who had chosen me—threatened to undo me in ways no blade could.
A gust of wind stirred the ash into brief spirals, and I heard, faintly, the sound of movement behind me. I did not need to turn to know they followed. My companions, my tether to something more human than power or war. I could feel them lingering, hesitant, as though the circle's shadow had not truly released me yet.
I closed my eyes. For a moment, I let the silence drown me whole, let the whispers of ash rise and fall like surf. I did not want to face their eyes—not yet. Because what if they looked upon me not as Ryon, but as the shadow of something becoming monstrous?
But I could not delay forever. The South did not grant such mercies.
Still, my mind refused to let go.
I remembered the heat of his blade when it struck mine, the desperate fury in his stance. He had not fought for himself, but for the North's memory, its pride, its future. And when I struck him down, I did not kill a man—I extinguished the hope that had carried him into that circle. I had known it the instant his body fell, the instant the silence roared louder than the clash of blades.
And the memory would not let me rest.
"Ryon."
Her voice—low, steady, carrying the quiet storm of someone who had watched too much and said too little—cut through the fog of my thoughts.
I turned, and her eyes met mine. There was no accusation in them, but neither was there ease. She searched me as though she feared she might find something unrecognizable.
I had no words for her. What could I say? That victory did not taste of triumph? That every breath since felt stolen? That the duel had not ended because I carried its circle with me still?
So I said nothing.
Instead, I turned back toward the horizon. The throne of the South loomed distant, veiled by war and fire, but still it called to me. Not as promise, but as sentence. And I knew, even as the ash crumbled beneath my feet, that every step toward it would demand more duels, more silence, more fragments of myself carved away.
But I could not stop. Not now. Not when too much had already been buried in my name.
The ash remembers. And so must I.
I walked forward.