[Haldor's POV—The Beginning]
I was four when the world ended.
The carriage wheels skidded on wet stone—a shriek of iron, a violent lurch—and then we were falling. Rolling. Crashing. The world turning into splintered wood and screams and darkness.
When the world stopped moving, I didn't.
I crawled out from the broken carriage door, glass digging into my palms. I didn't understand the pain. I didn't understand the blood.
All I understood was one thing, My mother wasn't moving.
Her hand—the gentle hand that braided my hair every morning—hung motionless against the shattered frame. My father lay beside her, his sword broken, cracks of red spreading beneath his armor like roots of a dying tree.
That day, before I ever learned to write my name, I learned a different word.
Death.
People say grief is heavy. But in that moment, grief wasn't heavy. It was empty. So empty it swallowed every sound from the world.
