The missive was simple, but it carried the weight of a war.
"I will come for my fallen. Without compromise. If you want battle, you'll have it."
The parchment crumpled faintly in Alexis's hand, his thumb pressing into the ink as though he could erase it.
He had read it three times already, yet the words cut sharper each time.
On the fourth reading, he laughed—a hollow, broken sound.
"So that's it…" His voice rasped, thick with bitterness. "It can't be stopped."
Whether he handed over the bodies with open palms or barred the gates with steel, the truth remained: his men had been the cause of their deaths.
Even if Hiral did not strike that very day, he had no reason to hold back and had all the reasons to strike. The blood was permanent, the scar carved deep.
And Alexis knew the general well enough to see the snare hidden in mercy. Hiral could retrieve the bodies in silence, then make use of the event to corner Alexis.
With a sigh, Alexis penned his reply with steady strokes, though his hand ached from restraint.
"Come. Take them. You have my word no blade will be drawn unless you strike first."
When the wax seal cooled, Alexis pressed his lips tight against the koi pendant and drew a long, shuddering breath. His chest felt strangled, suffocating, as if every gasp of air scraped him raw.
He could not leave it to chance.
That night, he gathered a small retinue of men he trusted without question—hardened veterans who owed their loyalty to him alone, not to nobles' purses.
They went without banners, without trumpets, without the proud blaze of Ro's crimson.
Only cloaks, silence, and blades for shadows.
By dawn, Alexis stood upon the soil of the vassal state.
The air still reeked of smoke and rot. Charred wood groaned in the breeze, the remnants of homes sagging into ash.
Broken spears jutted from the earth like tombstones, and blood had blackened into the dirt, permanent as iron.
He ordered the premises secured with ruthless efficiency—silent signals, scouts placed high in the ruins, archers concealed in collapsed walls.
Every breath of the land belonged to him and his men, every shadow tensed for movement.
And yet, as Alexis sank into the hollow of a shattered barn, cloaked in darkness, his gut twisted.
His gaze swept the horizon, searching for the banners of the East, for the shape of a man he could name across any battlefield.
But what he did not see—what none of his men saw—was the glint of young eyes beneath the rubble.
The lone survivor of the massacre crouched in a hidden hollow only a native would know, fists wrapped tight around a jagged blade of iron.
His breath was shallow, his heart steady with a clarity born from despair. To him, every soldier bore the same face: the face of ruin.
And so, in the silence before the storm, the boy waited to strike the first shadow that dared step too close.
****
Dawn had only begun to stretch pale fingers across the horizon when the Eastern banners did not appear—but Hiral did.
No fanfare, no trumpets.
Just a small squad of scouts and hardened fighters, their boots crunching softly over the charred soil of the vassal land.
The silence around them was heavy, as though even the earth held its breath.
At the entrance to the ruined village, the bodies awaited. Each one draped in white cloth, laid out with reverence that could not mask the violence beneath.
Hiral strode forward first. His gloved hands lifted the shrouds one by one, revealing faces he had known, men who had trusted him, boys barely grown into soldiers.
The brutality marked their corpses—throats cut with no clean strike, torsos carved with rage rather than precision, eyes left open as though the killers had not even cared to grant them dignity.
For a moment, his composure was stone. Then colder. Sharper.
The scouts who stood behind him felt the shift in the air, the way his silence cut more than his words ever could.
"Carry them," he said at last, voice flat and edged.
His men moved at once, shoulders stiff with restrained fury as they lifted their comrades.
And then—
A raw shout split the silence.
From the ruins, a youth burst forth, eyes blazing with grief and hatred, blade raised in desperate defiance.
He ran not at the Ro soldiers hidden in shadow, but straight at Hiral.
Steel flashed.
In a blur of motion, Hiral pivoted.
His hand caught the youth's wrist, twisting the crude blade free with effortless precision. His other arm swept, knocking the boy flat into the dust.
The fighters at his side reached for weapons, but Hiral stilled them with a glance. His gaze lingered on the youth—ragged, wild, his body thin from hunger yet burning with the will to fight.
A local. A survivor.
Hiral's stance softened, though his eyes never lost their frost. He raised his voice, pitched not just for the boy, but for the shadows he knew were watching.
"Soldiers of Ro."
The words carried across the ruins like a challenge, clear and unshaken.
"Is this your hand? Sending a wounded child to fight your battles? How cowardly, when he is already the victim of your own sins."
The boy groaned as Hiral released him, leaving him limp in the dirt.
With unexpected care, Hiral dragged him closer to the entrance, laying him where any could see.
Then he rose, cloak shifting in the cold morning air, and turned his gaze once more toward the hidden Ro soldiers.
"Listen well," he called, voice ringing across the stillness. "Battle is inevitable. Prepare yourselves, for we will strike with all we have. The blood you spilled, the cowardly provocation you orchestrated—"
His hand clenched, as if crushing the very air. "—shall be repaid a hundredfold."
His men bore the bodies away, their departure marked not by drums of war, but by the quiet thunder of grief turned to vengeance.
In the shadows, Alexis watched, every muscle drawn taut, his chest filled with dread.
For, Alexis's heart stuttered the instant the youth burst from the ruins.
For a split second, instinct nearly tore him from the shadows—his body leaning forward, throat burning to shout that the boy's action was his own.
But then he saw him.
Hiral's composure, colder than ice.
That sharp, merciless calm carved into his face as he disarmed the boy and laid him low.
It wasn't rage—it was something more dangerous.
A judgment that cut deeper than any blade.
And when Hiral turned, when his voice rang across the ruins—
"Soldiers of Ro, Is this your hand?"
—the words struck like a spear through the ribs.
Alexis's breath caught, strangled in his throat.
His body stiffened, muscles locking under the weight of grief that suddenly surged like a tide.
Every nerve screamed to deny it, to step out, to tell him no—this wasn't his doing.
But Hiral's gaze…
Cold, unyielding, unshakable.
It froze him where he stood.
Alexis's hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms.
He couldn't move.
Couldn't speak.
The accusation wasn't just spoken—it was believed. And in that belief, Alexis was already condemned.
So he stayed rooted in the shadows.
His chest tightened as Hiral placed the unconscious youth at the entrance, not with cruelty, but with a care that only deepened Alexis's shame.
Then, Hiral's vow thundered through the silence—vengeance promised, battle declared.
"The blood you spilled… shall be repaid a hundredfold."
The words echoed, again and again, long after Hiral and his men began their slow march away with the bodies of their fallen.
Alexis did not follow.
Did not breathe until the sound of Eastern boots had faded into the distance.
Only then did his legs give way, his body trembling as though struck down.
He pressed a hand to his mouth to smother the sound in his throat—a laugh, or a sob, he couldn't tell.
Still, Hiral's voice haunted him.
That cold gaze burned into his bones.
And Alexis remained in the shadows, suffocating beneath the weight of a guilt that wasn't wholly his—and yet a sin he must carry.