Whoever takes the life of another without just cause—whether for vengeance or to spread corruption—has, in effect, destroyed all of humanity. But whoever preserves a life, it is as though they have saved all of mankind.

  -From the Undisputed.

  Chapter One

  A lone figure sat amidst the ruin of battle, his armor slick with the blood of the fallen. Some had been allies, others sworn foes—but in death, they were indistinguishable. The broken earth around him drank deep of their sacrifice, littered with shattered weapons and sundered banners. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, its edge dulled by flesh and bone, its steel reflecting only the crimson-streaked sky.

  Through the visor of his battered helm, he saw only ruin. The clash of steel had faded, the screams now distant, lost to the wind that whispered across the corpses.

  With but a single word, he had once commanded armies. Loyal knights had followed him without question, and craven wretches had groveled at his feet. Yet now, none of it mattered.

  He lifted his gaze to the heavens—cold, indifferent stars gleaming far beyond mortal reach. Was this struggle anything more than an echo in the vast cruelty of the universe? Did it matter at all?

  Jaw clenched, he forced himself upright. A hush fell over the battlefield as those few who remained saw him rise. Their looting ceased, their whispered prayers faltered. He did not look at them. He saw no banners, no comrades, no enemies.

  He took a step forward, then another, his gait slow, heavy with the weight of what had been lost. The battlefield stretched in every direction—a wretched monument to the folly of men. Bodies lay where they had fallen, their faces twisted in final moments of agony, their hands still clutching at wounds that could neither be stitched nor mended.

  The stench of blood and burnt flesh clung to the wind, mingling with the rot of the dead.

  Shattered shields lay half-buried in the mud, their sigils unrecognizable beneath the grime. Mangled pieces of bones jutted from broken bodies, their marrow soaked in crimson. The crows had already begun their feast, black shapes moving like shadows among the fallen. A severed hand, still clad in its mailed gauntlet, reached toward nothing, fingers curled as if grasping for a salvation that had never come.

  The warrior walked through it all, his steps slow, his mind distant. Each corpse was a name that once was known, a voice that would never be heard again. The cries of the dying had faded, but the silence they left behind was worse.

  Still, he walked. Not toward victory, not toward glory—only toward home, beyond the horizon.

  One by one, the survivors stirred. Those who still drew breath, who could still stand, saw the sigil upon his armor, smeared though it was with gore and dust. Recognition dawned in their hollowed eyes. Their hands, stained and trembling, abandoned their scavenging. Their weary limbs carried them forward, step by painful step, until they followed in his wake.

  No words were spoken. None were needed. The battlefield behind them wept in silence, its rivers of blood carving paths through the mud. The crows screeched their requiem, and the wind carried the final whispers of the dead. The march home had begun—not in triumph, but in indifference, a funeral procession for the pitiless oven beneath an indifferent sky.

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  Some could not forget the price of peace. Old men and women sat in the corners of dimly lit streets, their voices hushed, their eyes distant. They spoke not of victory, nor of glory, but of survival—of what had been lost, of who had been buried beneath the fields where dark grain now grew. They did not celebrate; they endured, carrying ghosts that whispered to them in the dark.

  Not all wounds bled, nor did all scars fade. The conscripts who had returned—those few who had outlived the war—moved through the world as if they no longer belonged to it. Their hands were steady in labor but trembled in solitude. Their gazes were distant, haunted, as if still searching for enemies long since buried. Some had found purpose in the rebuilding, but others wandered, nameless and lost, drifting through a world that had moved on without them.

  Recovery did not mean that the wounds of the past were being erased; it meant that the scars no longer defined the whole. The land, once ravaged by death and soaked in the blood of countless battles, was hardly recognizable. To the unknowing, it was nothing but a peaceful stretch of fields, calm, a place untouched by the horrors that once married its surface. Yet beneath the ashen soil, the bones of the fallen had crumbled into dust, their sacrifice now a quiet, unspoken part of the earth. The blood that had stained the ground, once a river of woe, had been carried away by time and the current, leaving behind only the gentle flow of murky waters. The land, was just there.

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  Beyond, where the horizon met the sky, the monuments stood. They did not inspire, nor did they comfort. They were reminders—cold stone and silent accusations against the cruelty of history. As the sun dipped behind the barren hills, the land seemed to exhale a tired sigh, and for a moment, it was as if time itself hesitated, uncertain whether to press forward or collapse under the weight of memory.

  The dead were forgotten. Their names lost the lips of those left behind, their echoes hushed to the silent abyss, cried in no songs that were sung. The land had not prospered from their sacrifice—it barely qualified to be called simply survived. And for those who remained, that survival was no triumph. It was a burden, one they bore without complaint, because there was no one left to listen.

  Peace had come. There was no rejoice. It was the peace of silence, of emptiness, of things broken that could never be made whole again.

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  The village of Harrowstead stood on the edge of the world—or at least, it felt that way to those who lived there. A collection of wooden homes huddled against the great blackened cliffs, where the wind howled like the voices of the lost. The settlement had survived generations of hardship: war, famine, and winters so cruel they stole the breath from infants before their first words could be spoken. And yet, it endured.

  At its center stood an ancient stone structure, weathered by time and the ceaseless battering of the elements. Some called it a temple, others a relic of forgotten gods. Its cracked facade and leaning steeple cast long shadows over the village square, its hollowed interior a place of silent reverence. Though no prayers had been uttered there in generations, the people still gathered within its crumbling walls during moments of great sorrow or uncertain hope, as if the stones themselves might remember the faith they had long since lost.

  Its stone had darkened with age, its engravings worn to near illegibility by time and touch. It was here that the village marked the passage from childhood to adulthood. For centuries, every son and daughter of Harrowstead had knelt before it under the watchful eyes of the elders, their hands pressed against the cold, unyielding surface. They kissed and whispered their names to the shrine’s weathered bones as a promise to carry the weight of the village’s survival. Not all who knelt rose again as they once were. Some left behind more than just their names.

  Beside the shrine stood the village's attuned, a man older than memory itself, draped in faded robes adorned with symbols no one alive could still decipher. His hollow eyes gleamed with the weight of knowing. He did not speak often, but when he did, his words carried the weight of prophecy. As each child pressed their hand to the stone, he watched, searching. Those with a glimmer of the unseen, a whisper of power in their blood, would find his gnarled hand resting upon their shoulder. A quiet word of guidance, a warning, or a reassurance—each tailored to the soul that stood before him. Some left the shrine with their heads held higher, others with their burdens made heavier.

  Tonight, the fires burned high. The scent of roasting venison and spiced mead filled the air, but beneath the revelry was an undercurrent of something heavier—an expectation, a weight pressing down on those who would participate.

  Elias stood apart from the gathering, his back to the flames. He should have felt excitement, or pride, or even fear. Instead, there was only a hollow space inside his chest. He had known this moment would come, had watched others before him kneel at the pillar, their names forever etched in its surface. They had returned to the feast afterward, changed in some unspoken way, their eyes heavier, their laughter dimmer. Elias was expected to do the same.

  But what if he couldn't?

  He did not belong here. Not truly. He was not born beneath the cliffs, nor raised among these people who had taken him in as one of their own. He had been found among the ruins of a bandit encampment, a child of raiders and thieves. The militia had cut down his kin, razed their makeshift homes, and taken him away from a world he barely remembered. He had been too young to understand, too weak to fight. They had called it a rescue.

  He had been raised in Harrowstead since then, fed, clothed, given a name not his own. But the whispers never faded. The stolen child. The bandit's whelp. No matter how much time passed, the blood in his veins would never truly be Harrowstead's.

  The voices of the elders called the first names. One by one, his peers stepped forward, each pressing their hands to the stone, murmuring the sacred words. Each name carved into the pillar was a thread tying them tighter to the land, to the duty that came with it.

  Elias could not move. The village had given him life, but it had also taken much from him. His past, his family—whatever they had been. Perhaps they had been monsters. Perhaps they had deserved their fate. But did that mean he deserved whatever this life that would be pushed on to him? What if he did not kneel? What if he refused?

  The elder called his name. Silence followed. Eyes turned toward him, expectant, unwavering. The moment stretched thin as a blade’s edge. His hands trembled at his sides, his breath shallow. He could not speak. He could not move. The attuned man stepped forward.

  For the first time in his living memory, he broke the silence of the ceremony with discourse at the tounge. His voice, rough as old parchment, carried through the night.

  "You do not have to kneel."

  A murmur spread through the gathered villagers. The attuned man placed a hand on Elias’s shoulder, his gaze deeper than the abyss beneath the cliffs.

  "You were not born of this place, and so it does not own you. There is another path. The world is vast, and it calls to those who listen."

  The old man leaned in, his voice lowering to something only Elias could hear.

  "Go. Seek the halls where magic is not feared but understood. If the blood of your past still haunts you, let knowledge shape what you will become."

  The choice hung in the air. The weight of a life bound to Harrowstead—or the unknown that lay beyond.

  Elias exhaled, long and slow. His heart pounded, but this time, it was not fear.

  It was possibility.