The first dawn came slowly, as if it feared what it would find below.

At first, it did not touch the ground. It lingered at the horizon, pale and cold. When the sun finally rose, heralded by lamentation, its light spilled over a world that was stained with blood.

Saela stood where the line had broken.

Not where it had held. She could not recall that moment. If it had come at all, it had been brief enough to be lost in what followed.

She did not know the place by the bodies. Or…what she supposed were bodies. Friend and foe lay tangled together, and in the end, nobody could tell them apart.

No—she knew the place by the ground. By the way it curved beneath her—where the dead lay thickest. The corpses were half buried in the mud, as if the world was hiding the evidence of what had happened.

She struggled to remember when the fighting had stopped.

One moment there had been noises all around her—steel clashing on steel beneath a dark sky. The next—nothing, which was somehow worse.

Because in that silence there were other sounds.

A scream sounded off to her right.

High. Thin. Animal.

Her head turned instinctively before she could stop herself. She clenched her fists and swallowed hard.

The boy, barely fifteen winters old, lay twisted in the mire, digging his heels into the earth as he tried to force himself upright. He failed. His arms—or what was left of them—slipped beneath him and he crumpled with a broken scream.

“Please… it hurts. Stop… stop, it hurts!” he sobbed, his words strangled. “Ma! Ma! Help! Ma!”

Many heads turned towards him, but no one moved to help.

There was nothing anyone could do.

A wheezing noise sounded beside her. Like laughter—but bitter. “Aye,” the man muttered, “It hurts. That’s…that’s how it is—”

“Enough,” she forced the words through clenched teeth, “Be silent.”

The man lifted his face towards hers. Dried blood coated the left side of his body, his left eye was ruined and the other was trying to focus. “I was only—”

“I said be silent.”

For a moment he stared at her in disbelief, then turned away, “doesn’t matter, anyway. Nothing matters.”

Saela glanced back at the boy, who was curled in on himself now. His cries had given way to broken sobs.

Her fingers coiled around her echa, but she did not draw it.

She sighed and stepped over the corpses around her. The earth sucked at her feet as she moved, making a sound too much like water. She groaned at the thought. She could not recall the last time she had drunk water.

“Saela. You’re alive.” The voice was young, but raised in that familiar tone that her Shakish people spoke in.

Like every Shak, he stood a full head taller than any man she’d ever met. His armor was shattered and hung down in torn plates about his waist. A gash ran down the length of his sword arm and his ear was split in half.

“Aetheren.” Her voice was steady.

“It’s…it’s over.” He stammered. “He’s…dead.”

Saela considered that. The word seemed so small for such an impossible feat. She nodded. “Yes, I suppose he is.” She hesitated, “You look horrible.”

“You look worse.” His voice sounded haunted.

She looked down and saw herself for the first time.

Her armor was dented and torn. The metal at her ribs had caved inward into the wound beneath. Blood coated her skin. Her hair was stiff with dried blood, hanging heavy down her back. None of it was the color it had been before the battle.

She drew a breath; the wound in her side protested sharply.

She tasted iron.

Shrugging, Saela sighed, “I’m fine.”

Aetheren nodded, but couldn’t meet her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

He hesitated, then held out an object, crushed beyond visibility. She took it. As she inspected it, she realized it had once been a vambrace. Her breath hitched as she spotted the thin symbol carved in the metal. Two thin lines overlapped by a Shakish ‘L’.

She stumbled.

Her knee plummeted into the muck.

A memory flashed through her mind:

“Don’t do that, Lothan. You’re going to ruin your armor.” She had chided him, a laugh on her lips.

“It’s my armor. I can mark it however I want.” He had replied.

She had rolled her eyes.

Now she closed them—tight.

“Lothan…” Her soft breath gathered in front of her, reminding her of snow…back when snow was still white. She glanced to the hills, where the white had been marred with red.

“We found him on the west hill.” Aetheren paused, “There wasn’t enough left of your brother to bury.”

Saela gasped, a hand on the wound at her side.

Her eyes wandered, seeking some way to distract herself. She saw only death. To her right, an old man was crawling through the ruined ground, screaming for a son who would never reply. To her left, one of the northern tribe fighters was attempting to soothe her screaming horse: the beast’s legs were shattered beneath him and his flank was torn open.

Aetheren laid his hand on her shoulder, but she did not turn.

Tears gathered in her eyes.

She drew a sharp breath and straightened.

Saela’s eyes found a group of soldiers by the stream—now clotted with bodies and sludge. She saw the broad-shouldered forms of the Drenai, the tall Shakish, the nimble riverfolk, soldiers from Aletia, and others. Their voices were raised in anger.

She scowled, “How can they still fight?”

“They’re debating how it ended,” Aetheren whispered in the Shakish tongue.

“Like it matters.” Saela was grateful for the familiar language. The wound in her side began to ache as the numbing chill in the air wore off.

“The Drenai claim they dealt the last blow—”

“—Of course—” Saela narrowed her eyes.

“—but the riverfolk from veyru say it was steel from all the realms. A perfect ending.”

“That doesn’t exist. I was there.” Saela raised her chin in defiance.

“What is the truth?” He asked.

She sighed, “We shouldn’t have won.”

There was a long pause before Aetheren spoke, “Some of his men were spotted fleeing into the Hoshka.”

“There are always survivors.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he hesitated, “his second held the western flank.”

“And?” She asked carelessly, though the words struck deep—if only the Red Hand had been on the eastern flank…her brother might still be alive.

“Nobody can agree on how he died.”

Saela did not respond, only hardened her gaze and watched the sun. For eons, it had been constant, yet the moment they needed it most it disappeared—only to return once the fighting was over.

Coward.

Finally, she turned back to Aetheren and forced a smile, “it’s over.”

“Then why do I feel like it’s just begun?”

They both fell silent until, eventually, Aetheren slipped away to get his wound fixed. As the shock began to dull, shouts of victory rolled across the plains. Saela stood as she had all day, listening.

By then, the sun had reached the center of the sky.

“If this is victory…” she muttered, her tongue slipping into Shakish, “I do not wish to see what defeat looks like.”

Then she looked up.

The sun had not moved

It did not bleed.

It did not remember.

Saela did both.