The world reassembled itself in jagged pieces.
Aden's consciousness slammed back into his body with the violence of a spear through the ribs. His lungs seized—not from injury, but from the stench.
The air was a living thing here, thick with the perfume of opened bowels and meat left too long on the fire. His tongue curled against the taste of iron and bile.
He was kneeling.
No—collapsed.
His hands pressed into mud that wasn't mud at all, but earth churned to slurry with blood and worse things. When he lifted his fingers, they came away strung with glistening threads of—
Don't look.
But he did.
The battlefield stretched before him like a gutted beast.
His army—what remained of it—was broken.
To his left, a standard bearer hung impaled on his own polearm, the Twelfth Pillar's banner wrapped around his throat like a noose. To his right, three knights stood back-to-back in a macabre parody of formation—except their heads were gone, their necks ending in smooth, cauterized stumps that still smoked.
And the sounds—
Gods, the sounds.
Not the roar of battle, but the wet, choking gasps of men drowning in their own blood. The creak of plate armor as dying fingers scratched at breastplates. The low, animal whimpers of horses with their bellies split open.
"Vas...co..."
Aden turned.
Captain Orren dragged himself forward, his legs ending in ragged meat just below the knees. His face was a mask of blood, one eye a ruined socket. His remaining hand clutched a broken sword—not in threat, but as a crutch.
"You..." Orren spat a glob of black onto Aden's boots. "You did this."
Aden's mouth opened. No words came.
Behind Orren, the survivors gathered. Not in ranks—never again in ranks—but in a loose half-circle, their weapons hanging limp at their sides. Their eyes...
Their eyes were worse than any blade.
Lieutenant Cray, his jaw shattered, spoke through teeth clenched in pain: "First it was the enemy. Then... then it was us." He gestured to the scorch marks radiating outward in a perfect circle.
"You burned through the 3rd Company like they were kindling."
Nearby, Captain Dain of the 3rd Company knelt beside the remains of his lieutenant. The man's corpse was halved, sliced clean from shoulder to hip, the edges of the wound seared black.
Dain's hands shook as he pressed them against the dead man's chest, as if he could somehow piece him back together.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were hollow.
"We held the line," he rasped. "We held, and then you—" His voice broke. "Gods, Aden, you tore through us like we were nothing."
Aden's stomach twisted.
A young squire—barely fourteen—let out a choked sob. "Ser Haldon tried to stop you. You... you smiled when you cut him in half."
A choked sob drew his attention. A squire—a boy, no older than sixteen—crouched beside the body of a knight, his hands pressed desperately against a wound that would never close. His tears cut tracks through the grime on his face.
"Y-you promised," the boy wept. "You promised we'd make it home..."
Aden opened his mouth. He didn't know what to say.
The ground tilted beneath Aden.
No.
That wasn't me.
That was—
Hooves.
The Ash-Sworn arrived in a thunder of armored riders, their obsidian plate gleaming under the sickly light of the setting sun. They reined in at the edge of the carnage, their horses stamping nervously at the stench of death.
At their head, Veyra the Iron sat motionless atop her warhorse, her face unreadable beneath her helm.
For a long moment, there was only silence.
Then one of her lieutenants—a grizzled veteran with a scar across his throat—let out a low, shuddering breath.
"What in the hell happened here?!"
Veyra didn't answer.
Her gaze swept across the slaughter—the bodies, the scorched earth, the lone figure standing at the center of it all.
Aden.
Her fingers tightened on her reins.
"Fall back," she ordered, her voice cold. "Now."
Her mercenaries didn't argue. They wheeled their horses, retreating as swiftly as they had come—but not before Aden caught the look in their eyes.
Fear.
Not of the battlefield.
Of him.