"Not all enemies wear foreign banners."— Anonymous, The Last Crystal Sermon.
There was no storm. No fanfare.Just fog.And silence so thick it felt like walking through wet wool.
They moved slowly. Not by caution, but by necessity.Their feet dragged. Their eyes scanned nothing. Their crystals—dead.
Yesterday, they had been gods.Today, they were bones wearing names.
Laereth paused first.
"Iralya," she whispered, voice like cracked glass. "Do you feel it?"
Iralya didn't answer. Her hand rested against the crystal at her hip, as if touch alone could coax a heartbeat from it.
It did not respond.
Veyra walked ahead, lips moving silently. She wasn't casting. She was begging.Not to the gods.To memory.
Thaan was the last to speak.
"They're watching us."
"Who?" Laereth asked.
He didn't answer.
Because he already knew.
The first arrow didn't whistle. It hissed.
It struck Iralya below the collarbone, pinning her backward into a crooked tree. She didn't scream. Just blinked in disbelief, mouth half-open.A second arrow pierced her abdomen.A third—her throat.
She tried to raise her staff.
But the crystal wouldn't glow.It only cracked in her grip, dull and grey.Her blood soaked the tree behind her like ink on old parchment.She sank slowly, her hand reaching not for help, but for Veyra——who was already running.
Toward her.Too late.
"Iralya!"
A volley answered her cry.
Thaan turned first, shouting. "They're ours! These are our men!"
Another arrow took him in the shoulder.He staggered, laughing.
Not from humor.
From understanding.
"It's them," he gasped. "The capital. The fucking capital."
A lancer charged from the mist—no heraldry, no warcry. Just steel and duty.Thaan blocked the first thrust with his forearm—bone cracked.He kicked the man back, snatched a fallen dagger, and plunged it into the soldier's throat.
The man gurgled—and smiled as he died.
Another replaced him. Then another.
Thaan fought without spell, without music.
His last act was headbutting a soldier so hard they both collapsed.
He died face down, laughing through broken teeth.
Laereth stood alone in a clearing.Not by choice.
She had carved symbols into her skin again, desperate. Desperate for something to answer her.
Nothing came.
Soldiers encircled her.They were not monsters.Not demons.Not even cruel.
Just men. Following orders.
One stepped forward and said, "Lay down."
She didn't.
He sighed.
The first blade cut across her thigh. She buckled.
The second took her eye.
She gasped—but not in pain. In frustration.
"I wrote the truth," she muttered. "You just don't know how to read it."
They stabbed her twelve more times.
Her blood painted her runes red.
None of them glowed.
Veyra watched from the edge of the road, frozen.
She didn't cry.
Didn't scream.
Didn't run.
Iralya was gone.Thaan's body was being looted.Laereth's face no longer resembled itself.
And still… no magic.
She stepped forward.
"I surrender," she said, raising empty hands.
The archers did not lower their bows.
"I was one of yours. I served the Crown. I bled for it."
A single soldier stepped closer. Young. Barely more than a boy.
"You were dangerous," he said, not with malice—just certainty.
She looked him in the eyes.
"I was loyal."
He hesitated.
And then a voice, distant but clear: "No survivors."
The arrow pierced her chest. High—beneath the collarbone.
She remained standing.
Another arrow. Stomach.
She knelt.
The final came through her eye.
She fell sideways, hand resting on the ground, palm open as if expecting someone to take it.
No one did.
By sunset, the fog had lifted.
Their bodies lay among the broken path, stripped of crystals, of dignity, of meaning.
No tombstones.No names.
But beneath the soil, the mana stirred.
Crystals—cracked, drained, abandoned—began to pulse.
One by one.
Not with power.
But with memory.
And far, far away…a voice older than kingdoms stirred from sleep.
Not with grief.
With purpose.