DROKHAR
THIRTY-EIGHT
The dead don’t want vengeance. They want to be heard.
“Speak to me.” I drop my blade. The curved iron lands in the blood-soaked earth with a thunk that seems impossibly loud.
“Tell me what I took from you. Tell me what you needed to say before you died. Tell me everything—” I force the words past the knot in my throat.
“And I will hear it. I will remember. I will carry your words until the day I join you.”
For a long moment, nothing happens.
Then the first soldier approaches.
He’s young. Barely more than a boy, his armor rusted through in places, his face half-dissolved by decay. But his eyes—the hollow sockets where eyes should be—fix on mine with an intensity that makes my ribcage ache.
His mouth works. Forms words after centuries of silence.
“I was going to be a father.”
The rasp cuts through me. Behind me, I hear Aradya’s sharp intake of breath.
“My wife—” The soldier’s lower lip trembles. “She was pregnant when I left. I told her I’d be home before the baby came. I promised. And then—” He gestures at himself. At the ruin of what he’s become. “I never got to hold my child.”
I burned you.
The realization crashes through me. Not this specific soldier, maybe, but others like him.
Hundreds of them. Thousands. Young men who died with promises unfulfilled, their bodies dumped in mass graves before their families could find them, their ashes scattered by death wardens who never stopped to ask if they had anything left to say.
“I hear you.” The words feel inadequate, but they’re all I have. “Your child lived. They had children of their own, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Your bloodline continued even though you couldn’t be there to see it.”
I don’t know if that’s true. I have no way of knowing. But the soldier’s ruined face relaxes. The tension drains from his shoulders. The weight of centuries lifts from him in a single breath—all that grief, all that rage, all that desperate need to be remembered—released.
And then—
He dissolves.
Not into dust. Into light. A soft glow that rises from where he stood and drifts upward, toward a sky that seems slightly less red than it was a moment ago. I watch it go. Watch him go. This stranger whose name I’ll never know, whose story I heard for the first time and the last.
Rest well, soldier. You’ve earned it.
The King makes a sound. A rumble of displeasure that shakes the ground beneath my feet.
“What are you doing?”
I ignore it.
Another soldier approaches. An older woman this time, a captain by the insignia fused to her armor. She died defending a position that was already lost.
“They ran.” Her words carry decades of bitterness.
“The men under my command. I ordered them to hold the line, and they ran. I stayed. I fought. I died—” Her voice breaks.
“And no one ever knew. The battle reports said we were overrun. The reports said there was nothing anyone could have done. They never mentioned that I gave them time to escape. They never—”
“I hear you.” I step closer to her. Close enough to see the wound that killed her—a spear thrust through the gap in her armor, aimed at her spine. Someone attacked her from behind while she was busy fighting enemies in front. “You were a hero. You deserved to be remembered as one.”
“Then remember me.” Her demand carries the edge of command, even after centuries of death. “My name was Sethara Voss. I held the eastern ridge for three hours with four soldiers against a force of two hundred. Remember that.”
“Sethara Voss.” I repeat the name, committing it to memory. “Eastern ridge. Three hours. Four soldiers. I’ll remember.”
She studies me for a long moment. Then she nods, once, and follows the first soldier into dissolution. Another point of light rising toward the sky.
Another fracture appearing in the King’s composite form.
“Stop this.” The King’s command reverberates through the battlefield, but its authority is crumbling. Soldiers are turning toward me now—dozens of them, hundreds, drawn by the light of their comrades’ release. “I speak for you. I demand justice on your behalf—”
“You demand blood.” I don’t raise my voice, but it echoes anyway. “You demand vengeance. But they don’t want blood. They don’t want vengeance. They want—”
“To be heard.” The voice belongs to a soldier in ancient armor, his features so decayed he’s barely recognizable as human. “To say the things we never said. To let go.”
The King screams.