Leon stood atop the city wall, staring into a horizon swallowed by smoke.
The wind carried the stench of blood even this high up.
Below, the battlefield stretched without end—an uneven graveyard where the dead had not yet been gathered. Corpses of humans and orcs lay scattered across broken earth, twisted together in the aftermath of slaughter. Shattered armor, claws, broken weapons. A chaotic mosaic of war.
There were more orcs than humans among the dead.
But Leon had stopped thinking in numbers.
Each body below had once been a person. A soldier. A son. A father. Someone who had laughed, eaten, dreamed. And now they were simply still—reduced to weight and silence, the way all things eventually were.
His fingers tightened around the stone parapet until his knuckles whitened.
Behind him, the city gates had fallen.
That part of the memory was worse.
The breach had not been dramatic, the way war songs described. No heroic last stand. No divine intervention. No sudden reversal of fate. Just pressure, then cracking stone, then screaming—and then the orcs had come in like a tide that does not care what it destroys.
Inside the walls, war had become something else entirely. Not strategy. Not defense.
Slaughter.
Smoke obscured most of the streets below, but through gaps Leon could see soldiers dragging bodies, medics kneeling over wounded men, porters moving stretchers toward the inner districts. And among them, civilians—those found too late, or not far enough along the evacuation routes.
Not many.
But enough to make the word *victory* feel obscene.
Leon swallowed. His chest felt tight, as if the air itself had thickened.
"This is my home," he whispered.
His voice barely carried past his lips.
"This is my city…"
A tremor moved through him.
"And it's burning."
His vision blurred—not from smoke. He blinked hard, refusing to let it fall. Grief did not feel noble. It felt like drowning while still standing upright.
"Where are the mages?" he said suddenly, louder, though not directed at anyone.
It was not a new question. It had lived in him since childhood, shaped by stories that had meant more to him than anything real ever had.
He turned.
Raymond stood behind him.
His older brother was taller by a head, broad-shouldered in a full suit of steel that had not been silver for some time. Blood streaked the armor in jagged lines—some dried to rust, some still glistening when he moved. He looked like what he was: a man who had survived the front line. A man who had stopped believing in anything that didn't bleed.
Raymond followed Leon's gaze down into the ruined city.
"Mages?" A short, humorless exhale. "Those arrogant bastards don't care about a border city."
Leon turned to him quickly.
"Unless war drums reach the capital gates, they don't move. They don't bleed." Raymond's voice was calm in a way that felt worse than anger. "Their pride is limitless. They believe humanity will hold itself together until it's convenient for them to step in and *save* it."
"That's not what the books say," Leon said.
Raymond looked at him sharply.
Leon pushed on, desperation leaking through. "They said mages ended wars. That a single spell could erase entire armies. That when everything was about to fall—they came."
Raymond gave a quiet, cold laugh. "And you believed that."
Leon flinched.
"Look around you."
Raymond's voice rose—not loud, but sharp enough to cut through smoke and distance.
"This is reality. Your city is burning. People are dying. And you're still holding onto bedtime stories like they're promises."
"They can't all be lies."
"Not lies," Raymond said. "Selective truths. Written by people who never stood where we are standing."
Silence stretched between them. Below, a distant scream rose and faded.
"You're eighteen now," Raymond said. "Your chance to awaken is gone."
The words struck harder than Leon expected—not because they were new, but because they were final. Something in his chest drew tight.
"You've spent your whole life waiting for something that never came," Raymond continued. "Reading. Dreaming. Telling yourself you were different."
A pause.
"You weren't."
Leon's breath shook.
Raymond's gaze softened—just slightly. Not enough to become gentle. Just enough to show he understood what he was destroying.
"It's not a curse," he said more quietly. "Most people don't become legends. Most people survive." He looked toward the city. "And right now, that's all that matters."
"So what now?"
"You become a warrior."
Leon laughed once. There was nothing in it.
"Not a dreamer," Raymond said. "Not a boy chasing stories. A warrior who stands where he's needed." He gestured toward the battlefield. "This is what happens when people wait for miracles. When they hesitate."
Leon's eyes moved across it all.
Bodies. Smoke. Fire. Silence.
Something in him began to shift.
"The mages you admire don't come when villages burn," Raymond said, quieter now. "They come when it benefits them."
"That can't be true."
Raymond didn't answer immediately.
"It is."
Silence.
Something inside Leon cracked—not loudly, but deeply, the way stone splits under pressure it has endured too long. All the stories. All the imagined futures where he would one day stand among legends.
They didn't vanish.
They broke.
Raymond studied him.
"You still have something," he said after a moment. "Strength can be built. Discipline taught. Our father can guide you. I can." He stepped closer. "You can still become something that matters."
Leon said nothing. His eyes stayed on the burning city—on everything he had believed would be protected by something greater than men.
Nothing had come.
No miracle. No savior.
Only ash.
"You wanted to be a hero," Raymond said. "Then stop waiting to be chosen."
The sentence lingered longer than the others.
Slowly, Leon's hands tightened. Nails bit into skin. The pain grounded him. He breathed in, then out.
The grief was still there.
But something rose alongside it—not hope, not fantasy. Something harder. Colder.
Resolve.
"If I can't be what I dreamed…" His voice was low. Steady. Different. He lif ted his head. "Then I won't be powerless."
Raymond watched him without speaking.
Leon's fists tightened until his arms trembled.
"Make me a warrior."