"We don't bury the dead... We carry them."
The snow didn't fall. It descended heavy, silent, like judgment from the heavens. The wind carried no song, no howl, not even a scream. Only the rustling of dead cloth over dead men. And in the middle of that stillborn battlefield… sat a boy.
His age? No one could say. His eyes? Too old to guess. His sword? Broken in three places. His name? Thalric Vornheim. He didn't cry. He didn't shake. He didn't move.
His fingers were buried in the still-warm blood of a man who had once been called "Father." Not by him...But by the child that man had abandoned for war. Now the child had returned the favor.
The man's neck was nothing but torn flesh and half-whispered prayers. His head lay inches away, jaw slightly open as if death had tried to answer something.
And Thalric… just watched. The snow collected in his hair, on his brows, like dust on a forgotten sculpture. His mouth opened slightly.
Not to scream. Not to speak. But to breathe.
One. Last. Breath.
A shadow moved behind him. Boots crushed frozen bones beneath their heel, and the soft crunch seemed louder than thunder in that silent plain of corpses. A woman's voice.
Soft.
Tired.
"Thalric..."
He didn't look.
"This wasn't supposed to be your war."
"You were just a child..."
Silence. The woman kneeled behind him. She didn't touch him. She didn't dare.
Because Thalric's hands were still gripping the blade. And even broken, it was still thirsty.
His lips finally moved. A whisper, half-buried by the falling snow:
"He lied when he named me."
"He called me son…"
"But he gave me nothing but silence."
The wind shifted. A scream rose from somewhere across the hills. Not of war...Of grief. Of someone realizing they were the only one left breathing.
Thalric blinked.
Once.
Then stood.
The blood made no sound when it fell from his hands it had already frozen.
He didn't take the sword. He didn't take the body.
He walked. Alone. Into the white.
Behind him, the woman whispered the dirge of the dead:
"Here lies the Hollow Son…
Not of flesh, but of silence. Born in snow, raised by steel. His name is sorrow."
[To be continue]