Dawn seeps into the ruins of Moravice like a ghost reluctant to touch the living. You stay. You do not mount your horse. You pull your cloak tighter against the wet air and walk into the waking city, determined to dig through its ashes until you find a spark of what was once yours. The streets glisten with last night’s rain, reflecting a sky as pale and fractured as memory. The city exhales slowly around you—vendors shouting, carts rattling, guards marching—but every sound feels like an echo from a world you no longer belong to.
You wander aimlessly at first, letting your feet choose the turns. Past the cathedral, its windows shattered and saints eyeless. Past the square where your father once addressed the people, now filled with peddlers of Drevanyn trinkets and imperial coins stamped with Claudius’s face. You stop beside a fountain where moss and grime choke the water. For a moment you almost kneel—to touch the stone, to feel something familiar—but then you remember that the marble was quarried in your father’s time. Now it belongs to someone else.
You ask questions in whispers. The smith who once forged your signet ring has disappeared. The clerk who tallied your family’s accounts now serves in the new administration. Every loyal name you speak earns only blank looks or careful denials. It is as though the city itself has conspired to forget you.
By midday, you reach the northern quarter—your old hunting district, now swollen with refugees and beggars. A patrol rounds the corner ahead. You duck into a side street, heart hammering, pressing yourself into the shadow of a collapsed arch. You watch their crimson banners flutter past. The sigil of Drevanyn: a serpent devouring its own tail. When they are gone, you emerge again, breath shallow.
You are being hunted. You know it in your bones, though no one yet calls your name aloud. The emperor’s shadow is long, and it stretches even here, among the ruins.
As evening falls, you slip into a narrow lane where a crooked lantern burns before a shuttered tavern. A voice calls from the doorway: “My lord?”
You freeze. The man who steps forward is old, stooped, his eyes sunken—but there’s recognition there, buried under years of fear. “My lord,” he whispers again, trembling. “You live.”
It is Tomasz—once your stablemaster, loyal beyond measure. You remember his laughter echoing across the courtyard when you were a boy, his rough hands guiding yours as you learned to ride.
He ushers you inside before you can speak, through a low door and into a small house tucked behind the tavern. The air smells of straw and stew. Inside, a woman sits by the hearth—his wife, thinner now, older—and two daughters, one grown, one still a child. They stare, wide-eyed, but say nothing.
“You shouldn’t have stayed,” Tomasz says once the door is bolted. “The city isn’t safe for your kind.”
“I know,” you reply. “But I had to see it. I had to know.”
He nods gravely. “Then you’ve seen enough.”
You spend the night under their roof, curled on a straw mattress in a small room beside the stables. The sound of the rain on the roof is a comfort you haven’t felt in years. Sleep takes you, restless and shallow. You dream of your parents’ voices, of Margaret’s laughter turning to silence, of fire consuming marble and banners alike.
Days pass. You remain hidden, venturing out only at night. Tomasz brings news—fragments of whispers from taverns and markets. Claudius has strengthened his alliance with Drevanyn. Ignacjusz commands the garrison. Anyone tied to your family has been stripped of rank, property, or life.
You try to plan, to build some thread of strategy—but you have nothing. No soldiers, no coin, no allies. All that remains are ghosts and the few heirlooms Tomasz salvaged after the fall: a jeweled dagger, your mother’s necklace, a few signet rings, and a chest of silver coins buried in the stable floor.
And yet, amid the ruin, a strange warmth begins to creep into your life again.
Her name is Joanna—the elder of Tomasz’s daughters. She is not Margaret, not truly, but when the firelight catches her hair, you see the same hue, the same tilt of the head, the same quiet strength in her eyes. She tends to the household, speaks little, and walks with the grace of one born to hardship but unbroken by it.
At first, it is only glances. A hand brushing yours as she brings you a bowl of broth. A smile shared in silence when the others have gone to sleep. Then, one night, when the rain drums against the roof and the world beyond feels impossibly far away, she comes to your room.
No words are spoken. The candle burns low as she reaches for you, and in her touch you feel both solace and shame. You hold her as if clinging to the memory of something already lost. Her breath trembles against your neck. You close your eyes and pretend, for a moment, that it is Margaret’s voice you hear.
In the morning, you are filled with guilt—and hunger. The human kind, the one that follows grief like a shadow. Joanna avoids your gaze, but not out of regret. The next night, she returns. And again, and again. The house remains silent; Tomasz does not ask. Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he, too, remembers what love once cost him.
But desire cannot build a future. It only delays ruin.
By the tenth day, soldiers begin sweeping through the northern quarter, searching homes, questioning refugees. The noose tightens. You know your presence endangers them all.
One evening, Tomasz returns with a grim face. “They’re coming closer,” he says. “You can’t stay. If they find you here, they’ll hang us all.”
You nod. You have known this moment was coming.
That night, under cover of darkness, Tomasz leads you to the stables. He digs into the floorboards, revealing the small chest of silver and heirlooms. “It’s not much,” he mutters. “But it’s what I could save.”
You open it. Inside lies your mother’s necklace, your father’s signet, the jeweled dagger, and several coins stamped with your house’s seal. The weight of it brings tears to your eyes.
“Tomasz,” you say quietly, pressing the necklace into his hands. “For your wife. For your daughters.”
He tries to refuse, but you close his fingers around it. “You’ve given me shelter. Let me give you something in return.”
He bows, silent, his eyes wet.
Joanna steps from the shadows. “You’re leaving,” she says.
You nod. “I must. There’s nothing left for me here.”
She looks at you for a long moment, searching your face. Then, softly, “Take me with you.”
The words hang in the air, fragile, desperate.
You hesitate. She has done nothing to deserve the life that follows you—the exile, the danger, the endless running. And yet, when you look at her, something inside you stirs. She is not Margaret, but she is hope, raw and human, and you are so very tired of ghosts.
The night wind rises, carrying the distant echo of the city bells. The road beyond the gate waits, dark and unending.
You close the chest, sling it over your shoulder, and look from Joanna to Tomasz. Two lives bound to your fate by loyalty and longing.
At last, you speak.
“I will leave before dawn,” you say.
Joanna takes a step closer, eyes shining. “Then let me come.”
You meet her gaze, the silence stretching between you, heavy as prophecy.
Outside, the first light of morning touches the ruined rooftops of Moravice. The smoke of dying hearths rises into the gray. Somewhere, far beyond these walls, Margaret’s name still burns in your chest.
You reach for the reins of your horse.
Two paths unfold before you once more:
….
—You take Joanna with you, the ghost of Margaret fading with each mile, and together you ride toward whatever fragile dawn awaits beyond the empire’s grasp.
…..
You leave Joanna behind, turning your face north to seek Margaret once more, your heart split between the ashes of what was and the promise of what might yet be.
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