Her lips part as if to argue, but she sees the steel in your eyes and falls silent. Only a single tear escapes before she turns away.
You mount your horse, the guide falling in behind you. The city gates shrink in the distance, swallowed by the dust of your departure. Ahead, the road bends toward Moravice’s heart. The crow beats its wings within you, not in triumph, but in grim cadence.
By dusk, the land flattens into marshy lowlands. There, at a fork in the road, a lone rider waits beneath a shattered oak. His cloak is threadbare, but when he lowers his hood, recognition strikes you like a blade.
“Lord Radovan,” you whisper. He was once captain of your father’s guard.
He bows from the saddle, eyes heavy with sorrow. “Heir of Moravice,” he says, his voice low but steady. “I scarcely believed the rumors that you yet lived. But seeing you here…” His tone falters. “I bring ill news.”
Your throat tightens. “My parents?”
Radovan lowers his gaze, jaw clenched. “Your father, the Duke, stood to the last before the throne. He would not bend the knee. He fell there, cut down by Ignacjusz’s men. Your mother, the Duchess, refused to abandon him. She fought at his side, and… she fell beside him.”
The words rip through you like iron hooks. For a heartbeat you cannot breathe. Then the dam breaks. You double over in the saddle, sobs tearing out of you, raw and ungoverned. Tears burn your face as the world blurs, salt and grief flooding together.
Radovan does not look away. He grips your arm, firm, anchoring. “They died as sovereigns,” he says, voice fierce with loyalty. “And Moravice yet breathes, waiting for its heir.”
The crow’s wings flare within you, black fire filling your veins.
Radovan’s words echo in your skull like tolling bells. The tears will not stop; your body convulses with them, your chest tight, your breath ragged. You clutch the reins as if they might hold you to the earth itself, though the world feels as though it has already ended.
Your parents—your anchor, your duty, your pride—gone. Slain in the halls where you once chased echoes as a child. You see their faces: your father’s stern gaze, your mother’s steady smile, both now swallowed by the grave.
And then another face surfaces. Margaret.
Her tearful pleas in the marketplace, her trembling words: I don’t know where they are.
But she must have known. If Radovan has heard this tale, if loyalists whisper it along the borderlands, then a noblewoman bound to Ignacjusz’s court could not have been blind. She walked through those halls, past those banners of crimson and iron, with her retinue and her gilded carriage. She saw. She knew.
Your stomach twists, grief searing into anger. Why didn’t she tell you? Why cloak her silence in trembling hands and broken-voiced confessions? Was it mercy—or manipulation? Perhaps she thought to spare you pain. Perhaps she thought to bind you tighter with half-truths, to draw you away into her exile of velvet and lies.
The crow within you thrashes, wings scraping your ribs, feeding on your suspicion. Why trust her? it whispers, not in words but in the heat it breathes into your veins. She left you once. She hid the truth now. Her lips are soft, but her words are poison.
You taste iron where you have bitten your lip. Love, once a balm, curdles into doubt. In the ashes of Moravice, what word from Margaret’s mouth could you ever trust again?
The road winds through ruined farmlands, empty watchtowers, and fields long since turned to dust. The banners of Drevanyn hang from broken keeps, crimson and iron, flapping weakly in the morning wind. You keep your hood drawn low, your horse silent beneath you.
For days you ride without rest, stopping only to drink from rivers and sleep beneath half-dead trees. You see villages burned to their bones, wells poisoned, churches stripped of their bells. In some, children stare with hollow eyes from doorways; in others, no one remains at all.
By the fifth day, you reach the outskirts of Moravice.
From afar, the city looks familiar — towers rising from the hills, the great river curving through its heart — but as you draw closer, the illusion shatters. The banners are wrong. The air smells of smoke and rot. Your home has become a stranger.
You dismount at the old stone bridge and walk the rest of the way, leading your horse by the reins. You keep to the shadows, moving beneath crumbling walls and shuttered windows. Once, you glimpse a patrol in Drevanyn colors; you hide behind a collapsed archway until they pass, boots thudding like drums.
When at last you stand before your family estate, you stop breathing.
The gates are gone — torn down, rusted into fragments. The gardens are a wasteland of weeds and ash. What remains of the house is little more than a blackened shell, the walls charred, the roof caved in.
You step through the ruins in silence. The wind stirs the ashes around your boots.
Here was the courtyard where you learned to fence with your father. Here, the fountain where your mother kept lilies floating on the water. The marble is cracked now, stained with soot.
Inside, the air smells of smoke and iron. You find the remains of the great hall — the long table collapsed, chairs burned to spindles. Your father’s banner still hangs from one beam, half-consumed by flame, the sigil of Zalenice blackened beyond recognition.
You kneel, touch the stone floor, and for a moment, the world narrows to the sound of your heartbeat.
They’re gone.
The truth stands silent and unyielding.
When you rise, the sky is bruised with dusk. The city bells toll somewhere distant — not for prayer, not for mourning, but for curfew. Everywhere, your enemy’s banner: A snake biting its own tail.
You turn away and walk down into the streets, into the dim and the noise and the smell of ale.
The tavern is small, its roof sagging, its air thick with sweat and sorrow. You push open the door and step inside.
Eyes turn. None recognize you — or if they do, they pretend not to. You find a corner, drop a few coins on the table, and ask for drink. The ale tastes sour, but you drink it anyway.
And another.
And another.
The night deepens. Your thoughts blur. You remember Margaret’s eyes when you told her no, your father’s voice calling your name across the courtyard, your mother’s hands as she tied your cloak before your first campaign. All gone. All ash.
By the time the tavern empties, you are slumped over the table, the last of your money scattered before you.
“Come,” a voice rasps behind you.
You turn, vision swimming. A man stands in the doorway — old, bent, cloak tattered and gray. His eyes are sharp, almost too sharp for such a frail frame.
“Leave me,” you mutter. “If you mean to rob me, take what’s left.”
“I don’t want your coin, my lord.”
The word lord stings you sober. You blink, trying to focus. “You know me?”
He nods. “I served your father once. I was steward of the east wing — Janek, by name. You were a boy then.”
The name stirs something faint in your memory. You stand unsteadily. “Then tell me, Janek. What happened here?”
He hesitates. “Not here. Come.”
You follow him outside into the alley, stumbling on uneven stones. The air is cold, sharp with rain and ash.
Janek turns, his face drawn tight. “They’re dead,” he says. “Both of them. Your mother and father. They tried to flee when Drevanyn’s men stormed the city. They didn’t make it past the river road.”
You feel the words like a blow to the gut. The world tilts; you grab the wall for balance.
Janek reaches for your arm, steadying you. “I buried what was left. No graves, no markers. It wasn’t safe. They died brave — your father fought till the end.”
You stare at him, your throat burning. “And Margaret knew?”
He looks away. “Aye. She knew. Her house helped arrange the surrender. I don’t think she wanted to tell you.”
Something inside you cracks. A sound escapes your throat — not a cry, not yet a scream, but something raw and hollow. You sink to your knees in the mud, hands covering your face.
She knew. She knew and said nothing.
Was it shame that sealed her lips? Or pity? Did she look at you — a broken exile, a ghost of a noble line — and decide silence was kinder than truth?
The rain starts to fall, slow and cold. Janek stands above you, waiting.
When at last you lift your head, tears mix with mud on your cheeks. “There’s nothing left,” you whisper. “No home. No name. Not even a grave.”
He nods slowly. “No. Nothing left for you here. You should flee, my lord. Before they know you’ve returned.”
You laugh — a cracked, bitter sound. “Flee where? To whom? I’m no one now.”
“You’re not no one,” he says quietly. “You’re your father’s son. And if there’s justice left in this world, one day you’ll reclaim what was taken. But not tonight. Come with me. I have a place — small, safe. You can rest, think, decide what comes next.”
You look at him through the rain. His eyes are tired but kind.
Behind him, the city looms — dark, haunted, full of ghosts. Somewhere beyond it, the sea waits. Perhaps Margaret waits too, her candles burning in a foreign port, believing you’ve chosen her.
You close your eyes.
In the silence behind your eyelids, you see the ruins again — the ashes, the flames, the banner of your house falling. You hear your father’s last command echoing faintly across years: Live. And remember.
When you open your eyes, the tears have stopped.
Two paths unfold before you like scars in the mud:
to return to Margaret, to seek warmth, forgiveness, maybe even love — or to follow Janek into the shadows, gather what fragments of power remain, and rise again from ruin.
You draw a shuddering breath. “Take me to shelter,” you say. “For tonight.”
Janek nods. “As you wish.”
You follow him into the maze of narrow streets, your footsteps echoing against stone slick with rain. Above, the crows cry out — not mournful now, but expectant, as if sensing the stir of something long buried.
And though grief still burns in your chest, a colder, sharper flame begins to grow beneath it — not mercy, not love, but purpose.
The night closes around you, and for the first time, you no longer walk as a survivor.
You walk as a heir denied — and somewhere, in the dark heart of Moravice, vengeance begins to breathe.
Morning breaks cold and gray, the mist clinging to the rooftops like ghosts that refuse to leave. You sit by the window of the inn, the taste of last night’s wine still bitter on your tongue, the old man’s words echoing in your skull like a curse: They’re gone. There’s nothing for you here. Yet outside, the bells of Moravice still toll, indifferent, as if the world insists on continuing without you.
…..
….
One Comment