"Father!"
I stood before him, the man with the graying beard and the eyes that once carried warmth. His armor gleamed like silver caught in sunlight, not a single scratch to be found. I had never seen him dirty, not even after a battle. The metal was always spotless, and his skin looked untouchable, as if the world itself could not lay a hand on him.
He was tall, but that might be because I am still small. Everyone seems tall when you are ten. Yet Father was different. His height wasn't only in inches. It was in how he carried himself, how people moved aside when he passed. Even silence seemed to straighten its back around him.
He walked past me, his boots clicking softly on the marble floor. I watched him head toward the room he now stayed in, the one that used to belong to him and Mother. They did not share chambers anymore. Ever since the skies turned red, he had moved to his own study.
Back then, when I called to him, he would turn around and smile. He would lift me in his arms or ruffle my hair until I laughed. So I tried again.
"Father!"
The word left my mouth and fell into the quiet hall. He didn't turn. Not even a glance.
I looked down at the wooden sword in my hands, my training sword. He said I could not touch real steel until I earned it. I wanted to, though. I wanted to carry a sword like his. They said his blade was one of the finest ever made, a weapon that had written our family's history. I had heard its name whispered by the servants, but to me it was more than a name. It was a promise.
"My lord, you are not permitted to walk any further."
A soldier stepped in front of me, his arm stretched across the corridor. He wore red garments underneath iron armor, bright but not like Father's, and a sword rested at his side. His voice was firm, but there was something uneasy in his eyes.
"Who said so?" I asked.
He didn't answer. I turned my head and saw the large doors closing behind Father. His back was to me. Around him were his generals and vassals, their cloaks swaying like shadows. Just before the doors shut, I caught his face. His eyes met mine for a second. They weren't kind, not like before. They were sharp, like blades that had forgotten softness. I felt something twist in my chest.
The doors closed.
The sound was heavy.
Behind me, the old butler spoke. "My lord, your sword mentor has arrived. There will be time to speak with your father later."
I nodded, though my throat felt tight. I turned toward the hall where the soldier still stood, his arm now lowered, his gaze somewhere on the floor.
I walked away with slow steps, the wooden sword bumping against my leg. It used to make me proud, that sound. I thought it meant I was training to become like him.
But as I walked farther from those doors, it only reminded me how small I still was.
And how far my father had already gone.
*
*
*
The sun was sinking low, its light bleeding into the horizon like a wound that refused to close. The sky burned in hues of red and orange, a fire that seemed to mourn the world rather than warm it. Smoke rose from distant forests and broken towns, turning the clouds into gray shrouds. The land was dying, and the heavens wept for it.
From the tall windows of his study, Aule watched the ruins below. The room stood high above the city, meant for nobles, not weary soldiers. Every evening forced him to look upon what he had failed to protect. His quill rested unused on the table. His hand, rough with scars and calluses, remembered the weight of a sword more than the softness of paper. War had taught him that words did not stop blood from spilling.
"How long do you plan to ignore me, and your children?"
Her voice cut through the silence. It was sharp at first, but it trembled toward the end, like a heart struggling between anger and despair.
Trivinia stood behind him. Her beauty had not faded, yet sorrow had written lines beneath her eyes. The jewels she wore glimmered faintly in the dim light, beautiful but hollow, their worth measured in the lives they could have saved. Her eyes, red and swollen, spoke of nights spent alone in the quiet of her own grief.
He did not turn to face her. His gaze remained on the burning horizon. "You shouldn't be here."
"You sleep here. You eat here. You live here more than you live with us." She gestured weakly at the walls, the floor, the heavy air that had grown used to his silence. "You return home in armor. Not as my husband, not as their father. You look at me as if I am another shadow in this house."
Aule turned his head slightly. His eyes looked older than his years. The man she once loved was still there, somewhere beneath the weight of duty, but buried too deep for her to reach.
"Do not lie to me," she said softly. "I know the physicians come at night. I know the servants bring basins of blood, bandages soaked red. You think I do not hear the pain behind these doors?"
She stood at a careful distance. The kind one would keep before a stranger. Or a lord. Or a man one no longer dared to trust. She feared him, not because he had ever struck her, but because she could feel that he might one day forget how to love. The war had carved him into something unrecognizable.
Her voice began to break. "Can you not tell me what is happening? Why there are more soldiers every day? Why our son, Andras, asks where his father is? He wonders what he did to make you turn away. And I wonder the same. Why do you shut us out, Aule?"
Her words lingered, trembling in the stillness. "Why are you pushing us away?"
He did not move. His eyes drifted back to the table, where papers lay untouched. Maps. Letters. Seals. His fingers traced the edge of a scroll without feeling it.
"Get out."
Her breath caught in disbelief. "Aule, you are being unreasonable. What harm can there be in telling me?"
"Do I have to tell you," he said quietly, "how many people are dying because our family has lost the gods' favor?"
His tone was calm, yet it carried a heaviness that filled the room. He rose from his chair, the wood scraping the floor in protest. "Too many want what we have. Too many depend on what we can no longer give."
She flinched at his sudden movement. His voice grew louder. "Even in famine, the soldiers must eat before the common people. Because if they fall, there will be no one left to protect the rest. Every day I decide who starves and who survives. That is what this war has made of me."
Her voice was small. "Why are you shouting?"
"So that you can hear me," he said bitterly. "So that when I am gone, you remember why I could not be the man you wanted."
He stepped closer. His shadow swallowed her as he towered above her trembling form. She closed her eyes, bracing herself, fearing that his hand would strike her. But it never came.
His palm, rough and cold, touched her cheek instead. Her warmth burned against his skin, and he realized how long it had been since he had felt anything that wasn't pain.
"I cannot afford distractions," he said quietly. "Not when all our lives depend on what I do."
Her tears slipped down her face. His thumb brushed them away, careful and slow, as though he was afraid she might vanish if he pressed too hard. For a moment, the soldier disappeared, and only the husband remained.
"Please," she whispered.
"I can't," he replied.
Their foreheads met. Her tears stained his skin, and his breath trembled against her. Between them was the silence of everything that had once been love, now drowned beneath duty and fear. Outside, the fires still burned. Inside, neither spoke again.