The ground here felt different. Harder. Less forgiving. His feet—if you could call them that, just bone and joint—hit the compacted soil with a sound sharper and more deliberate than the soft give of graveyard dirt. He noticed it, stored that fact away, and kept moving.
He didn't glance back at the graveyard. He thought about it briefly but decided there was nothing new to see. He'd seen enough.
The battlefield stretched out in front of him, opening up slowly like bad news does. At first, just broken bits here and there—a shattered spear, a rusted helmet half-buried—and then more. Soon, he stood in the middle of what had clearly been huge. Siege gear, or what was left of it. The skeleton of a catapult, its arm long gone, the frame leaning into the earth as if it had been falling for years. Supply carts collapsed in on themselves, wheels rusted and useless. Craters barely sunken now, softened by time and rain.
He stopped by one crater, looked down. This wasn't a small fight.
He tried to remember. He was fifteen then, a new knight fresh from his commission. He recalled the chaos, the noise, but siege machines? He didn't remember those. That meant either they weren't on his side, or he'd died before he had a chance to see them. Probably the latter.
He moved on.
What made him stop properly was the remains of a cart. Almost nothing left—just rusted iron rims, bolts, and a ghostly frame shaped by rot. The wood was gone. Not just rotted away, completely vanished. Gone in the way that takes a long, long time.
He crouched and studied the wheel rim. The rust was layered, thick. This kind of decay happens over decades, not just a few years.
How long had it been?
He tried to figure it out but didn't have enough to be sure. He calculated twice with different guesses, both times landing on an unreal number. He settled on something higher. Sat with that thought.
At least a hundred years. Probably more.
He said it quietly, or tried to, but no sound came out. He'd mostly stopped speaking anyway—it was an old habit. He looked at the wheel again a moment longer, then stood and kept going.
There wasn't much else to do with a number like that.
About an hour later, he found what used to be a road. The paving stones were cracked, weeds pushing through the gaps, edges swallowed up by grass. But it was still clearly a road. Somebody had decided traveling between places mattered enough to lay stones for it.
He stood on it, looked left, then right. Both ways just showed more road and horizon—no answers.
Left, then. No real reason, but left seemed as good as anything.
This road gave him something the graveyard didn't: evidence. The world had kept moving after the battle. Whoever fought and died here, whoever buried the dead and left, had kept building. The road, though old, had patches replaced with slightly different stone. Someone had cared enough to repair it.
That meant something.
He wasn't sure what, exactly, but it was something.
He walked.
The land on either side was flat and plain. Fields that might once have been farms, now wild, with tall grass swaying in the wind. He passed what looked like the foundation of a building: just a rectangle of stone at ground level. Whatever had stood there was gone.
Did I ever come this way when I was alive?
He tried to remember. Nothing clear. Just fragments: a march, mud, cold, the smell of too many people packed close. He'd paid little attention to the land, mostly trying not to look scared at fifteen.
A lot of good that did.
A campfire caught his eye. No more than three days old.
He almost missed it. It was tucked away off the road in the shelter of a low stone outcrop, protected from wind. Whoever made it knew what they were doing—the ash was neat, and the area cleared of debris—a practical setup.
He crouched down, studied the cold ash.
Someone had been here recently, then left.
He looked between the fire and the road, then to the ground. Boot prints. Multiple sets—at least two, maybe three.
People. Real people.
He glanced at himself.
Bone. Joints. Hollow chest. Just the faint suggestion of fingers. Nothing human anymore.
Right. That was going to be a problem.
He stood and thought about the problem with the same low effort he'd been applying to most things lately. No quick fix. He made a note of it, adding it to the growing list of things to deal with someday.
He kept walking.
Near what he guessed was dusk, a marker appeared. Old stone, worn carvings he couldn't quite read, faded paint maybe touched up long ago but now peeling.
He stopped, squinted—a habit with no real purpose anymore.
Somewhere. Distance unknown. Helpful.
He moved on.
Off the road about twenty feet, under what had been a tree, he spotted a grave. The tree was mostly dead, one stubborn branch still clinging, some leaves left. Someone had picked this spot on purpose.
The marker was made of stone, shaped and carved carefully. Letters cut deep, still legible from where he stood.
He walked slowly toward it.
A name. A date. Below that, a line he had to come closer to read.
He was loved.
He stood there.
The grave was neat, the ground clear of weeds in a way that suggested someone still came here, or had recently. A small circle of stones sat at the base, placed deliberately by a hand that wanted to do something but didn't know what.
He looked at it for a long time.
Someone had buried this person, come back here, stood exactly where he was standing, and felt something he no longer could. They'd placed those stones with care, walked away, and come back again.
He was buried in a field with hundreds of strangers.
No name. No marker. No one returning.
He was loved.
He read it again without meaning to. Just did.
Far back, before the graveyard, before the first attempt, before the war, there had been people. A mother whose face he could almost see. A father who smelled like woodsmoke. A small, cold house in winter that still felt like home.
He hadn't thought about them in—
He didn't know how long. A hundred years, maybe more.
He stayed by the grave until the light faded. Then he turned, found the road, and started walking again.
He didn't look back.
He thought about it.
He didn't.