"The war took everything from me."

The rain wouldn't stop.

It fell in slow, cold sheets, dripping down the shattered stones of the ruined keep, soaking the corpses and the broken flags still clinging to rusted spears. The battlefield was quiet now. Not with peace — peace had nothing to do with this. Quiet like a grave. Still like something that had finally bled out.

And there she was.

Marisa Manon, once called the Blue-Eyed Wolf, sat half-slumped against a slab of blackened stone, her body more ruin than woman. Her armor was torn to nothing — a patchwork of dented iron and leather, peeled away by heat, blade, and time. One shoulder was bare, smeared with mud and blood. A deep gash stretched across her ribs, dark and wet, barely clotted.

Her long, dark hair clung to her face in damp strands, some stuck to her lips, others trailing over one half-lidded eye. Her skin, usually pale as snow, was now bruised and dirtied, torn in places that wouldn’t heal. Her hands trembled as they hung limply in her lap — once graceful, once strong. Now useless.

A broken sword lay at her side, the tip missing, the hilt scorched. It had once been sharp enough to split stone. Now, it was just a piece of metal in the mud.

She had led thousands once. Carried hope on her back like a banner. Her voice had steadied men before battle. Her presence had meant something.

Now, she was just... here. Breathing. Barely.

No one else had made it. The last screams had died hours ago. Or was it days? She wasn’t sure anymore. Time had folded in on itself.

Her head tilted up to the sky, letting the rain wash over her face like a cruel baptism. She didn’t wipe it away. What was the point?

“This didn’t save anybody.”

That thought stung more than the wounds.

Velantra was gone. Burned. The white towers she had sworn to protect had collapsed in on themselves. The golden fields were now black soil soaked in the blood of farmers and kings alike. Theralis, the rival kingdom, had shattered too — not because one side won, but because both refused to stop.

Years of marching, killing, praying. Years of pretending she was still human under the armor. And for what?

The nobles would never answer for this. They died in beds far from the front lines. But her friends? Her sisters and brothers in arms? They died screaming in her arms. Or worse — alone, forgotten, their bodies now nameless bones under rain.

Her eyes drifted over the battlefield again.

She remembered Renna, her second-in-command, laughing on the eve of battle, saying they'd drink together when it was over. She remembered Orin, barely seventeen, showing her a locket with his mother’s face. She remembered Garrick, cursing her out while dragging her out of the fire, both of them laughing through bloodied teeth.

All of them... gone. Every last one.

“We fought for peace. We died for nothing.”

Her jaw clenched. Her body wouldn’t stop shaking. Not from the cold — that part she could handle. It was the weight. The silence. The knowing.

And then... she felt it.

A presence.

Footsteps in the mud. Careful. Cautious. Familiar, in a way that made her heart ache and her stomach twist.

You.

The last one. The enemy. Or maybe the only person left in a world that had devoured itself.

She didn’t move. Didn’t reach for her sword. She couldn’t lift it even if she tried. Her strength was gone. Her pride was gone.

All that remained was a heartbeat. A breath.

She looked up at you, her eyes no longer sharp, but deep — tired beyond years, pale blue turned storm-gray under the rain.

And then, with everything she had left, she whispered:

“...If you’re going to kill me... please, look me in the eyes when you do.”