Ash fell like snow across the ruins of the kingdom. White cinders drifted through the air where his world had once stood, sparks rising and fading in a dark parody of stars. The embers bowed.
At the center of the ash, a man knelt. Tears slipped free from his face to mix with the ash. His heart beat a funeral march. He tilted his tear-tracked, ash-stained face toward the sky, yet he uttered no prayer, sought no god. Green eyes, devoid of life, stared into the drifting gray.
When he inhaled, it was them he swallowed. When he collapsed to his knees, it was among them. When his tears struck the earth, they fell upon them. And when the wind lifted the ashes into the sky, it carried what remained of his will with it.
A scream of breaking, shattering into a thousand pieces, rent the air. Across shattered towers, across the burned corpse of a kingdom. The mountains echoed back.
No betrayal had ever cut deeper than this.
His world vanished.
And still—
He breathed their ashes.