The battlefield had grown still, the screams long gone, leaving only the cold wind whispering through broken steel.
High above, perched on the crooked branch of a dead tree, a raven watched.
Its feathers were darker than the night itself, swallowing the moonlight.
Its eyes gleamed with an eerie intelligence—silent, patient, unnervingly calm.
Yet none of the soldiers saw it.
Not Captain Rovan Hale.
Not the survivors shaking in fear.
Not even Varyan Duskveil.
The raven witnessed everything.
Varyan stood among the corpses, his breath slow and steady, his amethyst eyes dimmed but unbroken. Blood dripped from his fingers, quiet as falling rain.
The ring of soldiers surrounding him tightened nervously.
Varyan didn't raise his weapon.
He didn't move.
He simply lifted his gaze to the cloudy sky as if searching for something only he could see.
"Do you know why I'm still standing here?" he asked suddenly, voice cold and calm.
No one answered.
The soldiers waited, expecting a story, an explanation, a confession.
But Varyan gave them nothing.
"No past," he muttered, almost to himself. "No explanations. Not for any of you."
His expression hardened—an impenetrable wall of silence.
"You don't deserve to know what shaped me.
Only what comes next."
A shiver rippled through the line of soldiers.
The raven tilted its head, watching him with an unnatural stillness.
Varyan exhaled slowly, his shadow stretching behind him like a creature ready to awaken.
"Remember this," he whispered.
His eyes blazed with dark resolve.
"I am not who I was.
I am what this world made me become."
The raven let out a soft, chilling caw—almost as if approving.
The night swallowed the battlefield .
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