EPISODE 10 — ASH WITHOUT FIRE
The rain didn't stop.
It wasn't heavy.
Not violent.
Just enough to make the world feel unfinished.
Aryex lay on the ground where the fight had ended.
Not because he was injured—
but because standing felt unnecessary.
His hand was still stretched forward.
The place where Raven had been.
Nothing was there now.
Mud filled his palm.
Cold.
Real.
He closed his fingers slowly, as if the air itself might resist.
It didn't.
For a moment, he thought he heard her voice.
Not calling him.
Just… breathing.
He sat up too fast.
Silence.
The battlefield was already forgetting them.
Smoke thinning.
Footprints filling with rain.
Blood dissolving into the soil like it had never mattered.
Aryex stood.
The world tilted.
He didn't fall—but his body swayed, confused, like it had lost its center.
He looked down at himself.
Hands shaking.
Knuckles split.
His chest rising too fast.
He laughed.
A single sound escaped his throat—sharp, broken.
It surprised him.
"Pathetic," he whispered.
Not to the enemy.
Not to fate.
To himself.
He walked.
No direction.
No plan.
Just forward.
Each step felt heavier than the last, like the ground was quietly asking him to stay.
Night came without warning.
The rain stopped.
The cold didn't.
Aryex collapsed against a ruined wall somewhere beyond the battlefield.
Stones pressed into his spine.
He didn't move them.
His eyes stared at the sky—
clouds tearing apart slowly, revealing a few stars.
Raven liked stars.
The thought came uninvited.
His throat tightened.
"No," he said aloud.
The word came out weak.
Images pushed in anyway.
Her standing ahead of him.
Her turning back.
That half-second where she trusted him to be there.
And he wasn't.
His breath hitched.
He pressed his palm against his chest like he could hold something in.
"I should've—"
The sentence died before it began.
Because there was no ending where she stood beside him.
He slid down until he was sitting, knees pulled to his chest.
The world felt too big.
Too empty.
He didn't cry.
That scared him more than anything.
Morning light crept in pale and dull.
Aryex hadn't slept.
His eyes burned, but his mind stayed wide open—
replaying the same moment again and again, each time with a different ending that never happened.
He stood again.
This time, his legs almost gave out.
Hunger clawed at him.
Thirst scraped his throat raw.
He ignored both.
He found a shallow stream and stared at his reflection.
The boy looking back didn't look angry.
Didn't look heroic.
He looked… unfinished.
His lips moved before he knew what he was saying.
"If I were stronger…"
The water rippled.
"If I were faster…"
Another ripple.
"If I mattered more…"
He stopped.
His reflection shattered with the current.
Aryex straightened slowly.
"No," he said.
Not loud.
But firm.
He didn't say Raven's name.
He couldn't.
Instead, he picked up a broken piece of metal lying near the ruins.
Not a weapon.
Barely even a blade.
He held it anyway.
Not to fight.
Just to feel the weight.
The cut edge bit into his palm, drawing a thin line of blood.
He didn't pull away.
"Remember this," he murmured.
The pain didn't hurt.
That hurt more.
Far away—
in a place he couldn't see—
Chains tightened.
A voice lied.
"Aryex is dead."
And Raven heard it.
Aryex turned his back to the ruins and began walking again.
This time, there was no laughter.
No tears.
Just something quiet settling deep inside his chest.
Not rage.
Not hope.
A hollow space.
And somewhere within it,
a fire waiting for permission to burn.