Hours clawed passed.

Erik stirred awake, drenched in a cold stew of blood, snowmelt, and smoke. His skin stung where the fabric clung to it. His patrol cap was gone. His uniform—shredded and stiff with gore—hung from him like molted skin. He didn’t care.

He moved like a phantom through the aftermath, staggering past heaps of lifeless men and mangled horses. Frozen limbs jutted at odd angles. Eyes stared at nothing. A single boot lay abandoned, its owner nowhere in sight.

Ahead, the gate of Viljar gaped open like the maw of a beast, blackened and still.

At its threshold lay his Commanding Officer—the Pirate—collapsed in a sprawl of blood and bullet holes, crimson soaking the stones beneath him like ink spilled across parchment.

It had been a trap.

The White Legion was gone.

Erik stood alone, smoke on his breath and ash in his lungs. He said nothing—there was no one left to listen.

The burden of their sins clung to him now. Someone had to carry it.

Viljar had fallen. And with it, the infamous White Legion.

He wandered deeper into the ruins, past the twisted remains of a carriage and the blackened bones of rooftops. Silence pressed in like snow-heavy cloth.

Then he saw him.

A civilian, crumpled against a wall—young, maybe nineteen. Clean-shaven. Dead. Dressed in a long wool coat, trousers, boots laced tight, all intact. Erik hesitated. Then didn’t.

His fingers worked fast, numb and shaking. He tore the coat free, pried off the boots, tugged the blood-smeared shirt loose. It felt obscene, stealing the clothes off a boy barely old enough to shave—but his own uniform reeked of death and Empire, and he couldn’t wear it a moment longer.

He changed right there in the street, stripped himself of everything that marked him as a soldier. What he put on was plain, civilian—heavy cloth, frayed seams, buttons dulled by frost. The coat was a size too small, the collar tight around his neck, but it would do. It had to.

He walked away from the body without looking back.

Eventually, he found shelter: a scorched pub, somehow still standing, as if war had forgotten to claim it. Half-burned signs creaked on their hinges. The door resisted him, then gave way with a sigh.

Viljar was no longer a city. It was a carcass—gutted, charred, and left to rot beneath a sky the color of wet stone. The silence was suffocating, broken only by the groan of broken beams and the wind’s eerie whistle through fractured walls.

Erik let the last of his gear fall to the floor. The sound was dull. Final.

It had been a long day.

The longest.

Behind the bar, crooked shelves clung to the wall, bottles cloaked in soot and dust. He grabbed one labelled Weltek—Viljar’s pride, or so the old soldiers claimed. Strong enough to burn clean through memory.

The cork snapped. He drank straight from the bottle.

Then, like a wraith, he slipped into the back room.

There was a fireplace—cold, soot-lined, and waiting. He peeled off the last remaining traces of his military past, tossed them into the hearth: his belt rig, his holster, a single bullet still in the loop.

One match.

Flames licked the fabric like they'd been waiting.

Erik sat down, bottle still in hand, and stared into the fire.

“If Agatha’s alive…” he muttered, “I’ll marry her when I get home.”

Was it love? Or just another lie—one more comfort to wrap around his guilt like a soft wool blanket?

Maybe. He didn’t know.

He just needed something to hold onto.