STOP! 

Enclave of Tyton

West of the Artem River

Year of Trochta, 1052

It took no more than a mere second for fate to abandon the prince, and he could do nothing but watch, his body frozen, despite the unrelenting southern sun. The months of strategizing the campaign, the weeks of preparation, the unbounded onslaught of adversarial forces, culminating into this. 

Since childhood, Heiko knew he would someday wage war with the coastal kingdom of Ilyos, and he knew it would be on Tyton soil. It was a grim rite of passage, as old as his family's blood. A wicked tradition that made him an Achterecht - that made him his father's son. And Heiko would've done anything to make his father proud, even if it meant confronting the infamously vicious Ilysian general in battle at the callow age of fifteen. 

Just like his elder brothers, Prince Heiko was a dutiful son, and bellicose by nature. It was a disposition that was fanned and fostered, and it served him well when he first set foot on the battlefield. 

But to say the sight of the statuesque and imposing face beneath the bronze nose guard was anything but daunting would've been a lie. Before, the prince had not only his father, but two elder brothers by his side. He didn't believe there to be anything to fear. 

Now, that face was the only one he could see. The enemy general had ripped his helmet from his head to gaze at his work, brow pressed with focus and sweat. Heiko didn't dare follow his gaze. Not again. His hands were already shaking, his knees only able to support him because they were locked in place.  

Heiko knew it was an arrow - an Ilysian one made of tempered steel and rosewood, fletched with grouse feathers. He knew where it was bedded, deep in his father's chest. He knew when it struck because at that same moment, the gods dropped a veil upon the field, silencing not only the soldiers, but the world itself. 

"My prince."

A familiar hand slipped around Heiko's arm, tugging him ever so slightly back, but to no avail. The boy couldn't pull his gaze from the horseback general, whose chest rose and fell heavily, as if it were he who suffered at that moment. 

And even when the prince heard his father's men behind him rushing to prepare their white wool bunting - their admittance of defeat - his body wouldn't shift. His eyes could not stray from the man who murdered his father, not until a clammy palm was pressed to his cheek, guiding him away from that sight, and to one far more consoling. 

"My prince, we must go."

Rudolf's voice sounded leagues away, but his face was close. His skin, sweat-slicked and ruddy. The gash through his right eyebrow, and the blood that trailed down his cheek. The distress that weighed heavily in his copper eyes. 

“Heiko.” He was begging this time. 

The young prince was clutching his sword so tightly that it was almost painful to release it, but he did, because Rudolf never begged. He was a stoic man who took great care in choosing his words. But this treacherous onslaught had reduced him to it. This wicked general had reduced him to it. 

Heiko’s stomach clenched as he turned for one final gaze at the man. He was not the image of perfection. He was not the image of any god that the prince knew. But when those dark eyes began to scan the field, as if searching for more dissidents, challenging them to present themselves, a realization struck him, driving itself deep to his very core. 

Some men were to be feared more than gods.