I woke up face down in a river. My first thought was I must have tripped, but then I remembered the Empire. I went from a boy that was terrified of his Mother's wrath, to a scared boy worried that everyone he knew was gone. I stood up from the river and located the sun.

It was falling in the West, meaning the day was nearly over, and also telling me what direction I needed to go. I ran for all my worth. I needed to know. Maybe the Empire had left peacefully. Maybe the Capital had sent reinforcements. Maybe they had managed to hold them off.

The sun set and the moon rose, yet I ran. After half an hour, I could smell it and adjusted my course. The smell got worse the closer I got. When I finally broke through the tree line, I stood on top of a cliff, overlooking the city. Even at this great distance, I could see the mountains of dead. The Behemoth still slept in front of the gate, though no noise came from it. In fact, there was no sound. Birds weren't crying. The wind did not blow. Any creatures that were there before, had run off. It was eerily quiet.

I noticed all of this in a second, yet none of it registered. I had to stop myself from jumping off the cliff to get to the City faster. Instead, I was forced to run around the cliff. I reached the city by midday. The day's heat made the stench many times worse. As I reached the gate, I inspected all the bodies of the Defenders. It had never really occurred to me why Soldiers from my old world had worn dog tags until I noticed the majority of the dead were unrecognizable. Hours of searching turned into a day, a day into two. On the third day I found my parents.

They were surrounded by the dead of the Empire, nearly buried. After I had dug them out and laid them side by side as far away from the carnage as I could, I just stared at them. I had expected to cry. I had wanted to cry. But all that came out was an oath. An oath, not of pathetic things like Justice or Revenge. I swore an oath to become stronger so that I may be able to protect my loved ones. So what if I recognized the Empire a threat to everything I knew. I grabbed one of the countless weapons around and bound my oath with my blood.

I spent the next week sorting Defender from Empire bodies. I lined up the Defenders in neat rows, sorted by Guard and Soldier, and Soldiers by their Division Numbers. Luckily, each Soldier had their Division Number stitched on their shoulder. Not that it mattered for the Empire's dead, I just threw them all in a pile to be burned. I only ate the scraps that I found when I was too weak to lift a body. I only slept when I couldn't lift my own arms. My feet constantly slipped in the bloody mud. After the first day, I couldn't notice the smell, but I knew it was there and it became ingrained in my head. In less than an hour of work, I was covered head to toe in blood, guts, and mud.

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I dug the graves of the Defenders one by one, taking another week. Maggots had started to emerging a week ago, but something was keeping them away, I guessed it to be the sleeping Behemoth. I placed my Parents, Adam, and Justin separate from all the others. At the head of the massive graveyard, I buried them. I grabbed a scrap of wood and wrote their names on it, detailing the date of their death, and that they were surrounded by the dead of their foes. I placed a similar plaque at the heads of all the divisions, listing them off in case anyone was to come to try and reclaim the dead.

With them all buried, I went inside the manor. It was ravaged, but strangely, none had been taken. I left the rotting pile of Empire Soldiers as I walked through my home one last time. I grabbed everything I would need on my journey, through I knew not where I would go. All the other valuables, I moved into the family vault. Each Noble House had a vault like this. Once closed, only a direct blood relative could open it. If there were no such relatives, the vault would automatically open.

I had such fond memories of nearly everything in the manor, that by the time I was done, practically everything had been moved into the vault. I didnt even think it to be so large. With everything safe in the vault, I put my armor back on. I had taken it off the second day, but it had still been caked with the blood and mud. It was a constant reminder about Adam. I kept a book about the world with me. It explained geography and Beasts, all very generalized, and was the last book Justin had given me.

I kept the gloves my parents had given me. I would keep the Voidwolf legacy alive, so as long as I could. Pulling my backpack on, I grabbed the burning piece of wood and walked out of the manor. It was a long march from the manor to the mountain of corpses outside the city walls. There was no ceremony of any sort. I tossed the torch onto the pile and didnt stop or turn back.

As the mountain of corpses erupted in flames behind me, I finally shed a tear. It was the first tear I had shed in this new world. Hitching up my pack, I walked on, letting the tear fall off my face as I walked through the Graveyard.