In the field hospital housing most of the city’s wounded soldiers, along the back wall was a row of beds labeled “stable.” While the stink of death and the rush of healers made the place feel closer to a morgue than a place of respite, the same could not be said for the patients.

They, despite mostly being injured, were smiling.

They had won, the battle was over, the enemies were slain. Many had died, that was very true, but no more would fall. The rush of the hospital would slowly dwindle, loved ones would be reunited, others would say goodbyes, but just like the patients resting along the back wall, the city would heal.

That was the way of war. That was the way of the Palemarrow citizen.

Gathered around one particular bed were multiple people. Most were older, one was younger. Parents, friends, allies. The people one wished to go into battle with, the people trusted enough to bring everyone home safe and sound.

And yet, the group was missing a few… that was, until they entered the hospital.

“Glenny!?” Leland shouted upon seeing his friend for the first time since before the battle. “You dyed your hair!?”

All eyes shifted from the newcomers then back to the boy in bed. Only one other had brought up the fact that Glenny’s fiery red hair had turned bone white, and that was Jude, the first person he saw when he woke up. The others, his dad especially, didn’t want to trouble him about the oddity until after he was fully healed up.

Glenny, however, thought it was quite odd that neither his dad nor Jude’s parents had brought it up. He was honestly starting to believe someone was pranking him. Jude would be the type to dye someone’s hair white while they were unconscious just for a gag, then have everyone play it off like it was perfectly normal… Suddenly, Glenny had an idea for a great prank.

He sighed deeply, the pain in his chest still not fully dissolved. It was his punishment for doing what he did, Glenny knew. He had tapped into something he wasn’t quite ready for, and now it was time to pay it back in full. But still, he would do it again and again. Anything to kill the monster hiding in his mind.

“Side effect,” he said back to Leland. “Does it look okay?”

Leland’s face scrunched. He didn’t want to lie to his friend, but… “Yeah.”

The frankness caught everyone off guard, mostly Jude, who found the single word to be the funniest thing ever.

“You look like a snow covered pine cone covered in red sand!” Jude cackled, whatever previous worry he felt for his friend gone like the wind.

“Sand?” Glenny asked, smiling somewhat himself.

Leland filled him in, describing his head exactly like a pinecone covered in snow and sand. Glenny’s hair had always been longer, and when it wasn’t properly styled, it plopped down like a paintbrush pushed into a table. But now, layers of white mixed with his natural red, especially at the roots. It was patchy and mangled too, something the boys were quick to point out.

Diana rubbed his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Glenny. Some dye and a proper stylist and everything will be sorted out. Girls love stories of heroics, especially when the hero pushes themselves to their physical and mental limit so hard that their hair turns white from the stress.”

The last word was said with a deathly glare to both her son and Leland. Lucia, Leland’s mother, was aptly doing the same from behind them.

“Oh, uh—”

“Ah, sorry,” Leland muttered, glancing at his wounded friend. “We’re just messing with you. It does look kind of coo—” He cut himself before quickly yelling, “Glenn! Did you dye your eyes!”

Glenny sighed, dejected. Again, Jude had already questioned his eyes. Instead of their usual color, they had turned solid black with a ring of centralized white – if the berserker’s description was anything to go off of. Again, an after effect of using the power of the Void, a power he now knew he did not fully understand.

The Void was a pure white wasteland. Not a pure white and black wasteland. He was doing something wrong when he invoked the Void, or he was tapping into something far beyond his current understanding of the Void. Regardless, he now had weird eyes.

After Leland described how Glenny’s eyes looked somewhat like Lodestar , a white ring filled in with black, the atmosphere turned sour. Oblivion wasn’t something anyone wanted to be compared to.

Glenny sighed after it all. “Even though you two are being complete jerks right now,” he said to Jude and Leland, “I’m glad you two are safe.”

“Us two?” Jude scoffed. “You’re the only one who was injured!”

Leland tugged at his shirt, finding the nearby wall very interesting. “Right, you were the only one in danger of dying. How can you be glad we are safe?”

Softly, Glenny smiled. “Love you guys.”

Jude let out a yelp, leaned over, and promptly hurdled one of his best friends into a great big hug. His other best friend soon joined as well, crowding the small hospital bed.

“Love you two as well.”

“Same!”

Carmon, who had been silent since his barrage of questions after his son woke up, let out a powerful sigh. Seeing Glenny unconscious, his wounded form, and his worn down psyche, had brought up too many painful memories of that fateful day the love of his life had been taken from him.

But now, seeing that his son still could laugh and tease, he felt a well of pride and guilt. Pride for the man his son was becoming, but guilt for hardly being a guiding hand. He saw his wife in their son more and more every day, and was glad Glenny had friends who could watch his back.

Slowly, as to draw no attention, Carmon leaned back in his chair, allowing the shadows to obscure his face. A string of tears leaked from his eyes.

He was so glad his son was fine.

“Oh!” Glenny suddenly shouted, before pulling at his Legacy tattoo. A slightly foggy mirror appeared in his hand. He looked all around his head, more dejected than before.

----------------------------------------

It was two days later when everyone was summoned to the castle. They were to be awarded medals for their “heroic actions” that “saved countless lives,” or some such. The day prior, Rushwin had reappeared demanding a report on Leland’s battle against Ashford.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Leland, of course, obliged, leaving out many parts while implying certain things that didn’t quite happen the way he explained. This had all been coached by the adults who knew the true story, specifically Carmon who was rather adept at sprinkling white lies into conversations. Rushwin obviously knew something was fishy about his tale, but also couldn’t do anything about it. Leland wasn’t an Inquisitor, nor did he hold any power over the city’s newest famous protector.

Which was a strange thing; people knowing who he was. Renown was not like Leland expected. The stories people with great renown always told were of celebrity and pride. But for the now outed Harbinger, he mostly got strange stares or people raising glasses at him. Which was… fine, he supposed. At least they didn’t bother him or try to slip poison into his drink.

Not that he went out in public very often, there were just too many of them for him to feel comfortable.

Still, the award ceremony was supposed to be an olive branch between him and his allies, and Aunty P, and that meant doing things the royal way. It had been a long time since any of the boys had been fitted for proper formal wear, bathed, shaved, and got a decent haircut – Glenny notwithstanding.

In the end, the boys and their parents appeared via a portal as close to the castle as they could without interfering with the anti-spatial magic field. Much to everyone’s chagrin, the splinters of divine bone that ruined the royal campus had all been removed. Spencer was even asked to help with the cleanup, although he secretly kept a few small shards for himself. Not that he knew what to do with them.

The rest of the campus had been fixed up to a proper pristine make. One thing could be said about high-ranked occupational Legacies … that they excelled at their jobs and then some. Legacies of Level Foundation re-tamped the ground, making way for Legacies of Chiseled Stonework to rebuild the mangled grand staircase. Legacies of the Grove replanted the shrubbery while a Legacy of Nature grew the sprouting until they were proper adult plants.

All in all, everything looked fixed. Behind the scenes, not so much. Small graves had been erected here and there, families giving a final offering to their loved ones who fell protecting the castle.

And it was this fact that made Leland wish to not leave the comforts of whatever inn they were staying in.

With all the death the city had been subjected to, there were just too many lost souls. And since Leland was the only one of his immediate group of family and friends who could see dead souls, he bore the burden of horrors.

These dead… did not want to be dead. In their deaths, mostly one emotion remained: anger. Maybe it was how they died, in battle against a true monster. Adrenaline, fear, whatever it was, Leland stopped trying to help the souls move on after the third one brought him to tears.

His quest from the Seraphim Lord wasn’t getting done, he knew, but he couldn’t make himself attempt to help them. So he left them to the city’s professionals.

It was selfish he knew, but it was his parents telling him that he “didn’t have to do it all” that allowed him to sleep at night. He had saved the city from Ashford and whatever his master’s plans were, he didn’t have to look after the dead as well.

But when he knew his parents weren’t looking, he attempted to console any soul he came across. It only happened twice, these souls being “normal” people who had naturally died in the city, not in the wake of war.

One was a Legacy of Mathematics, an accountant. He died from heart failure in his bed after two months of struggling to sit up. The soul confided in Leland that he was glad he died, because his family could finally stop caring for him although it was the guilt of dying that made him fail to pass on in the first place. The soul passed when Leland expressed he understood and would probably feel the same given the situation.

The second was an old lady who died of age. Leland assisted her in finding her granddaughter one last time. The soul passed on beside Leland as they stared into the window of the granddaughter’s workplace. She was smiling.

“It’s the guilt,” Isobel had told him as he wandered back to the inn they were staying in.

She had appeared from the shadows, almost giving him a heart attack. “How long were you following me?”

Isobel knew about his “soul-sight,” as he called it, as well as the problems he encountered. She had been there for the first soul he’d met and had talked with him about the heartache then as well.

She ignored the question. “It’s guilt. That’s why you can’t talk to the soldier’s souls.”

“What are you blabbering about?”

Giving a slow eyeroll, she said, “You feel responsible for their deaths. That if you had killed Ashford faster, or rather, killed him months ago, none of this would have happened. You can’t face them because it’s your fault.”

“No,” Leland mulled, drawing the syllable long. “It’s that they scream incoherently at me.”

“At you, or at you?’

“Is there a difference?”

Isobel took a step forward and patted him on the shoulder. “There always is. Goodbye Leland.”

And just like that, she walked off, disappearing into the city’s dark night. Isobel didn’t attend the award ceremony, nor did she return to the inn.

“Where is she?” Leland asked as he, Jude, Glenny, and their parents walked up the steps leading to the castle.

There were hundreds of soldiers around, each uniformed and saluting. The ceremony wasn’t just for a few boys and their parents, but rather everyone who went above and beyond in the battle. Dozens ventured up the steps, some soldiers, others family members holding memorabilia of their loved ones. All were being honored, even the dead.

“She’s never been one for formal events,” Jude muttered, trying to keep his mouth as still as possible. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to be talking during this.

“Who cares?” Glenny asked, subconsciously eying up at his hair. Not that he could see anything, but the Legacy of Beauty who had fixed him right up had done a wonderful job given his circumstance. “She’s kind of rude.”

Leland shook his head. “She should be here.”

The ceremony lasted, for them, all of five minutes. They reached the top of the stairs, waited a short bit for their turn, then stepped onto the main landing. With the backdrop of the castle, Aunty P pinned an ivory badge to Roy’s chest. She then moved on to Diana, then Jude, then Carmon. At Glenny, the badge changed shape and design into something grander. She pinned it on him with a smile. Lucia and Spencer got a matching pair, the magic-version of the one Glenny received.

But she didn’t give Leland anything. His neck tingled as the moment dragged on, the staring populace like ants. She then cleared her throat and spoke, something she had not done for most of the other awards.

“I, Regent Queen, would love to present you, Leland Silver, with what is rightfully yours. But someone else wished to do the honors despite being warned by several royal healers.”

Somewhere, a troop of low-brass instruments started playing. Then, the castle gates clicked, their mighty doors opening.

“Chin up,” Aunty P whispered to Leland. “This is her first appearance as Queen. Don’t ruin it.”

Confusion marked his face, at least until Queen Sybil Palemarrow took a step out of her home. She walked with precious efficiency, a movement that neither dragged her long regal dress, nor caused her lifted heels problems. She wore ivory and red, her kingdom’s colors, or rather, her colors.

She smiled at him as she walked, her eyes locked only on his. With lips as red as an apple, her scars were hardly visible. A bygone reminder of a time of childhood, a time of weakness, a time of innocence. It hadn’t been long since she had woken up, only two days, but in that time her mother and all the previous queens had taught her many things.

She was neither the person she once was, nor was she anyone different. She was simply her, a girl who longed to leave the cage that was her home, only to realize her home was a paradise all along.

She stopped a comfortable distance from Leland. An attendant quickly passed a box to Aunty P who then opened it for her Queen.

Sybil removed a custom made badge. It was violet and familiarly circular, like a ring or a halo. She brought it close to her own heart before closing the distance between her and its true owner. She reached out, pinning it on Leland.

Leland quickly realized his mouth was agape and he was staring. Then he realized his friends and family had departed the stage, leaving him up there alone, the traitors. He then remembered he could speak.

“How was the nap?”

Smooth.

Sybil smiled gently, a mix of emotions fluttering through her mind. “It was good. Until someone’s magic lit-up the whole city. Although I do have to say, it made finding that accursed statue much easier.”

Leland blinked a few times. “Er, what?”