The first night was brutal. Polter crouched close to the fire, the cold biting deep into his skin. His breath hung in the air like mist, and every limb felt heavy and stiff. His furs, forgotten in the rush to leave, would have made all the difference. Now he was forced to sit awake, the heat from the flames too weak to reach him. Across the fire, Across the meager glow, Gero lay swathed in thick pelts, a mound of shadow with only the glint of his eyes visible when they flickered open. The man seemed unbothered by the cold, his breaths slow and steady, a steady rhythm that mocked Polter's shivering gasps. Polter watched him with a mix of envy and resentment, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. The silence between them was heavy, filled with unspoken words and the weight of shared secret.

"Enjoying your beauty sleep?" Polter muttered, unable to keep the edge from his voice.

Gero's eyes opened, dark and unamused. "Better than listening to your teeth chatter," he growled.

Polter forced a thin smile. "Your concern warms me more than this fire."

"Fire's not much good if you don't know how to tend it," Gero retorted, shifting slightly under his furs.

"Ah, advice on survival from the esteemed Gero. How ever did I manage before?" Polter shot back, his sarcasm a flimsy mask over deeper frustrations.

Gero snorted. "Managed to get yourself nearly killed, as I recall."

Polter's jaw tightened. "Details."

He gripped the hilt of his sword for warmth, but the metal was cold to the touch. The thorns in the hilt pressed lightly against his palm—a small sting, but the discomfort was better than the numbness setting into his fingers. He had grown attached to that pain, it kept him grounded when he had lost all grounding.

The next morning brought no warmth, the sky painted in shades of gray that offered no comfort. The sun was a pale disc, its light thin and cold. Gero was already up, his movements efficient as he packed his belongings. "We should head north," Gero said gruffly, not bothering to glance in Polter's direction. "Gwenforth's recruiting. He won't give a damn about Thornheart."

Polter rubbed his hands together, futilely trying to summon warmth. "Trading one warlord for another? How original."

Gero shot him a hard look. "Got a better plan, fancy lad?"

"Perhaps we find a quiet little hamlet," Polter mused. "Settle down, tend sheep, grow turnips. The simple life."

Gero barked a harsh laugh. "You? Mucking stables and milking cows? I'd pay silver to see that."

"Why not?" Polter challenged, raising an eyebrow. "I've hidden my talents before. Besides, Vilifrid at least was a noble prince, even if he is a bastard, Gwenforth is a usurper and a murderer with nothing but arbitrary ambition guiding him."

"Not too different from us," Gero said pointedly. "You don't just walk away from what we are."

"And what are we, exactly?" Polter asked, though he already knew the answer.

Gero met his gaze, eyes hard as flint. "Killers. You gave birth to that instinct the day you took up the sword. No changing that, in me or you, village life didn’t stop us with Godefroy."

"It was good, then." Polter said quietly, the words tasting bitter.

"Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep," Gero scoffed. "Doesn't wash the blood off."

"At least I feel something about it," Polter snapped. "You’re content to make yourself a villain but I won’t allow myself to be one."

"Villainy and killing keeps me alive," Gero growled. "Better than ‘chivalry’ and ‘pretty galavanting’ for the sake of an early death." He raised a hand ending the discourse, “I'm heading north. You coming or not?"

Polter studied him for a moment. "Why the rush to throw yourself back into the meat grinder?"

"Because it's what I do," Gero said flatly. "What I'm good at. Unlike you, I don't pretend otherwise."

"Who knew you held me in such esteem," Polter drawled.

"Don't flatter yourself," Gero replied. "Just don't fancy digging your grave when some farmer sticks you with a pitchfork for trying to stick his daughter." Polter began to grow red in that moment, and instinctively clenched his hands around a phantom handle, he choked down his pride for once, and saw the humor of it.

Polter chuckled softly. "Your concern is touching."

Gero turned away. "Believe what you want. I've got a path to walk."

As he began to stride off, Polter called after him. "Gero."

He paused but didn't turn. "What now?"

"Despite your charming demeanor," Polter said, "thank you. For trying to appeal to me."

Gero was silent for a beat. "Debts owed," he muttered. "Don't read into it."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Polter replied, a hint of a smile on his lips.

Polter watched him go, the cold filling the space Gero left behind. Day two was spent in silence, with only the noise of his own thoughts. He wandered west, though the direction held no promise—just an escape from the choices he was unwilling to confront. The landscape offered little solace: charred remains of villages smoldered like open wounds upon the earth, skeletal frames of homes standing as grim sentinels. Once-thriving hamlets were now desolate, their inhabitants either fled or fallen. Each day blurred into the next, hepassed open graves where hastily buried bodies protruded from shallow earth, the stench of decay mingling with the damp air. Battlefields stretched out like scarred plains, rusted weapons and shattered shields jutting from the ground like the markers of forgotten graves. The crows feasted well here.

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Once, from a ridge, he spotted a keep in the distance, its once-proud towers reduced to blackened husks. Smoke still curled from its ruins, a thin line ascending into the gray sky. "Another fallen stronghold," he whispered. "How many more before there's nothing left to burn?" Patrols roamed the lands, men bearing banners and insignias that held no meaning to him. Whenever he glimpsed them—from afar or by the glint of their armor through the trees—he would slip into the shadows, heart pounding with a mix of fear and a residual thrill. It was a game he knew well, but one that had long lost its allure.

When chance encounters were unavoidable, he donned new identities as easily as changing cloaks. "Evro," he'd say with a cordial nod, or "Heledrad, at your service." But the lies tasted bitter now, the names blending into a hollow litany. "Jamot," he offered once to a suspicious guard, forcing a smile. "Hret," he mumbled to a merchant who eyed him warily. By the fifth day, fatigue had settled into his bones, a weariness deeper than any he'd felt on the battlefield. The rain was a constant companion, a cold drizzle that seeped through every layer, clinging to his skin like a shroud. He managed to coax a meager fire to life beneath a cluster of skeletal trees, their bare branches reaching skyward like pleading hands. He sat close to the flickering flames, but they offered little warmth and less comfort. Shadows danced around him, phantoms born of firelight and weary eyes. Staring into the embers, he felt the weight of his isolation more keenly than ever. "Well done, Polter," he muttered, the words swallowed by the damp night. "Masterfully traded one misery for another.”

Sleep eluded him, and when it came, it brought no rest. He saw the faces of men he rode with, fought with, but never died with. Pride was a poor companion, and silence offered no counsel. On the sixth day, the dense forest began to thin, trees giving way to rolling dunes speckled with hardy grasses.

The scent of salt hung in the air, and finally he saw the vast open sea. He stood for a long moment, letting the brisk coastal wind whip around him, tugging at his cloak like a restless child. The roar of the waves was a welcome sound, drowning out the echo of his thoughts. The edge of the world, he mused internally. Or mine at least, a barrier I cannot cross.

Descending to the beach, he felt the sand give way beneath his boots—a softness unfamiliar after days of trudging through mud and debris. He let his fingers sift through the cool grains, the simple sensation brought a faint smile to his lips. An impulse seized him—a whimsical notion that felt almost foreign. Kneeling, he began to gather wet sand, shaping it with hands more accustomed to wielding a sword than crafting. Slowly, a form took shape: walls rose, towers sprouted at the corners, a gate took form. He carved battlements with the edge of a seashell, etched windows and doors with meticulous care.

Polter stood before his castle of sand, the edges of his mouth quirking into a faint smile as the tide crept closer, the waves lapping at the edges of his carefully crafted walls. The soft amber glow of the setting sun cast long shadows over the beach, giving his creation an almost magical quality. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, the sound swallowed by the rhythmic roar of the waves.

For the first time in days, perhaps longer, he had forgotten the weight pressing on him—the burden of guilt, of decisions made, of the lives he had taken and failed to save. There was a peculiar stillness in the moment, a calm so foreign it felt alien.

Then he noticed something odd.

His sword—always within reach, always a tether to who he was—was nowhere to be found. Polter turned his head sharply, a brief panic flaring in his chest, before he spotted the hilt guard sticking up awkwardly from the sand a short distance away. His breastplate and gloves lay beside it, the discarded pieces of his identity half-buried beneath the shifting grains, its glowing eye, always watching and judging seemed shut under the sand.

For a moment, he just stared, his brow furrowing as if the sight itself were an affront. When did I cast them aside? Why? The answer eluded him. He searched his memory, trying to pinpoint the instant when he had unbuckled the straps, drawn off the gauntlets, and set his weapon aside. It wasn’t something he ever did—not fully. To be without his sword was to be vulnerable, defenseless. Yet here he stood, unarmed and unarmored, like a man shedding his skin. And he hadn’t even realized.

Polter stepped over to the pile, his bare hand brushing the sand from the sword’s hilt. The cool metal was familiar, grounding, but it didn’t bite as it should. He flexed his fingers, feeling the cool sea breeze dance across his unprotected skin. For a fleeting moment, he hesitated. The thorns that pricked his palm, the weight of the blade—these were constants, anchors. But just now, as he had knelt to shape his castle, he had felt neither. He had forgotten.

And in that forgetting, he had felt free.

Polter sank to his knees beside the sword, his gaze fixed on it as if it might offer an answer. What kind of man am I, that I could set aside my armor and weapon and lose myself in something so childish? I, who carried bloodstained hands and a name heavy with deeds best left unspoken? I should have felt shame—disgust, even—but I didn’t. Instead, there was confusion, a strange wonder that bordered on disbelief. “What overcame me?” he muttered aloud, the words carried away by the wind.

He looked back at the sandcastle, now half-consumed by the tide, its walls crumbling in the face of nature’s relentless march. It stood no chance, of course; no creation of man could last long against the sea. Yet it had been there, if only briefly. A thing of fleeting beauty and imagined purpose, created by hands that knew more of killing than building.

The simplicity of it struck him. For those few moments, kneeling on the sand, he had not been Polter the warrior, Polter the burdened, Polter the hunted, or even Polter the knight. He had been… what? A child again, perhaps, playing in the snow with Dante and Lehran, dreaming of knighthood before the world revealed its cruelty. Or maybe he had been no one at all, free of past and present, existing only in that singular act of creation.

The thought unsettled him. It was too foreign, too far removed from the man he had become. Yet it lingered, an ember glowing faintly in the ashes of his mind. If it had been so easy to forget, even for a moment, perhaps it wasn’t the sword or the armor that defined him. Perhaps the man he thought he was could be left behind, just like the castle. Polter turned back to the sea, the tide now fully claiming the last remnants of his sandcastle. Its towers had crumbled, its battlements washed smooth, until there was nothing left but a faint depression in the wet sand. It felt like a farewell—he bent and picked up his sword, the blade heavier than it had ever felt before. The familiar press of its weight against his side was more burden than comfort. The thorns on the hilt, muted by his gloves, no longer bit into his skin, but the memory of their sting lingered like an ache. He slung the belt over his shoulder and began walking up the beach toward a grassy knoll that overlooked the shore.

The wind shifted as he climbed, carrying the scent of the sea mixed with the earthy fragrance of the grass. A lone tree stood atop the knoll, its branches twisted and gnarled by years of coastal winds. The bark was rough and scarred, a survivor of countless storms. Polter stopped beneath it, resting a hand against the trunk, its solidity grounded him.

From his belt, he drew a dirk with a practiced motion. He stared at its edge for a moment before pressing the blade into the bark, carving with slow, deliberate strokes. The rough image of a castle began to take shape—a crude imitation of the one he had built in the sand, its towers and walls etched into the living wood. His hands moved almost of their own accord, guided by a memory he couldn’t fully grasp. The finished carving was simple, imperfect, but unmistakable. A mark left behind. A reminder.

He stepped back, examining the small castle as the wind tugged at his cloak. His chest rose and fell in a deep breath, and without allowing himself to think too long, he knelt.

He began to dig.