The rebels framed it as a goodwill gesture—a prisoner exchange without the exchange. Shale and the other nadic captives were released at the edge of Livadian territory, unshackled, unmarked. The White Lion himself stood at the head of the group, his voice calm but carrying weight.

  "Go back," the Lion said. "Return to your emperor. Live your life."

  Shale hadn’t responded. He barely looked back as he crossed the no-man’s-land, the treeline thinning into the muddy outskirts of imperial patrol routes. His gut burned with shame, but his purpose stayed sharp—he’d bury what he’d seen. He’d stay loyal.

  Matiran loomed gray beneath a sunless sky when Shale returned. Smoke clung low over the city, the air thick with the stink of too many bodies and too little bread. The familiar rise of the barracks came into view as he crossed the stone bridge, its once-crimson banners faded to rust.

  But the gates stood shut.

  Shale slowed, the weight of his pack heavier with each step. He banged on the iron doors. Nothing. No sentry. No watch.

  After long minutes, a junior clerk from the central quarter arrived—his robe barely hanging on his shoulders, the eagle sigil of the empire half-torn at his chest.

  The clerk blinked at him, frowning as though sizing up a stranger. "Name and unit?"

  "Lieutenant Aeric Shale. Cedar Company," Shale said, the words catching in his throat. The clerk’s blank stare twisted something in his gut.

  "Never heard of you," the clerk muttered, thumbing through the ledger.

  "I fought for fifty years," Shale snapped, but the clerk’s expression didn’t change. "Well, I'm here, reporting for duty," Shale said, straightening his back, though every part of him sagged.

  The clerk shuffled through a thin ledger, eyes squinting at the pages. "Cedar Company’s been stricken from the rolls. Disbanded."

  The words landed like a blow.

  "Where’s my unit?" Shale pressed, fists clenching.

  The clerk shrugged. "Some discharged. Some conscripted into other regiments. Others…" he let the thought hang, unwilling to say the rest.

  Shale turned from the gates, jaw locked, fury simmering. His barracks—a home for better or worse—shuttered. His men, scattered like seeds in the wind.

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  Matiran had never felt so hollow. Shale drifted through its streets, no red uniform to shield him, no orders to guide his steps. The city pulsed with unrest.

  Protests churned again near the central square—angrier now, hungrier. The emperor’s face, once plastered on every wall, had begun to peel and rot, the paper curling like dead leaves.

  Bread lines stretched for blocks. Coins devalued by the week. Merchants hawked their wares in whispers, as though afraid to be seen. Former soldiers, men Shale once knew, huddled in alleyways with hands outstretched like beggars. They wore remnants of their uniforms—tattered, filthy, the red trim faded to brown.

  Morgellon’s Black Cloaks moved among them like wolves, their hoods drawn low, their mageia faint but present—a constant reminder that the empire’s hand still hovered over their throats.

  Shale felt the land beneath the stone streets. The dryad blood in him ached at the wrongness of it. The ground itself pulsed with neglect. The soil had turned brittle, the balance frayed. No harvest would come from fields like these.

  He was stripped of command, stripped of duty. A soldier without a war. A dryad without roots.

  But the knot in his gut—tight since the Lion’s camp—only grew heavier.

  He found Hawthorn slumped against the base of a broken statue, a cloak of rags draped over his shoulders. The sergeant’s beard had grown patchy and wild, his eyes sunken, rimmed red. A chipped tin cup sat in front of him, rattling with a few dull coins.

  Shale froze, staring down at the man he’d fought beside through mud and fire. Hawthorn blinked up at him, squinting against the daylight.

  "Lieutenant?" the voice rasped, thin with disbelief.

  Shale crouched, lowering himself to Hawthorn’s level. "Hawthorn."

  The sergeant’s smile cracked like dry bark. "Didn’t think I’d see you again. Figured you’d be dead or gone."

  Shale’s throat tightened. "Cedar Company?"

  Hawthorn shook his head, the motion weak. "Scattered. Some begged their way into other units. Most like me."

  Shale glanced at the coins, his jaw clenched. "How long?"

  "Since the barracks shut," Hawthorn muttered. "Morgellon’s lot said we were done. No pay, no duty. No need for mouths that couldn’t hold a club steady."

  Shale reached into his coat, pulling free a few karmata, dropping them into the tin cup. Hawthorn didn’t thank him—just nodded, hollow-eyed.

  "You still wearing the red?" Hawthorn asked, voice rough.

  Shale stood, the knot in his gut twisting tighter. His gaze lingered on Hawthorn longer than he meant it to, tracing every line worn into the sergeant's face. This man had fought beside him at Solokhia’s gates, laughed with him over half-rotten rations, cursed the same psyad officers in the mud. Now he sat hollow-eyed, tossed aside like the empire's scraps.

  The karmata in the tin cup felt like an insult.

  "Not today," Shale muttered, but the words felt brittle. His fists clenched and unclenched as he turned away, the weight of it pressing heavier than the stone streets beneath his feet. For all the wars he’d fought, for all the blood he’d spilled, this was what victory looked like.

  Ashes and ghosts.

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