Threads of Fate

Rovan Vasker: Year 799

The smell of blood had become as familiar to Rovan as the air he breathed. It clung to his skin, seeped into his clothes, and filled his nightmares. Five years. Five years since he had been drafted into King Aldric's army, fighting for a kingdom that no longer felt like his own. The War of the Nine Flames had promised glory, but all Rovan had seen was death.

He sat by the fire, sharpening his blade with slow, deliberate strokes, the grinding of stone against steel cutting through the stillness of the camp. Around him, the other soldiers sat in silence, their faces gaunt, their eyes hollow. The flames flickered in the wind, casting shadows that twisted like specters in the night.

The battlefield had become a graveyard. No one spoke of victory anymore, only survival. Each day they marched into the fray, each night they returned fewer in number. Rovan had learned not to remember the names of those who fought beside him—names meant nothing in the dirt and muck of the front lines. Only the dead mattered now.

Across from him, Captain Marek stood, his broad shoulders slumped, his once gleaming armor now dull and battered. Marek had been a hero once—one of the king's finest, a soldier whose name was sung in taverns across the kingdom. Now, he was just another broken man in a war that had no end.

"We move at dawn," Marek said quietly, his voice barely cutting through the crackling fire.

Rovan didn't look up. He didn't need to ask where—they never knew where they were going until they were already knee-deep in the bodies. The eastern front, the southern pass—the names blurred together. It didn't matter. Each place was the same. Another battlefield. Another massacre.

"I heard them again," one of the younger soldiers, Lerin, muttered from his place by the fire. His hands shook as he gripped his spear, his knuckles white. "The screams... at night... they never stop."

Rovan knew what Lerin was talking about. He had heard them too—every soldier had. The wailing of the dead, carried on the wind. Some said it was the ghosts of their fallen comrades, others whispered of darker things. Curses. Magic. The war had twisted everything. Even the land itself seemed to moan in pain, as if it too was dying alongside the men who fought upon it.

"They're just stories," Marek said, but his voice lacked conviction. He had seen the same things they all had. The blackened skies, the shadows that moved without a source, the way the enemy forces sometimes collapsed without a single blow being struck. Rovan had watched it happen—whole regiments falling to their knees, clutching at their throats as if invisible hands were choking the life from them.

"There's nothing waiting for us but death out there," Rovan muttered under his breath, the weight of the war pressing down on him like a shroud. His hands trembled as he sheathed his blade, the firelight reflecting off the cold steel. "Death, and worse."

The morning came with a thick fog that clung to the earth, swallowing the camp and casting everything in a pale, ghostly light. The soldiers moved in silence, their armor heavy on their shoulders, their weapons already slick with the dew of the cursed air. Rovan could feel the tension, the unspoken dread that hung over them like a pall. They were marching toward the eastern front, where rumors of strange disappearances and unnatural deaths had spread through the ranks like wildfire.

No one spoke of victory anymore. They only wondered how many more would die today.

Rovan fell in line with the rest, his boots sinking into the mud as they marched. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, the cold metal grounding him against the fear that gnawed at his insides. He could hear Lerin muttering to himself again, barely keeping it together.

"They're out there," Lerin whispered, his eyes darting to the mist-covered hills ahead. "I heard them last night... the voices."

Rovan kept his eyes forward, but he felt the weight of the young soldier's words. The whispers of the dead had haunted them for weeks now, growing louder with each passing night. Sometimes, Rovan could swear he saw shapes in the mist—twisted figures that moved just beyond the edge of sight. He had stopped sleeping. He couldn't risk what he might see if he closed his eyes.