Silent Ruin {A Novella}|18+

Ch. 2

The Return

The sun was high, shining brightly over the bustling market. The village had been quiet for so long, tucked away from the frontlines of the war, but today there was a different energy, a crackling sense of change. Leah stood by the fruit stall, idly touching the rough skin of an apple while her mind wandered. The market was her escape, a place where she could breathe without the weight of her past pressing so heavily against her chest. But today, even the simple act of browsing felt strained.

A trader, older and hunched from years of hard work, chatted with a small group nearby. Leah barely paid attention until she caught a name.

"Sebastian."

Her hand froze mid-reach, fingers brushing the apple's cool surface. She blinked, unsure if her mind had conjured the name out of habit. But no—there it was again. The trader spoke of soldiers returning, soldiers who had been thought dead. One of them, a man named Sebastian, had been seen limping back into the village.

Leah's breath caught. Her world, carefully built on fragile threads of denial, began to unravel. Sebastian, here? Alive? It couldn't be. For years, she had clung to the certainty that he was gone. The grief had consumed her once, but eventually, she had pushed it down, deep enough that she could continue living. With Jonathan.

"Did you hear?" the woman beside her asked, bubbling with gossip. "Soldiers are back. After all this time... it's a miracle, they say."

Leah's throat tightened. She managed a faint nod and murmured something about needing to go. Her feet moved on instinct, carrying her away from the market, but her mind was spinning, disjointed images of her life with Sebastian flashing before her eyes. The laughter they once shared, the quiet moments of stolen kisses, the promises he made before the war stole him away.

She reached her home in a daze. Jonathan would return later in the evening, as he always did after long meetings with the village council. For now, Leah was alone, and the silence pressed in around her like a suffocating fog.

She should tell him. Jonathan deserved to know. But how could she? How could she say the name of the man who had haunted her every thought for years, the man she had loved and lost and buried in her heart?

The hours dragged by, each minute a fresh torture of indecision. Eventually, dusk fell, and with it came the inevitable—she had to see him. She couldn't stay in this limbo, caught between what was and what had been.

---

The road to Sebastian's family home was overgrown, the once familiar path now a stranger to her. She walked slowly, heart pounding in her chest, every step heavy with uncertainty. She didn't know what she would say, or even if she could face him.

When she reached the small cottage at the edge of the village, Leah hesitated. The sight of it hit her like a punch to the gut. The place where they had spent so many afternoons together, dreaming of a future that had never come. Now, it looked abandoned, a ghost of its former self. But a flicker of light from the window told her that someone was there.

Her legs felt weak beneath her as she approached. She knocked lightly, unsure if she even wanted him to answer.

The door creaked open, and there he was.

Sebastian.

For a moment, she couldn't breathe. He was so different, yet painfully familiar. His hair, once thick and golden, was now streaked with dirt and cut short, and his face bore the weight of years she had missed. He looked older, harder, as if the war had carved deep lines into his very soul. Scars marred his skin, running jagged across his cheek, down to his neck. But his eyes... those eyes that had once looked at her with such warmth and affection, now burned with a haunted intensity that broke her heart all over again.