Honor and Glory | ATEEZ

054

I had been circling the camps on the field outside of Agora for hours now, suffering under the weight of exhaustion, anger, and sadness that weighed me down as I continued to let my feet carry me around the area.

The darkness had covered the world in a veil of shadows and secrets, and I could barely see the ground underneath my feet as I continued walking down the path I had found.

The meadow had been completely ruined underneath the weight of the thousands of feet that had trampled over the tall grass and beautiful flowers.

Now completely flat and ruined, it was covered in hundreds upon hundreds of tents.

I stopped for a moment, watching them glow in the light from the flames in the lanterns all around the camp, brightening the area, covering it in a golden glow.

They looked like stars on a night sky.

But as I turned my head to look up, I realized that there weren't any.

The beautiful dark blue canvas that usually hung over the Kingdom of Agora every night, splattered with droplets of white and yellow that glinted in the night, was nowhere to be seen.

Hidden by a thick layer of clouds.

Luckily, the storm was nowhere to be seen.

I huffed, feeling annoyed all of a sudden, and then getting annoyed at my annoyance as there was really no reason for me to be feeling that way.

I shook my head, suddenly wanting to cry.

I couldn't think straight and even hours of fresh air hadn't been able to fix it.

Running my hands through my messy hair, I tried my best to hold back a yawn but there was no fighting it, my legs could barely hold my own weight anymore.

I sighed, deciding to make my way back to the big red tent where I knew the others would have gathered by now, knowing that I should be there as well, that I had a duty to be there as well.

I trudged into the forest on the outskirts of the camp, encircling the meadow like a blanket of darkness around a single star, trying its best to snuff out the light.

The darkness got denser the further into the woods I got, my surroundings just as gloomy as my mood.

The trees reached high into the sky everywhere around me, reaching over the small path like shadows in the dark; tall, eerie.

I didn't mind them, simply brushing off the sounds of the dead leaves they had abandoned on the ground as they sand their last songs underneath the crushing weight of my feet.

Another feeling that weighed me down was guilt, I realized all of a sudden.

Guilt over the way that things had gone so, so wrong.

Guilt over how I hadn't been able to defend San, how easily I had been pushed back when he went down, how I hadn't been able to go back for him even though I wanted to.

Guilt over how many lives had been lost in the span of a couple of hours as the provinces' armies went into the city to fight for my kingdom.