She had Hanna’s age.
Ilys swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She pressed her fingers to the girl’s bloodstained eyelids, closing them with careful precision. Her lips parted, a whisper slipping through, unbidden.
“Monsters.” Her own voice barely sounded like hers, kneeling in the ruin of this home, in the ruin of this child.
A gust of wind howled through the broken streets. Across the river, beyond the town, Tyl’s land stretched vast and untouched; its rolling hills and rich fields stood unbothered, unburned, and undisturbed by the horror left in their wake.
She stared at the wide expanse, at the wealth of it.
“I hope their country burns,” she whispered. A prayer. A vow.
Ilys remained crouched beside the girl, her hands resting on the child's small, bloodied form. The wind ghosted through the streets, carrying with it the echoes of violence long since passed. She didn’t move, not while the horror curled like a noose around her ribs.
Behind her, Death stepped forward, his boots silent against the bloodstained earth. He did not kneel, did not reach out, did not attempt to pull her from the moment.
“You call these men monsters,” he said, his voice cool and even while watching the wreckage, the ruin. “And I will not disagree.” His gaze shifted, scanning the desolation before them.“But who reared their violence? Who raised their horses? Who called for their swords to be burnished?”
Ilys stiffened, her fingers curling where they rested against the child’s cold skin. She thought of the lessons drilled into her since childhood; the people of Tyl were the savages across the river, the lawless men who took what they wished and held no honor nor mercy.
But Death spoke not of men, but of nations. And Annon, for all its righteousness, for all its prayers and sacred oaths, was not innocent.
She clenched her jaw, swallowing against the rising bile in her throat.
Death’s voice lowered, almost to himself. “Some men honor no gods. Obey no Fates. They carve into the world thick with desire,” he lectured, “and we are left with the deficit.”
The wind pressed dust into her skin, but the tears streaking her unveiled face sliced through it, leaving pale trails against her cheeks. She did not wipe them away.
“Come,” Death said simply.
She thought he would take her out of the town, lead them away from this ruin, but instead, he turned back toward the stables. They moved silently, careful to avoid the bodies, stepping over shattered belongings and bloodied footprints. The town still smelled of rot and smoke, and the air held the heaviness of what had been lost.
The world outside had screamed itself raw, but the stable remained, untouched by the carnage outside. The horses stoodrestless in their stalls, their quiet offered near reprieve. The world made sense here—among creatures who did not lie, who feared without hatred and hungered without sin. She thought of Morrigan then—the familiar weight of him pressed against her leg, his breath a soft percussion against the soil. She missed that rhythm, that quiet exchange between beings who required merely presence. No words, no worship. Only trust, given and kept. Horses did not raze villages to prove dominion. They did not invent cruelty and call it order. They fled when danger came. They fought when cornered. They lived within the truth of their own need.
“Stay,” Death ordered.
Ilys sat heavily against the wooden wall and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. The flies still buzzed in her ears. The sight of the child’s small, twisted form burned into the back of her mind.
She heard Death move, his footsteps measured as he left her there. She did not know how long he had gone. Minutes. Hours. Time felt frayed, slipping through her hands, indistinct.
By the time he returned, the light had shifted, the afternoon stretching toward dusk. He pulled her to her feet without a word and guided her out of the stables past the dying embers of a town that had already been lost.
Her breath caught at the sight he had escorted her towards.
The bodies were gathered, lined side by side in careful rows. Civilians. The men, the women, the children, placed as if in sleep, their hands folded over their chests, fresh-cut flowers bunched between their fingers.
Death stood beside her. “Give them the rites,” he said. “I must collect. Give them your rites. Ease your mind.”
She knew the words by heart—the blessings carved into her tongue before she could even name her own soul. They rose now, unbidden, pressing at her throat: the ritual phrases, thepromises of peace, the command to release and return. She had spoken them a hundred times. Had drawn the line between life and death with a seasoned hand. Had believed that mercy could be measured by obedience.
But as she looked upon them—their broken bodies, their faces emptied of everything but fear—the words curdled. They did not fit here. They belonged to marble halls and polished altars, to the sanctified performance of loss. Not to this. Not to those who had been cornered, stripped, slaughtered without choice or dignity.
Kneeling beside the first body, Ilys placed a hand over the still chest, her voice barely more than breath. The words were old, older than the rites she had been forced to learn, intoned in passing by Grim, a story half-forgotten until now.
“Where the fire dims, you will rest.
Where the water stills, you will wait.
Where the stars gather, you will be known.”
