29 lines
No EOL
2.6 KiB
Markdown
29 lines
No EOL
2.6 KiB
Markdown
Snow fell like a curtain across the broken land—slow and heavy, blanketing the world in white silence. It dulled the edges of the foothills, softened the jagged paths, and cloaked the black scars of war. Trees twisted out of the mist like forgotten guardians, their branches sagging under ice. Wind moaned low through the canyons, as if mourning what had been lost.
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Telaryn trudged forward, her legs numb above the knees, boots soaked through. Each breath steamed in the frozen air and turned her chest to iron. The Mourning Peaks loomed above, a wall of distant shadows behind the veil of snowfall. Their true heights were hidden, as if the mountains refused to bear witness to the fugitives crawling at their feet.
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Behind her came the rest—Alisha, shivering but unbroken, her cloak wrapped tightly around both shoulders. Halven limped with every step, leaning on a broken spear. Two guards flanked the group, faces gaunt beneath dented helms. No one spoke. The snow swallowed sound and spirit alike.
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A scribe—the youngest among them—stumbled. Telaryn caught his arm before he fell and pulled him up with a grunt. He gave her a grateful, frightened look. She didn’t know his name. They’d left the palace in such haste that only fate had decided who escaped and who perished.
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She looked back once.
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Through a gap in the trees, far to the southeast, the pale smudge of Talpis could still be seen. The city, her city, burned like a wound in the snow—a smear of red and black on the white canvas of winter. Towers had fallen. The smoke reached high enough to choke the moon.
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She turned away.
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“This path won’t hold much longer,” Halven rasped beside her. His breath rattled like broken leaves. “The old passes… they’re treacherous when the snows come. We’ll have to find shelter by nightfall, or we freeze.”
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“There’s a spirit way near here,” one of the guards muttered. “The kind that follow the wind. Some say they lead to safety.”
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“Or straight to the dead,” said the other.
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Telaryn ignored them. She kept walking.
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Her thoughts scraped like knives inside her skull. Her father was dead. The throne gone. The gods silent. And yet here she was—still moving, still breathing, each step a betrayal of memory. Duty should have held her to the last gate. Should have seen her fall beside him. That was the old way.
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But she had chosen otherwise.
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The snow deepened. The world narrowed to the space between her footprints. Behind her, the wind blew fresh ash across the fallen standard of Talpis, which no one had the strength to carry anymore.
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And ahead, somewhere in the white silence, waited the next loss. |