War Crime

When Kael stepped foot in Ma Gogilka, he cried. The Banner of Blac’hil waving lazily in the wind was the first thing he was greeted with.

He’d never cry so easily in the Academy, but being with a woman changed you. In most ways, for the better.

He was always more attuned to human sensibilities, however.

Hand covering his eyes, probably to avoid the reality that stood simply in front of him.

His steed crooned. Such a good boy, Kael thought, gently brushing its mane. Loyal, even after years of enduring my dramatics.

“You didn’t do this.”

Kael looked down at the love of his life. He sniffled.

“Huh?”

“You didn’t do this to Ma Gogilka.”

But it was hard—so hard—to reconcile that, when the consequences of his parents’ deeds were breathing beside him, walking beside him, looking him in the eyes.

“Let’s go, Kael,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”

“Elisa…”

“What?” She was losing patience now. Who wouldn’t? This was almost too much to bear.

“Look at me.”

“What, Kael?”

“It’s easy for me to say, but I really think we should go back to the old house. Whenever you get this jumpy, it’s usually because you don’t want to face something”

“Have revisited this place countless times. Whatever there was left after the invasion has probably been dissolved by rain and soot.” Her heart was beating, and beating bad.

“So you’ve never looked thoroughly?”

“No.” A pause. “What’d be the point? It’d just get my hands dirty.”

He reached out. “Hold my hand.”

She hesitated, then relented. When their fingers interlocked, he held tighter than she expected.

“Do you trust me, my sweet?”

He felt it then—the stutter in her breath, the way her pulse quickened under his touch.

“If you do… then you’ll have to face this eventually. But you don’t have to face it alone.”

She exhaled again, shaky, her grip tightening in turn. He swore she muttered something under her breath. A small, reluctant “okay.”

And they walked forward together.

\\

The hinges of the blackened home were rotting, judging by the way the backdoor almost fell. Being burnt alive and left to rot in the Sun tended to do that to a building.

The inside was worse. Dust coated everything. The furniture had long since collapsed under its own weight. Mould clung to the walls like a second skin.

Muscle memory, faint but there, guided her steps through the hall. All the while, Kael looked under fireplaces, cabinets, anything that could lend clues. Nothing. He was nothing if not persistent at least.

When they finally reached her parents’ bedroom, she was shocked. As far as she knew, nobody revisited the village after the burning, even when growing up and forming the Obsidian Tide. Nothing left there was logically salvageable. Only finding an absence of a bed was disconcerting to say the least.

In its place stood something else entirely.

A shrine.

Elisa froze, disbelief coiling in her gut. A rough stone altar sat where the bed used to be. Three flowers, slightly wilted but carefully arranged, rested in a shallow bowl at its center.

She stared, stunned.

“What kind of sick joker goes through this…?”

Kael said nothing at first. He stepped forward, eyes scanning the arrangement. No demonic script, so it couldn’t have been an act of mockery.

He crouched down, fingers brushing lightly over the petals. Whoever came here must have been here recently, judging by the fact the flowers were freshly scented.

Elisa frowned. One was her mother’s favorite—a rare bloom that grew only in the shade-hollows east of the village. Another was her father’s, she recognized it from years past, plucked and pressed between old books in their home.

And the third—the third was hers.

She stared harder.

Three flowers. Side by side.

Her throat tightened.

Who else would’ve known that? She didn’t want to believe it but…

“Dad’s alive!” For the first time in days, she had something to smile at. But then, a frown came. Why was she so happy to find her dad willingly absconded and abandoned her daughter?

“But why hide from you all these years?”

Why indeed, Kael.

“I mean…" he continued. "He must have had good reason. From what you described him as… he didn’t seem exactly a reasonable person. He sounded like he was abusive…” Kael was trailing off like he was about to apologize again.

“No, no. You're right. He absolutely was. But though I saw all the bad parts of him, I saw good in him too. When he tried to stop drinking, he got better. And don’t forget, he was a war hero. That screws with anyone’s head.”

A pause.

“I don’t know,” she mused. “I guess a part of me refuses to believe I once looked up to someone who berated women who disagreed with him.”

Kael nodded solemnly. “So… we are off to the Eternal Shade next, right?”

“Kael, there’s something I didn’t tell you.” Her voice dropped lower. “I’m 99% sure they haven't updated the security system there. That does not bode well for... foreigners. Courtesy of the forest gods. Heard tales that it reads the contents of your soul, but I was never the most technically minded gal.”

Kael blinked. “What’s it do?”

“Let’s just say, any demon that walks in uninvited is a dead man walking.”

Another pause.

“So this… this is something I have to do alone.”

Kael nodded slowly. Despite all his might to instinctively protect.

There would be no protest.

\\

Same time, different place…

The clearing still stank of iron and ash.

Macel crouched beside the corpse of the demonkin leader, boot braced against a shoulder as he rifled through the coat.

He warned them if they didn’t come quietly! Two bullets in the chest later, and the bastard had still tried to draw a blade.

At least he could say if there were gods out there who gives a rat’s ass they tried the diplomatic route first.

“Check her satchel,” one of his men muttered.

Macel grunted and yanked it open—papers, maps, dried rations… and a sealed letter.

He broke the seal, brow furrowing as he read.

A neighboring state. Not demonkin, not Concordant—just opportunistic. Payment promised in exchange for destabilizing the region. Fracture Highcliff. Keep it broken. Six months of chaos, then extraction. Easy work, clean payout.

“Godsdamned mercenaries,” he muttered.

But the worst part wasn’t in the letter.

Another pouch—small, heavier than it looked.

He untied the knot, opened the lid—and froze.

A jar.

Glass, cracked at the rim. And inside—

A flicker.

A tiny, skeletal thing curled at the bottom, shivering weakly. Wings wilted, skin pale and translucent, breath shallow. A forest god’s figment. Starved, caged like a trinket.

Its eyes fluttered open. Dull. Flickering.

Macel swallowed hard. “Shit.”

He’d heard stories. Everyone had. That the forest gods didn’t pick sides—but they watched. That they responded. To cruelty. To imbalance. To rot.

And maybe now… maybe they’d had enough.

The wind shifted.

Leaves stirred where there was no breeze.

“Who’s there?” one of the mercs called out, hand on his weapon.

Then they appeared.

Not all at once. Not in a single form. They arrived like smoke, like light refracted through dew. Tall shapes that flickered in and out of clarity—some feathered, some scaled, others just a glimmer of flame or mist. Eyes that shimmered without pupils. Voices that layered over one another like wind through branches.

When they went to work pulling the bodies of the fallen with vines into the soil, he realized just how much his crew was screwed if they actually fought back.

They spoke as one. And not.

“We are not here to destroy you.”

The mercs backed up, weapons half-raised.

Macel didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

One stepped closer—a towering form, head like a stag’s skull wreathed in trailing moss, voice low and hollow.

“In fact, we are relieved. We have not spoken to your kind in many lifetimes. But not all of us agree. The old world pulls us apart still.”

Another shape flickered beside it, more feminine, more human—barely.

“What the other gods don’t know is this: yes—we would have given the location of the rebels. As we are about to do so now.”

Silence.

“Because what good is loyalty to silence when fire waits on every tree root?”

The air was colder now.

“We would rather give you answers than bury what’s left of the forest in ash. But not all of us see it that way. Be careful. There are bigger things on the horizon than petty squabbles amongst mortals.”

“…Harsh.”

\\

And just like that, they were gone. Dissipated into mist. Scary, what gods are capable of. And those were the minor ones.

Locations of the so-called ‘dissenter’ gods now in writing. Willingly given up. Gods, the last thing Highcliff needed were gods fighting amongst themselves.

Macel stood frozen for a moment longer, still holding the jar.

He glanced down at the figment again—its tiny body barely breathing.

He sighed.

“This is going to be a headache to write.”