When the Roads break

POV: Civilian – Liora, a trader’s daughter in a border town

The wind carried the scent of smoke and salt from the northern highlands, far stronger than it should have been. Liora clutched her basket of dried herbs tighter, balancing it against the jostling wheel of the cart her father had insisted she drive. She hated the roads: too narrow, too sharp, and too full of strangers who might cut the wrong corner, leave a cart overturned, or worse.

Her father had always said, “The road teaches patience. And patience teaches survival.” He was wrong. The road taught fear. Fear taught cunning. And cunning, she thought grimly, often failed.

The market at Valdaren—a modest town straddling the southern trade route—was unusually quiet. Merchants’ calls were muted, their carts half-empty. Liora’s father muttered something about delayed shipments from the Compact, missing grain from the central plains, and a “slow disaster in the making.” He tried not to sound alarmed, but his hands shook as he stacked baskets of dried fish.

Liora noticed the same worry in the eyes of the smith’s apprentice across the square. He did not greet her; he only glanced and returned to hammering red-hot iron. Sparks flew, striking the cobblestones, and she shivered. A stray spark hit her basket, singeing the corner of a few herbs. She cursed softly.

Movement at the gates caught her attention. A caravan approached, escorted not by the usual neutral traders but by men in ash-gray uniforms—the Concordat. Their banners snapped in the wind, the soldiers’ boots ringing sharp against the stones. Traders and townsfolk alike ducked instinctively, faces pale.

Liora’s father grunted. “They come for taxes again. Or worse.”

The soldiers dismounted with precision, forming a small cordon around the town square. Their captain, tall and severe, addressed the crowd. He spoke in measured tones about maintaining order, checking shipments, and “preparing for the inevitable.”

Liora did not understand what “inevitable” meant, only that it felt like a weight pressing against her chest. She looked around. The merchant’s apprentice had gone pale; a mother pulled her children closer. A man muttered a prayer in the old tongue.

The Concordat soldiers moved among them, inspecting carts, weighing grain, noting discrepancies. Liora’s basket trembled in her hands. Her father tried to smile. “It’ll be fine,” he said, though his voice carried no conviction.

Liora stepped forward. “Father, what if it isn’t?”

He said nothing. His jaw tightened. The market square suddenly felt too small, too loud, too exposed.

She watched the soldiers move on, leaving chaos in their wake. One merchant’s cart had been overturned, spilling sacks of flour and salt across the cobblestones. A young boy tried to gather them, only to be shouted at by a soldier. The mother beside him yanked his hand away. Liora felt her stomach twist.

She remembered Erynd Vale’s words, though she did not know him: Peace is the space where people decide what they’re willing to lose.

It seemed cruelly ironic.

By afternoon, the town council met, trying to negotiate with the Concordat officers. Liora’s father sat at the edge of the chamber, silent, fingers intertwined, jaw clenched. The officers’ words were calm but absolute. There would be no compromise. Only obedience. Only preparation.

After the council dispersed, Liora walked through the empty streets. Broken carts, overturned baskets, whispered arguments, and frightened children everywhere she looked. The market square, once lively, felt like a battlefield already won by some unseen force.

She paused near the fountain. Water trickled, silver and quiet, uncaring. She knelt and dipped her hands in. The chill bit her skin. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled—a single, slow note that reverberated across the town. It carried no comfort.

Liora thought of the people beyond Valdaren: families cut off by rising tensions, roads blocked, towns left unprotected. She thought of the Compact, the Crown, and the Concordat—their leaders, their promises, their ideologies. None of them had asked if towns like hers could endure their ambitions.

And yet she survived. Her father survived. Some would survive tomorrow. Perhaps most would not.

As she straightened, she realized that survival was no longer enough. Not in a world where the roads themselves seemed to fracture beneath every decision made by those far above her.

Somewhere beyond the mountains, somewhere beyond the high seas, choices were being made that would soon reach her. And Liora, who had once believed she was small and irrelevant, understood that she would be forced to reckon with those choices—whether she wanted to or not.

The road was broken. And it was coming for them all.