2 - The Warmth of a Survivor

The high-speed military carriage slammed to a halt, its heavy iron-shod wheels screeching against the cracked, unyielding earth. The momentum threw Valen forward, his palms slapping against the velvet-lined interior of the cabin. He didn’t wait for the driver to unlatch the door. Channeling a brief, intense burst of Holy Light into his boots, Valen kicked the heavy oak door open, shattering the brass latch, and threw himself out into the choking air.

The wind immediately caught his white-and-gold vanguard cloak, whipping it around his face like a frantic shroud.

His breath died in his throat.

The picturesque valley village of his childhood—the quiet, sloping sanctuary of green hills, stone cottages, and wild rivers where he had spent the first fourteen years of his life—was gone.

In its place lay a smoldering, jagged wound in the earth. The rolling hills were choked with a thick, pulsating purple-black sludge that hissed audibly as it dissolved stone, soil, and timber alike. The air didn't just smell like smoke; it tasted like copper, burnt iron, and sulfur—the undeniable, suffocating stench of a raw Abyss eruption. It was a localized disaster, a sudden tearing of the world’s flesh that had vomited the deep underworld up onto the innocent surface.

"Jace..." Valen whispered. The name felt small, brittle, entirely swallowed by the roaring wind and the distant, chaotic shouts of rescue teams.

His heart hammered violently against his ribs, a frantic, trapped bird bruising itself against the cage. Valen lunged forward, his pristine white boots sinking ankle-deep into the ash-covered grass. He pushed past local vanguard soldiers who were frantically setting up copper containment pylons, ignoring their startled shouts of "Sir, that sector isn't clear!" and "Lieutenant, fall back!"

He couldn’t fall back.

He channeled his Holy Light, letting the radiant, golden energy coat his hands like thick, glowing gloves as he threw himself into the debris. He ripped away shattered timber beams with his bare hands, his teeth gritted as the leftover purple miasma hissed against his divine light, trying to eat through to his skin. He didn't care about military protocol. He didn't care about his rank. He helped a frantic rescue squad pull three survivors from a collapsed communal root cellar, his hands shaking as he cleared the rocks from their faces. But none of them wore the face he was terrified of finding.

An elderly neighbor, coughing up a terrifyingly dark, viscid fluid, clutched Valen's pristine sleeve with bloody fingers, weakly murmuring that Jace’s parents hadn't made it out of their small house before the earth tore open.

The world went momentarily silent, save for the high-pitched ringing in Valen's ears. Panic, cold and heavy as lead, flooded his veins. He ran toward the lip of the main crater, his cloak tearing on a piece of jagged, rusted iron. He shouted his best friend's name into the burning wind, over and over, until his throat felt raw and scraped with glass.

"Jace! Jace!"

"Valen...?"

The voice was barely a rasp, a fragile thing that almost dissolved beneath the heavy hum of the purification arrays.

Valen spun on his heel so fast he nearly lost his footing on the slick ash.

Sitting on a overturned wooden crate near the perimeter of a medical tent, wrapped in a coarse, industrial gray wool blanket, was Jace.

Valen’s knees nearly buckled. He sprinted across the uneven ground, his boots kicking up clouds of grey soot, and threw himself downward. He wrapped his arms around his friend, burying his face into Jace’s ash-dusted shoulder, squeezing so tightly that his own knuckles throbbed beneath his leather gloves.

For one beautiful, fleeting second, the suffocating weight in Valen's chest evaporated. Jace was warm. He was breathing. Valen could feel the rapid, terrified flutter of Jace's pulse against his own collarbone. He was alive. 

Jace didn't hug back at first. His body was stiff, brittle as dried twigs, his hollow eyes staring blankly at the purple sludge bubbling a hundred yards away. His hands—usually calloused and strong from working the fields—were raw, the skin scraped away from the fingernails where he had clearly tried to dig through collapsed stone.

Then, a jagged, broken sound tore out of Jace’s throat. He leaned into Valen, his fingers clawing at the back of Valen's rigid, formal military uniform, burying his face into the golden embroidery of Valen's shoulder guard.

"They're gone, Valen," Jace choked out, his voice fracturing into a desperate whisper. "They're just... gone. The kitchen... the roof just came down. The ground opened up right beneath the hearth. I couldn't reach them. I couldn't hear them."

"I'm here. I've got you, Jace. I'm here," Valen muttered, his own voice thick, tightening his embrace until their breaths mingled.

Holding Jace, the absolute gravity of their childhood rushed back to Valen. Jace was the anchor that kept Valen human. When Valen's father—the legendary Commander Vane—had died in battle, Valen had been hollowed out, groomed by the military to be a cold, perfect weapon of the state. It was Jace who had refused to let him turn to stone. Jace was the one who had dragged Valen down to the river on hot summer days, forced him to eat stolen apples, and reminded him of what the earth smelled like when it wasn't covered in war-wards. Jace's mother had been the one to mend Valen's torn shirts; Jace's father had been the one who taught them both how to properly swing a wood-axe. They weren't just friends. They were the only real, living pieces of Valen’s heart left in this world.

"It was the tea," Jace wept, his entire frame shivering violently despite the oppressive heat radiating from the volcanic crater. "My mom... her chest was feeling tight from the damp fog yesterday. She asked me to run up to the northern ridge to gather some silver-leaf stems to brew a tea to help her breathe. That’s the only reason I wasn't inside the house. If I hadn't gone... if I had just stayed to help my dad mend the fence... I could have pulled them out. I could have died with them."

"Look at me, Jace," Valen said softly but firmly, pulling back just enough to frame Jace’s soot-stained face with his hands. He wiped away a trail of dark, tear-mixed ash with his thumb. "Don't do that to yourself. Look at me. It is not your fault. You cannot blame yourself for the earth breaking."

"We were supposed to build the new barn next month," Jace whispered, his eyes completely vacant, staring through Valen as if looking at a ghost. "My dad... he finally bought the oak timber from the timber mills. He laughed and told me he was getting too old to lift the center beams by himself anymore. He said we were finally going to do it together, just the two of us. We had the plans drawn on the back of the pantry door, Valen. It's all under the mud now."

Valen felt a hot tear slip down his own cheek, burning against his skin. The slow-burning horror of the situation was sickening; a lifetime of memories, of quiet, simple country dreams, completely erased in a single afternoon by a random shrug of the Abyss. He forced a soft, reassuring smile, squeezing Jace’s shoulders to ground him.

"I'm here now. I am not leaving you, Jace. You are coming back to the Capital with me. I’ll get you a home in the Inner Ring. I'll take care of everything. For the saints, I am so incredibly, deeply glad you are alive."

As night slowly crawled over the valley, the rescue camp settled into a grim, exhausted silence. The only sounds left were the low, rhythmic, mechanical hums of the vanguard's purification arrays, working in the dark to burn away the leftover sludge. Valen stayed glued to his friend's side, steering Jace into a small, isolated military tent reserved for officers' guests.

Exhausted from the sheer trauma and the lingering, nauseating effects of the miasma, Jace eventually collapsed onto one of the narrow cots, curling into a tight ball beneath the gray blanket. Valen didn't sleep. He sat on the edge of the opposite cot in the dim, amber light of a radiant lantern, watching the slow, shuddering rise and fall of Jace’s shoulders. He watched over his friend with a fierce, protective intensity, counting every breath, waiting for the dawn so they could finally leave this graveyard behind.

The harsh, unfiltered morning sun broke through the canvas seams of the tent, throwing sharp golden lances across Valen’s eyes. He blinked against the glare, his muscles stiff from sitting upright for most of the night.

Instinctively, his eyes darted across the small tent to Jace’s cot.

The bed was empty.

The coarse gray wool blanket was no longer tangled around his friend; it had been neatly, perfectly folded and placed at the foot of the mattress.

Valen let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding, a faint, tired smile touching his lips. He probably went back to the house, Valen thought, rubbing his weary eyes. It was a common, heartbreaking habit for survivors of sudden disasters—waking up in the morning, unable to accept that their reality had changed, and walking back to the ruins to try and salvage a scrap of clothing, an old tool, or a forgotten memento. It was a way to touch the past one last time.

Valen adjusted his uniform collar, pinned his white-and-gold cloak back over his shoulder, and stepped out into the crisp, biting morning air. The smoke from the crater had mostly died down, leaving the valley looking hollowed out, cold, and entirely gray under the morning sky.

He walked down the familiar dirt path toward the eastern edge of the village, where Jace’s family property stood. The outer stone wall of the cottage was heavily fractured, cracked down the middle by the seismic shockwave, but the main timber frame of the home was remarkably intact, standing like a stubborn skeleton amid the ash.

Valen stepped through the shattered front doorway, the wood crunching beneath his boots. "Jace? You in here? Let me help you carry whatever you find—"

The words died in his throat. He froze.

The house was completely, utterly empty.

It wasn't ruined by the earthquake. It hadn't been looted by panicked, desperate neighbors. It had been systematically, meticulously cleared. The heavy oak dining table Jace's father had spent months carving was gone. The iron cooking pots, the hand-woven rugs, the clothing trunks, the family heirlooms, the small wooden toys—even the linen curtains had been carefully unhooked and pulled down from the windows. The wooden floorboards were completely bare, swept clean of soot, showing only faint, fresh scuff marks where heavy objects had been dragged out toward the road.

There wasn't a single scrap of clothing left behind. It was as if an entire family's existence had been professionally, deliberately eviscerated from the earth in a matter of hours.

A cold, greasy sweat broke out on the back of Valen's neck. The slow-burn intuition of an experienced vanguard officer whispered that this wasn't the work of thieves or a standard clean-up crew.

He spun around, walking briskly back out to the dirt path, his eyes scanning the area until he spotted a local vanguard guard patrolling the perimeter fence.

"You there. Soldier," Valen called out, his authoritative, military tone cutting through the morning quiet.

The guard turned sharply, adjusting his iron spear. The moment his eyes caught the high-ranking white-and-gold embroidery of Valen's cloak, his posture snapped into a rigid salute. "Lieutenant! Good morning, sir!"

"Who cleared out the property down this path? The stone cottage with the cracked lintel," Valen demanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register as he pointed back over his shoulder. "Where did they take the belongings? And did you see the young civilian who was staying in officer tent four this morning? A man named Jace."

The guard’s posture didn't just stiffen; it locked.

The helpful, cooperative expression a common soldier usually gave to a legendary commander's son instantly vanished, replaced by a cold, glassy, unnatural blankness. He pulled his eyes away from Valen’s face, staring rigidly at the empty hills behind the lieutenant.

"I am unaware of any civilian by that name, Lieutenant," the guard said, his voice strangely flat, like a man reciting a rehearsed line from a manual. "And no properties in this sector have been cleared. Orders from regional logistics state that all structures within the blast radius are to be treated as hazardous, quarantined waste. No personnel have entered that house."

Valen narrowed his eyes, a dangerous, golden spark of Holy Light involuntarily flickering deep within his core, making the air around his fingers shimmer. "Don't play games with me, Soldier. I spent the entire night in a tent with him. I carried his parents' neighbors out of the mud. That house has been stripped down to the bare timber. Who brought the transport wagons in last night?"

"I don't know what you are talking about, sir," the guard repeated. His hand gripped the shaft of his spear so tightly his leather gloves groaned under the strain. His tone was sharp, defensive, and carried a bizarre, rigid edge that was entirely out of line for a low-ranking grunt addressing a superior officer. "I have my orders. If you don't believe me, check the daily registry at the commander's central tent."

Valen stared at the guard for a long, agonizingly tense moment. The silence between them grew heavy, suffocating.

Something was profoundly, terrifyingly wrong. The atmosphere of the camp had shifted entirely while he slept. It was no longer a tragic, mourning rescue mission.

It felt like a crime scene.

Without another word, Valen turned on his heel, his cloak snapping in the wind as he strode toward the large, canvas central command tent. As an elite officer of the Capital's Vanguard, he possessed the clearance to view any regional military ledger. If Jace had been moved to a medical facility in the Capital, or if a specialized bureaucratic clean-up team had processed the estate for estate taxes, it would be documented in black and white.

He marched into the command tent, completely ignoring the startled look of the administrative clerks who scrambled to stand. He pulled the heavy, leather-bound daily registry ledger across the wooden table toward him.

His fingers trembled slightly as he flipped through the crisp, freshly inked pages of the morning's updates.

Sector 4 Logistics. Casualty Reports. Survivor Relocation Logs.

He found the dedicated page for his home village. His eyes raced down the column, searching for the specific relocation alpha-code that would tell him which hospital or Capital housing sector Jace had been assigned to.

Then, his breath hitched. The blood drained entirely from his face.

There was no relocation code.

Next to the names of Jace’s mother and father, the fresh black ink read: Deceased. Body unrecoverable.

And right beneath them, written in the exact same cold, precise, unfeeling handwriting, was his friend's name.

Jace Vance. Age 21. Deceased. Status: Terminated by instantaneous toxic inhalation.

Valen stared at the page, the black letters blurring and warping before his eyes. According to the official, high-clearance document stamped by the Solarian government’s regional command just two hours ago, the friend he had held in his arms last night—the friend who had wept against his shoulder and promised to build a barn—had died a day ago.

On paper, Jace Vance had never walked out of the crater. On paper, his friend was already ash.