Traitor

"Damn you! You traitor! Do you have any idea about what you have just done? You sold out your own friends, your brothers, your people, and every good thing we had. Damn you Veyr! "

Veyr jumps up from a cold dream. He was already covered in sweat, his short dark hair messy and his white face became weary. His brown pupils were dilated and his lean chest was breathing heavily.

"Last night's memories, huh?"

 Veyr turned his head toward the sound. It was one of his fellow soldiers in his troop. 

The soldiers usually slept in the barracks provided by the royals, not cheap, not luxurious either. 

The barracks felt duller and heavier than usual, as if the horror everyone had witnessed the previous night had followed them back inside.  

Almost all of them had already left for duty. Only Veyr and a few others remained. 

Veyr didn't answer to the question . He stared through the window at the morning sky instead, the same grey it had been for a year now. 

His mind was torn between the horrible dream he had just experienced and the horrific night he had witnessed the day before.

"You talk in your sleep, you know."  

The soldier pulled his boots on, not looking up. 

" The whole barracks has heard it by now". 

"It's not something I choose to say," 

Veyr said finally, voice calm.

"Didn't say you did." 

The soldier shrugged.

 "Seven years is a long time to carry one bad decision."

Seven years. Veyr almost laughed at how the man made it sound small, one word for a war, a betrayal, and everything after.

Veyr had been sixteen when the kingdom's army split down its middle, the royals on one side and the rebels on the other, and he had gone with the rebels believing it would end the way he needed it to end, with nobles no longer feeding on the labor of people who had nothing.

 He had believed the man leading the rebels , a young major general who spoke like the future already belonged to him. 

A strong leader whom all the rebels looked up to. Veyr had believed him enough to raise a blade against the crown he was born to serve.

A year of civil war had answered that belief with failure. But what came after was even worse, though it took years to understand how much worse.

 The rumors started slow, that the rebel's leader's cause had never been the people at all, that somewhere in the losing months of the revolution he had reached for something older than kingdoms and crowns, older than humanity's memory of itself.

 The unnatural forces and it's unknown entities had always been there, sealed away since the first age, kept back only because humans learned the very same unnatural powers and spells long ago, the only reason that enabled humanity to co exist in this strange world.

 Nobody knew exactly what the leader had done. Only after five years just when the kingdom had begun to stand upright again, something ruptured and opened that should have stayed shut.

 Then the Celestria kingdom had to face forces that was beyond human.

That was one year ago now. Veyr stood up to get ready while listening to the same numbers everyone in the barracks had stopped needing to say out loud.

 Millions dead already, Cities sealed behind walls that hadn't existed two years earlier, surviving on secret trade roads because the open ones weren't safe anymore.

Few cities gone. Villages gone.Towns gone. Forests gone. Half the kingdom's land no longer belonged to anyone who could call themselves human.

"You still dream about him," the soldier said, quieter now, watching him. " The general ."

"I dream about what I did,"  Veyr said. "He's just in it." 

He picked up his boots and didn't say anything else, because there wasn't a way to explain that the accusation in his dream wasn't the general's voice at all. It was his own. 

His own painful guilt for contributing to something that took away everything that once used to be normal.

Veyr had never really been accepted back into the kingdom after the war. To most of the soldiers who knew his past, he was still a traitor, and outside the army it wasn't much different.

 The surviving government had imprisoned or executed most of the former rebels, while those who remained carried the same name like a stain.

 Veyr had stopped visiting his family years ago, facing his old neighbors had become unbearable, and there had been a time when he had wondered whether there was any reason to keep living at all.

 Eventually, however, even that pain had become familiar. The kingdom had given its people larger things to fear now . There is an invasion beyond the gates, cities to protect, food to ration, and an entire civilization struggling simply to survive.

Veyr reached for the jacket hanging by his bunk, the black one with the gold buttons and the braided cord stitched down the front in tight rows, with the kingdom's crest on the right shoulder, standard issue for any soldier still holding a post in the city. 

He pulled it on over his shirt, fastened the buttons one by one up to the high collar. Veyr wasn't a large man, medium height, built more for speed than for standing his ground in a shield line, but the jacket gave him a harder silhouette than he actually had, square at the shoulders, straight at the collar.

He then pulled on black pant and tucked them into the boots. He strapped his sword belt over the jacket last, checked the blade was seated right, and rolled his shoulders once to settle the whole weight of it. 

By the time he stepped out of the barracks, the grey morning had barely lifted.

The streets were mostly empty. There was a curfew in effect, and not a single civilian was allowed outside. Veyr walked through the ruined street, the air still unsettling and threatening. 

Veyr had seen the streets like this only once before, about six months ago, when those demon like creatures invaded the city and wreaked havoc across its districts.

He noticed the few soldiers assigned to clear the mess from the streets. All the bodies had already been removed, and now they were clearing away the shattered remains of the streets .

 Veyr then came across a different group of people, a cluster of officials in clean blue uniforms.

 He recognized them easily as belonging to the police intelligence department, analyzing the entire crime scene. A lot of them were there. Veyr didn't bother going near them.

He then spent the whole day alone, clearing away pieces of ruined buildings, vehicle debris, and other waste material. 

The soldiers weren't only fighting anymore. They were clearing rubble, guarding food stores, escorting investigators, repairing barricades and doing whatever work the collapsing kingdom could no longer afford to assign to civilians. 

Veyr had only been allowed back into the army because the kingdom had run out of soldiers. Too many had died during the invasion, too many had deserted, and too many positions had been left empty for the government to afford the luxury of refusing experienced hands. 

His past had not been forgiven, it had simply become less important than the need for another rifle on the street.

It was late evening, and the skies had turned red. The streets were so quiet that Veyr could hear the whisper of the wind and the cries of crows in the distance. He walked alone, his mind still lingering on the horrific tragedy of the previous night.

 Veyr was deeply frustrated with the way the military had handled the civilians. Deep inside, he was furious that they had been so willing to kill all the affected civilians without even considering any alternatives.

Only a few of them had been captured alive for further study, the rest had simply been put down. 

Even though Veyr understood the broader reasons and protocols behind situations like this, the lack of remorse shown by the officials had always disgusted him.

Veyr reached the military canteen for the evening tea break, where a few soldiers from each regiment had gathered. As he entered, he grabbed a piece of bun and a cup of tea before finding a spot at an empty table. 

As he drank, he overheard a conversation from a group of soldiers at the table behind him. When he realized they were discussing information about the previous night's event, he sharpened his ears.

“As far as I know, intelligence couldn't find any meaningful pattern among the victims. It was completely random...” 

“That's even scarier. What about the ones they caught alive?” 

“They can't cure it with any known magic spells, even with the strongest exorcists in the city. They'll probably kill them soon, too.”

Veyr sighed.

“Any clue who did it? Was it what everyone is saying? An unknown entity that entered the city...?”

“I don't know. They're not sharing any valuable information about that. However, it's mostly obvious that it's unlikely to be a non-human intruder. Otherwise, the army would have already found it by now.” 

“What the hell do you mean by that? How could it possibly have been done by a human?" 

" Yeah, he got a point. There's no one in the known kingdom who can cast such a powerful spell without revealing their presence. And most of all, why would any human want to do that? Especially in a situation like this?”

“You guys are right. Which is why they're not jumping to either conclusion yet...”

As Veyr finished eating, he noticed someone unfamiliar standing at the canteen door. 

He wore the uniform of an attendant from the City Commander's office. The man suddenly raised a hand, holding a sealed letter.

“Veyr Welch Steiner!”

Veyr looked up.

“Ah... present, sir.”

The attendant walked over, handed him the letter, and left without another word. Veyr stared at the envelope for a moment. 

He was surprised for several reasons, but one detail immediately caught his attention was the royal seal pressed into the wax.The letter was from High Commander Alaric Ross, the officer responsible for Vale city's military forces.Veyr carefully broke the seal and unfolded the letter. As he read, his eyes widened again.

' To: Veyr Welch Steiner

By order of the City Commandant, you are hereby instructed to report to the Southern Gate Military Camp at first light tomorrow.

Your presence is required for further assignment.

— High Commander Alaric Ross ' 

Veyr read those lines again. The Southern Gate. He hadn't been near the gates for a long time.

The very next feeling that came to Veyr's mind was skepticism. None of this made sense. 

The sudden reassignment.

And most of all, the one question that now refused to leave his mind.

 “ Why me? ”

To be continued.