They did not fight for glory. They fought for a single, bitter reason: the swordsman had once been the General’s captain. He had watched the Citadel fall, and he had run. He had left his honor in these stones.
The swordsman pulled his blade free. He did not sheath it. He simply stood there in the sudden, thinning mist as a true ray of sunlight—the first in a century—broke through the canopy and struck the throne. the misty ruins and the lone swordsman
And into this silence, he walked.
Today, he was not running.
He walked past the Hall of a Thousand Lanterns, now a skeletal ribcage of iron and rot. He passed the Fountain of Youth, now a dry well choked with thorns. Each step was a memory of a war he had not won, a friend he had not saved. They did not fight for glory