What Power Costs the Faithful
1105 Words
The battlefield did not fall silent when the last scream ended.
It lingered.
It clung to the air like smoke, thick and unforgiving, settling into the bones of those who remained. Veronica stood at the edge of the ruined clearing, her boots half-buried in churned earth and ash, her chest rising and falling with a breath she could not steady.
Around her, the pack moved in fragments, too quiet, too slow. No one spoke above a whisper. No one ran to celebrate survival. Victory, if this was it, had not come with relief.
Only cost.
She had thought she understood loyalty.
She had worn it like armour. She had believed that devotion, for the pack, for the cause, for those who led, was something clean. Something honourable. Something that protected.
Now she could see its shape more clearly.
It did not shield. It did not bargain.
It consumed.
Caelum stood not far from her, his broad frame indistinct beneath the dimming sky, streaked with blood that was not entirely his own. His posture, usually so steady, seemed strained, as though he carried invisible weight pressing down through his shoulders.
For a long moment, he didn’t move toward her.
He looked instead at the fallen.
Veronica followed his gaze.
There were more bodies than she wanted to count.
Some she recognised by the lines of their faces, others only by the fragments of uniform still clinging to them. Pack members who had stood beside her hours ago. People who had trusted their place in the world, trusted that obedience to command would mean survival.
She knew better now.
A young runner, one of the peripheral scouts who had once laughed too loudly in the training yard, lay crumpled near a broken barricade. His hands were still clenched, as if he had tried to hold onto something as life left him.
No one had reached him in time.
No one had been able to.
Veronica swallowed hard.
“This isn’t how it was meant to go,” she said, her voice barely carrying between them.
Caelum turned then. His expression was darker than she had ever seen it, not anger, not quite grief, but something colder, something edged with understanding she didn’t yet possess.
“It never is,” he replied.
There was no softness in the words. No attempt to comfort.
Only truth.
She felt it land inside her like a stone.
For so long, she had believed in the structure of things, the hierarchy, the discipline. Orders given, followed, carried through. She had leaned into it because it offered clarity. Purpose.
If she did her part, if she stayed loyal, if she obeyed, then she would be spared.
She almost laughed now, though the sound caught somewhere between humour and despair.
“They trusted us,” she murmured, glancing again at the fallen. “They followed because we told them to.”
Caelum’s jaw tightened. “They followed because they chose to.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” he agreed quietly. “It doesn’t.”
The wind shifted, carrying with it the metallic scent of blood and the faint crackle of something still burning at the far edge of the clearing. Veronica wrapped her arms around herself, though the chill came from somewhere deeper than the air.
Across the field, a cluster of pack members gathered near one of the healers.
She recognised them.
Not by name, there were too many for that, but by role, by presence. Those who had always been there in the background. Steady. Reliable. The ones who filled the spaces between louder voices.
Now they were the ones most clearly marked by loss.
One woman knelt beside another, her hands trembling as they hovered uselessly over a wound she couldn’t close. A third stood just behind them, staring blankly ahead, her eyes empty in a way Veronica had never seen before.
Witnesses.
Survivors.
The faithful.
Veronica took a tentative step closer, drawn by something she couldn’t ignore.
The kneeling woman looked up as she approached, recognition flickering briefly before being swallowed by something heavier.
“You told us to hold the line,” she said.
There was no accusation in her tone.
That was what made it worse.
Veronica hesitated. “We did what we thought-”
“It’s done now,” the woman cut in softly.
Her gaze dropped back to the still form in front of her. Her hands moved again, not to heal, but simply to rest against the fallen’s shoulder, as if touch alone might anchor something slipping away.
“We held it,” she continued. “We didn’t break.”
Veronica’s throat tightened. “And the cost?”
The woman did not answer.
She didn’t have to.
It was laid out all around them.
Veronica stepped back, something in her chest shifting, cracking open just enough to let a harsher understanding bleed through.
Loyalty was not protection.
It was offering.
Giving without guarantee.
Standing without the promise of being saved.
She had asked people to do that.
She had expected it.
A low sound drew her attention, a groan, sharp and strained.
She turned to find one of the older pack members being helped to sit upright, his movements slow, laboured. His face was pale beneath the streaks of dirt, and his breathing came in uneven bursts.
Another knelt beside him, supporting his weight.
“You’re still here,” the older man rasped, his eyes flicking toward Veronica.
It took her a moment to realise he was speaking to her.
“Yes,” she answered, unsure of what else to say.
He studied her for a long second, something almost amused ghosting across his features.
“Then it wasn’t wasted,” he said.
The words struck harder than any accusation could have.
“Don’t,” she started, taking a step forward. “Don’t make it that simple.”
“It is that simple,” he insisted, though his voice wavered. “We follow. We fight. Some of us fall. That’s always been the way.”
“And if it shouldn’t be?” she pressed.
He smiled faintly, a weary thing. “Then you’ll have to change the world, won’t you?”
The effort of speaking seemed to drain him. His head sagged, and the one supporting him steadied his shoulders.
Veronica stood there, caught between anger and something far more fragile.
Change the world.
As if it were a task she could just choose.
As if power alone made it possible.
She looked back to Caelum, searching for something, guidance, contradiction, anything that might anchor her.
He met her gaze.
- Writer
