ASH IN HIS HANDS
1091 Words
Chapter 11:
The letter came at dusk. Ash clung to the boy who delivered it. Drayce broke the seal without a word.
“Northern Spire fallen. Survivors unconfirmed.” Four words that changed everything. He read them three times anyway. The ink didn’t change.
Varric stood across the war table and said nothing. There was nothing to say. The map between them had too many red pins.
Drayce pressed his fingers against the table until his knuckles went white. He thought of Kael’s laugh. He thought of Raina watching the door.
Thinking of them felt like keeping them alive. For a few seconds longer, at least. It was a lie, but he needed it.
Outside, the capital kept moving. Merchants closed their stalls. Children laughed in the alleys.
The sound felt wrong. Obsolete. Drayce wanted to tell them all to be quiet. The North had ended.
Grief was a private country. He had just been exiled to it. No map. No guide. Only weight.
“Double the watch,” he said. His voice didn’t shake. It couldn’t. Commanders didn’t shake.
“Riders to the border villages,” he added. “If anyone comes from the North, I know before they reach the gate.” Varric nodded.
The door closed behind Varric. The room went empty. Too large. Too quiet.
Drayce sat down. The letter crumpled in his hand. He hadn’t realized he was gripping it.
For the first time since he was fifteen, he lowered his head. His forehead touched cold wood. He didn’t cry.
Men like him weren’t taught how. But he sat there anyway. Ash on his fingers. Their names on his tongue.
Kael. Raina. Eli. He said them silently. Like a prayer. Like a curse.
He did not let himself believe they were dead. He did not let himself believe they were alive. Hope and despair cut the same.
A commander couldn’t bleed in public. So he locked it away. Like every loss before this one.
But this loss felt different. This one had laughter in it. This one had Raina standing between him and danger.
Varric returned an hour later. He carried a list of names. Men stationed at the Spire. Men whose families would get letters tomorrow.
Drayce ran his eyes over the list. Searching for Kael. For Raina. For Eli. None of them were there.
That meant nothing. “Unconfirmed” meant bodies lost to fire. Lost to ice. Lost to collapse.
The North had swallowed them. It refused to give them back. Drayce hated the North for that.
“Start the memorial wall,” he said. Voice flat. “Leave space. Blank stone for the unconfirmed.”
Varric hesitated. Then nodded. Blank stone was worse than a name. A name meant an ending.
Blank stone meant a question. Drayce preferred the question. Questions meant they might still walk through the gate.
Night fell over the capital. Lamps lit the streets. Drayce did not light his.
He sat in the dark with the letter on the table. He traced “Survivors unconfirmed” with his fingertip. The ink smudged.
Somewhere north, wind howled through broken stone. Somewhere north, his people were running. Or dying.
He couldn’t tell which hurt more. Both thoughts felt like knives. He carried them both.
He remembered the last time he saw Kael. Kael had been drunk. Telling a story about a girl and a horse.
Raina had rolled her eyes. But she’d been smiling. Eli had been quiet, watching them like he was memorizing it.
Drayce had told them to sleep. They hadn’t listened. They never listened. Now he wished they had.
He would give anything to hear Kael’s laugh again. Even if it cost him sleep for a year.
A knock came at the door. Soft. Uncertain. Drayce didn’t answer at first. The knock came again.
“Commander?” A new recruit’s voice. A boy no older than Eli. “Rumor from the North. Fire on the ridge.”
Drayce stood so fast his chair scraped. For one second, hope hit him like a fist. Then he remembered the word “rumor.”
Rumors were cruel. They gave you air just to watch you drown. He forced his face still.
“Send a rider,” he said. “Find out if it’s true. If it isn’t, find the man who spread it.” The boy fled.
Drayce sat back down. His hands were shaking under the table. He hid them. Commanders didn’t shake.
He thought about writing a letter. To Kael. Telling him to come home. To Raina. Telling her she didn’t have to be strong.
To Eli. Telling him he wasn’t slow. He wasn’t a burden. But there was no address for the North.
No road letters could travel. So he wrote nothing. He just sat with the weight of a tower on his chest.
Somewhere far away, wolves howled. Drayce closed his eyes and listened. He told himself it was just wolves.
He told himself it wasn’t the world ending. He told himself a lot of things that night. He believed none of them.
But his back stayed straight. His face stayed still. That was what a commander did. Even when breaking inside.
Morning would come. Riders would return. The war would continue. That was the rule.
But tonight, Drayce let himself sit in the dark. Grief kept him company. Tomorrow he would be stone again.
Tonight he was just a man. A man who lost people he loved. A man who didn’t know if he’d get them back.
He whispered their names once. Into the empty room. “Kael. Raina. Eli.”
No one answered. The wind didn’t answer. But saying them felt like holding a door open.
Just in case. Just in case they heard him. Just in case they came home.
The fire in the hearth died low. Drayce didn’t feed it. He deserved the cold tonight.
He deserved to feel it. The same cold Raina felt. The same cold that might be killing her now.
He pressed the crumpled letter flat again. Stared at the words until they blurred. Then stared longer.
“Survivors unconfirmed.” He mouthed the words without sound. They tasted like ash.
Varric would return at dawn with reports. With more names. With more questions Drayce couldn’t answer.
Until then, Drayce sat. In the dark. In the quiet. With ash in his hands and a door held open.
Waiting. Because that was all he could do. Waiting was a kind of faith.
And faith was all he had left.
- Writer
