CHAPTER 101: ASHES OF TRIUMPH (RYON’S POV)

The mud was cold, but my body burned.

Every nerve felt flayed open, every vein too empty to carry what it should. My breath stuttered and scraped, the sound of it louder in my head than the clash of armies surrounding me. My cheek pressed into earth soaked with blood—his blood, my blood, the blood of too many men to count.

I tried to lift my head.

The world dragged against me. Smoke, screams, steel, all of it thick as water I was drowning in. My hair clung to my brow, sticky with sweat and crimson. My vision blurred in pulses—clear for a heartbeat, then smeared into shadows.

I remembered.

The commander’s eyes, the furnace of them, locked with mine until the moment my blade pierced his chest. His fire extinguished, but not gone. No. It was inside me now, seared into marrow, burning me from within.

He had said it: all things break.

I could feel it—my body was already splintered.

But I was still here. Still breathing, though each inhale was broken glass, each exhale a death rattle stolen from someone else.

My hand groped blindly until my fingers brushed the hilt of my sword. It was half-buried in the muck, its weight a mountain, its steel dark with gore. My grip closed on it because I knew no other way to exist. Without it, I wasn’t Ryon. Without it, I was nothing but a corpse waiting to join the others.

My knees bent beneath me, groaning as though the bones themselves resisted. Pain flared down my ribs, across my side, where the commander’s strikes had carved me open. My body screamed to stay down.

But something deeper screamed louder.

Not yet.

I dragged myself upright, each breath a curse, each heartbeat a hammer. The gorge swam in waves before me—southerners surging forward, northerners faltering, the circle of our duel carved into the earth like a wound that would never close.

My people shouted my name.

"Ryon! Ryon! Ryon!"

Their voices cracked the air like thunder, but it reached me as though from a great distance, carried across an ocean of fog. I wanted to answer them. I wanted to lift my sword high and roar with them.

But all I could do was stagger to my feet, swaying like a man drunk on blood and ghosts.

The System’s voice wound around my thoughts, smooth and cruel.

"Vessel endures. Broken. Splintered. Yet unshattered. Triumph weighs more than flesh can carry, but you carry it still."

I bared my teeth, whether in defiance or pain I didn’t know. My chest heaved. My sword rose, trembling, the point barely clearing the muck. And yet, when I lifted it, a roar erupted from the southerners like a wave smashing stone.

Their faith was heavier than any wound.

The commander lay at my feet, eyes staring blankly at the smoke-thick sky. I couldn’t look at him for long. Each glance dragged a hook through my chest. I had seen hatred in him, yes, but also a mirror of my own refusal to break. He was gone because of me. Gone because I had refused when he demanded I shatter.

My victory was his silence.

The word itself tasted bitter: victory.

I swayed, almost dropped my blade again. My knees wanted the ground, wanted to sink and stay there. The mud called to me like a grave.

The System whispered closer, curling in the hollow of my skull.

"You ask why you remain. Why not him. Why not collapse. The vessel that breaks is chosen not by strength alone, but by the weight it must carry. You remain because your burden is heavier."

Heavier.

Was that the reward? To carry more than he could? To stand while my body bled out, just so more chains could be fastened across my shoulders?

My throat worked, but no words came.

The noise of the battle blurred again. My vision dimmed, then sharpened with cruel clarity. I saw every line of the scarred commander’s face, even in death. The furrow of his brow, the slack of his mouth, the way his fingers still curled as if clutching for a sword that would never return.

"You first," I had told him.

And he had.

But I had followed. I just hadn’t finished falling.

My heart thudded, broken rhythm echoing in my ears. Sweat slid cold across my skin, though fire still burned beneath. My hand tightened on the hilt until my knuckles whitened through blood. I swayed, forward, back, forward again.

The circle held me.

That ring of churned earth, stamped with our struggle, was a cage I couldn’t escape. Beyond it, armies clashed and broke, but to me there was only here. Him and me. But he was gone. And I was not.

The silence of that truth hollowed me more than any blade could.

"Ryon!"

The shout tore through the haze. A southern voice, close, desperate. I turned my head, slow as if through mud, and saw shadows moving at the edge of the circle. My men. Their eyes wide, their faces streaked with ash and blood.

But they didn’t cross. They didn’t dare.

The circle was sacred. Even in victory, even in collapse, no one stepped inside unless I allowed it.

I wanted to tell them to stay back. I wanted to tell them to come closer. The words tangled on my tongue, unspoken.

My legs trembled. I fell back to my knees, the blade sinking once more into the earth. My hands shook as I tried to lift it, but my arms were stone now, unresponsive.

The System murmured, almost gentle.

"Rest. The vessel has endured its shattering. Now it must choose whether to scatter into ash, or hold its fragments together."

Ash.

That was what I felt like. Ash and blood, drifting in the wind of a battle that might already be decided.

I lowered my head. Not in surrender. Not in weakness. In mourning. For him. For me. For the circle that demanded too much.

My breath rattled once more, shallow and thin. My vision narrowed to a pinprick of light, then widened again in jolts. My body was leaving me in pieces, retreating inch by inch.

But I was still here.

Still here.

And then the dark surged up to take me.

Not silence, not void. A heavy dark, weighted with whispers and echoes.

The System’s voice followed me down:

"Ashes of triumph. Vessel unbroken. Sleep now. Rise later. If you can."

And I let go.