The Extra Who Stole the Hero's System-Chapter 32: Herald

THIRD PERSON POV

~~~

The rain hadn’t stopped for days. It soaked through tents, turned the parade grounds into mud, and left the training fields stinking of wet leather and unwashed bodies. Herald didn’t mind the smell. He minded the weight. Every morning, before the sun even scraped the horizon, they lined up—dozens of boys who’d never held a sword in their lives, clad in borrowed armor that fit like punishment.

Herald’s chest plate slipped to the left no matter how tight he tied the cords. The helmet made him feel like he was drowning. His sword, dulled from years of ceremonial use, was heavier than his old anvil back at the smithy. He had always thought swords looked noble in paintings, but now all he saw was cold steel and the promise of blood.

"Lift your arms higher, boy," barked the drill sergeant, pacing up and down the line. "Unless you want to die the first time someone swings at your gut."

Herald tried. His arms trembled under the sword’s weight. He forced himself to raise it higher, jaw clenched, breath short. The man next to him, some farmer’s son with straw-colored hair, grunted as he adjusted his own stance. They were all the same. Too young. Too thin. Too afraid.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be in Eudenia’s capital, making nails and horse shoes, mending hinges, listening to his father complain about taxes and iron prices. But the draft didn’t care about apprenticeships or peaceful dreams. The war had chewed up half the kingdom already, and now it wanted more bodies to throw into the eastern flank.

That night, Herald sat alone by the campfire. Rain hissed as it struck the flames. Most of the other recruits were huddled under tarps or clustered around card games, trying to forget tomorrow’s drills. His hands still shook. He rubbed them together, trying to summon warmth. Instead, he found Myrin.

She came like she always did—quiet, sharp-eyed, all edges and wind-chapped cheeks. A bow was slung over her back, and her short brown hair clung to her forehead. She plopped down beside him, pulling her hood lower.

"You look like you’ve seen a ghost," she said.

"I saw myself in a mirror," Herald replied.

Myrin smirked. "Still scared?"

"Terrified."

She didn’t mock him. That was why he liked her. She wasn’t like the others. Myrin had joined the war by choice. One of the few from the city of Liberal who hadn’t needed a push. She said she wanted to protect her sisters. She said the world was breaking, and someone had to hold the pieces together.

But when she looked at the fire, Herald sometimes caught a flicker of something else. Something tired.

"You ever think about running?" he asked, voice low.

"All the time," she said. "But there’s nowhere to run to, not anymore."

They sat in silence for a long while. Rain became mist. Firewood crackled. The world felt strangely distant, like it was already remembering them as ghosts.

Herald’s thoughts wandered to home. To his little room above the smithy. To the smell of ash and burnt steel. To the time Myrin had stolen his lunch as a dare and they ended up chasing each other through the village market. He hadn’t even told her he loved her. He wasn’t sure if it mattered.

"I don’t think I’ll make it," he said, softly.

Myrin didn’t respond right away. She pulled something from her coat—a worn piece of cloth, red and fraying at the ends. She handed it to him.

"What’s this?"

"A ribbon," she said. "From my sister. She tied it around my wrist when I left. Told me it’d keep me safe."

He stared at it, then at her.

"I’m not giving it to you because I think you’re going to die," she added, seeing the panic in his eyes. "I’m giving it to you because you’re going to survive. You’ll be too stubborn not to."

He tied it to his wrist that night. It felt strange, wearing something so delicate. But it gave him something to hold onto.

More than a week passed . The drills got harder. The armor felt less like punishment and more like second nature. Herald stopped trembling every time he gripped his sword. Lio joined their ranks around the same time—a stocky shieldbearer from the Duchy of Calvados with a crooked grin and a voice that could cut through any silence. He liked to talk. A lot.

"Eudenian, huh?" Lio had said the first day, clapping Herald on the back hard enough to nearly knock him over. "Don’t worry. We Calvadians don’t hold grudges. Much."

Herald didn’t laugh, but he smiled. It was enough.

Sylas, their sergeant, was another story. He was from Eudenia too, but years older, with eyes like cold stone and a beard flecked with gray. Rumor had it he’d fought in the northern campaign. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, people listened. He saw something in Herald—maybe the fear, maybe the stubbornness. Either way, he started pushing him harder.

"Again," Sylas would say, after Herald had already run the obstacle course twice.

And Herald would run it again.

The first taste of battle came on a foggy morning two months later. Their unit was sent to support a skirmish near the border. No one told them it would be that real.

The enemy came screaming through the trees—mercenaries, mostly, hired swords with dead eyes and iron axes. Herald barely remembered the fighting. It was all blood and mud and the sound of screaming. He swung his sword at a blur and felt it bite into something soft. Warmth splashed across his face.

Afterward, he sat beside a tree, vomiting. Lio found him there, pale and shaking.

"Welcome to the war," he said, offering a canteen.

Herald didn’t take it. "I killed someone."

"Better him than you."

Myrin walked up, arrows dripping red. She didn’t say anything. Just knelt beside Herald and wiped the blood from his face.

"You did good," she said.

He didn’t feel like he did good. He felt like a stranger in his own skin. But he nodded.

That night, they didn’t talk about the fight. They just sat close, shoulder to shoulder, staring into a fire that didn’t warm them.

Herald started writing in a little notebook. Just words. Thoughts. Names of the fallen. He didn’t want to forget.

"Why do you keep doing that?" Myrin asked one night.

"Because someone has to remember them."

He didn’t know what was waiting at the end of this campaign. He didn’t know if peace was possible. But he knew he wasn’t the same boy who had trembled at the sight of blood.

Something was changing. Something deep.

The war was molding him. And he didn’t know if he’d still recognize himself when it was done.