It was mesmerizing.

He stood rooted to the earth ,the cold wrapping around him like a lover’s embrace, unable to pull his gaze away away from the ball of red and orange.

The fire hissed and rattled as it feasted upon the fat and oil beneath the man’s skin, causing the surface to blister and burst open like mushroom heads or bubble blown upon.

Beneath the blackened rind, the raw, burning meat was revealed, glowing with a fierce, inner heat.

The man flailed his arms in a frantic, disjointed dance as the flames undid him, layer by layer, slowly and inexorably. Unable to do anything about it, just screaming and screaming until they came to be just a thin, whistling sound from a roasted lung.

He felt an almost magnetic attraction to the heat. He leaned forward, his face flushed a deep, bruised red by the radiance. The fire moved with a fluid grace, dancing in patterns that seemed to speak a language only he could interpret.

As he stared, his vision began to blur so long he hadn’t blinked, his eyes almost teared up with wetness, but he kept on gazing, as if fearing that one small wince would be enough to undo it.

The orange tongues of the blaze played games with his mind, twisting into shapes that weren’t there. The world outside the circle of light grew cold and inconsequential just for a moment.

His father, the war, his uncles, his mother, they all stopped being, until it was only him, the cold and the warmth.

He was drifting deeper into the trance, the roar of the flames filling his ears when a hand suddenly clamped down on his shoulder.

The grip was iron-tight, pinning him to the spot just as he had begun to sway toward the heat. The sudden contact broke the spell, the phantom images evaporating into simple smoke.

Were they even real?What was happening?

Basil blinked, strangely remorseful of the loss and his heart pressed deep into his chest, he was feeling agitation somehow, the sudden transition made his head swim overwhelming him.

He almost fell, and he would have had not a strong set of hands been there to hoist him up. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Uncle Jarza’s face appeared above him, illuminated by the flickering light but clouded with a deep, furrowed worry. His fingers dug into Basil’s tunic, anchoring him.

"Basil!" His voice was sharp, winning over the crackle of the meat. "Are you all right? Look at me, stay back. Don’t get too close."

Close?To what? Where was he?

The questions flickered in his mind like dying embers, but as his ears adapted back to the waking world, the environment provided the answers.

The screams were no longer distant or dreamlike; they were true and grounded with the terror of the living.

This was Basil’s first proper battle, though "battle" felt like a polite lie.

There had been no glorious clash of lines, no honorable exchange of steel. From the moment the First and the auxiliaries attached to its command were unleashed, and the instant the first screech of Yarzat iron sang in the dark, the mettle of the invaders melted away.

The supply camp was now a funeral pyre.

The fire roared, consuming a gods know how much’s worth of food destined for the front, turning the midnight sky into a bruised orange. In that hellish light, Basil could see the butchery unfolding, quick, clinical strokes of violence witnessed from the relative safety of the rear.

For the young princeling, it was the moment the lake he had always called an ocean revealed itself to be a mere pond. His knowledge of war, built on on the theoritical was a fragile thing. Now that he saw the raw, red meat of it, he realized he understood nothing at all.

The League’s army had every advantage: more men, more steel, a massive supply line. And yet, they were losing. Who dared say the opposite?

They were like a great bull, muscles bulging and horns razor-sharp, being slowly strangled against a post by a thin silken rope. No matter the beast’s strength, as long as the rope held, the end was assured.

He had spent two moons among these troops, and he had loved it. It was the most fun he had ever had, far from the stifling perfumes and the strictness of the court. He had shared bread with them; he knew of Val’s little girl and Bodger’s aging mother.

He knew the salty sea-shanty village Volm the Long hailed from, and Grog’s yearning to see the white spires of the Cathedral of the Great Apple.

He had laughed at the story of the dog that chased Toefinger up a tree, and nodded solemnly at Svorm’s tales of his little brother begging for sling lessons during his rare fortnights of leave.

He craved that normality. That sense of belonging. He wanted to hear about the boil on Fat Ball’s backside or how much ale Stone Stomach could actually pour down his gullet before falling over.

Jarza had been his guide, allowing him to follow on minor missions to blood his mind. The boy had even loosed arrows into the dark earlier some nights ago, and though the shadows hid the result, he felt in his gut that he had finally popped the cherry.

Svorm had even let him have a celebratory swig of vinegar when he’d boasted of it.He was getting acquainted with the taste.

But he had been arrogant. He thought two months had taught him the art of command and positioning. Jarza had dismantled that illusion in a single night.

He had always believed his father was the only astute mind in the family, yet Jarza did not fall short of his Prince. This was a masterpiece of patience and perfect execution. He watched the flames lick the sky and realized he saw his uncle in a completely new light.

The defenders hadn’t even hesitated when they saw the carts arrive under the cover of night, bearing the seal of the Prince of Shaaza. A few silver silverii pressed into the right palms had ensured the gates swung wide without a true inspection.

The League had quite literally opened the door for their own destruction, ushering the enemy into their storehouse with smiles and nods.

And then, the night turned to screaming and all hell broke loose.

They erupted from the carts like shadows given teeth and weapon, bringing nothing but fire and steel. They spread, and then did their job.

Tents were put to the torch in a sudden, synchronized bloom of heat, and the sentries were put to the axe before they could even mount a proper resistance.

They were outnumbered inside, and yet speedness had been their sharpest axe.

They had agents within the wooden walls too which did their bloody part, stocking through camp sowing panic, screaming that the enemy was already inside, that the walls had fallen, and that the night was lost.

They shouted, spread fire where they could and spouted morale-killing lies that rotted the defenders’ fighting spirit from the inside out. By the time the Primogenia led the final charge from the outside with their heavy wooden hooks to tear down the barricades, the fight was already over and packed.

"Every man in this camp will wake up to the heat of flames and the shrieks of his brothers," Jarza had whispered when the first sparks took hold. "What do you think they will do then, Basil? A man finds a brittle courage in a crowd, but he is terrified of dying alone.

It is in our nature to fear the silence of the grave. Take away his sense of belonging, make him feel isolated in the chaos, and his natural fear will spring out and swallow his will. They will break, they will cry, they will run. Until they will die. Alone just as they feared all along."

Basil had seen brutality.

He had watched a Voghondai axe split a man’s belly until his life rained out in a mess of grey and red. He had heard the high, thin whistles of men being hoisted into the trees by their necks, left as a buffet for the ravens. He had watched villages turn to ash and seen dozens displaced simply because they bowed to the wrong crown.

Children that would not make the long trail to safety, women that were raped and left in the open with broken lives.

Yet, he had never felt such a cold, gnawing unease as he did listening to his uncle’s lecture. His father and his uncles possessed a terrifying talent for stripping war of its romance and its high, hollow ideals. They tore the skin off the conflict, leaving its scarred, bleeding, and hideous form open for the world to see.

For only bloodied do dreamers finally see.

War was the only force capable of summoning true evil from the soul of men.

Through the screams, the shouts, the screech of steel and the few displaced laughters, Basil’s eyes drifted back to the burning corpse. The man was still now, his frantic dance over, yet he seemed farther away than he had moments ago, as if the fire were drifting into another realm and leaving him behind, having lost the chance to understand its truth.

He would never say it, he would never show it, but a sickening pressure at the base of his spine was making his way up.

His mouth flooded with a bitter wash of saliva that threatened to turn into a desperate vomit. It wasn’t simple disgust, he had seen blood before.

It was strange, he felt as if some dark, unseen spirit were physically hooking its fingers into his jaw, pulling his gaze back toward that specific fire. There was death all around and yet only there his eyes were being hooked.

The flames licked the man’s charred ribs, and Basil couldn’t look away.The limbs straightened as if in attempt to escape, and Basil couldn’t look away.The smell of roasted meat rose through the night air, and yet Basil still couldn’t look away.

Amidst the roar of the camp’s destruction, the clashing of steel, and the thunder of hooves, a pocket of impossible silence seemed to form around him and that small fire.

He stared into the heart of the blaze, and though he would never dare breathe a word of it to his father, his mother, or the uncle standing right beside him,never for the rest of his life , would he ever open himself to that night, he believed. But he would have sworn, as he would have for the rest of his life that he heard it.

A whispering raising into the cold night.