Leon's eyes slowly opened to a pale morning sky.
His mouth felt like ash, as if all the moisture inside his body had evaporated in the cold night. Every breath he took dragged cold air against his dry throat, scraping it like a blade. For a moment, he simply stared upward at the rough stone ceiling of the shallow cave, desperately praying that the previous days horrors had been nothing more than a violent, alcohol-induced nightmare.
But the throbbing pain in his forearm brought him back to reality.
"Ah..." Leon groaned, instantly clamping down over his injured arm.
The bleeding had stopped, leaving behind a crust of dirt and crimson, but the slightest movement sent sharp spikes of agony shooting up to his shoulder. His muscles were stiff, his legs were sore from the endless running. When he tried to get up, his knees trembled so severely he nearly collapsed back into the dirt.
Outside, the desolate wasteland stretched into the infinite distance beneath an orange morning glare. The land looked dead. The cracked earth yawned open in deep fissures, broken stones littered the horizon, and a relentless, dry wind swept across the plains, carrying sheets of dust.
Leon had no choice. He forced his bleeding, with bare feet to move. He walked to find water. He walked to find shelter. He walked to find something to help his situation.
Step after step, Leon dragged his branch crutch forward, the gnawing hunger in his belly twisting into a sharp ache. His lips split open, bleeding from sheer dehydration. At times, the wind played tricks on his frayed mind—he thought he could hear the distant screams of dying men echoing across the flats, but whenever he stopped to press his ear to the gale, nothing but a mocking, heavy silence filled the air.
Then a sound came from his right.
It was the unmistakable sound of dry wood creaking under immense weight.
Far across the barren terrain, silhouettes slowly materialized through the haze of swirling dust. Colossal wooden bullock carts, chained together in a miles-long, sluggish caravan, crawled across the wasteland. Their thick wheels crushed the brittle earth with a deafening groan while the exhausted oxen strained against heavy wooden yokes.
Leon didn't think. Driven by pure survival instinct, he stumbled down the ridge and ran toward them.
A rugged man in a dirt-caked tunic spotted the shadow approaching and stepped down from the lead cart, his hand instinctively dropping to a rusted iron dagger at his waist. "Stop, boy! Where do you think you're going?"
"Please..." Leon whispered, reaching out a trembling hand.
"Huh? What did you say?" the man asked, squinting through the dust.
"Please... take me with you," Leon begged, his proud, aristocratic voice was reduced to a broken whimper.
The man stared at him. He took in the sight of Leon's shredded silk pajamas, his bleeding feet, and the wound on his arm. Slowly, the man let out a heavy breath, massaging his forehead as a look of profound, helpless pity crossed his weathered face.
"I'm sorry, boy," the man said. "We can't do that. Every soul in these carts is a survivor of the butchery at Asin. We're traveling on fumes. We have no food to spare, and our water is strictly rationed. I'm sorry, kid. There's just nothing left."
Hearing those words, the last pillar of Leon's spirit shattered. His knees gave out, and he collapsed heavily into the dirt, clutching his wounded arm against his chest. He had lost it. The hope to live. The arrogance of a noble. All of it was gone.
"Why? Why did it turn out like this?" Leon thought as his vision began to blur. "I... I was a victim my whole life."
"Boy?! Hey, boy—!"
The man's panicked voice began to warp, becoming fainter and fainter, drowning beneath a heavy roar in Leon's ears.
The world went pitch black.
-------------------------
The rhythmic, violent jolting of wood against rock vibrated through Leon's skull.
"Oh! He's awake."
Leon's eyes opened, greeted by the low groan of heavy wheels dragging through dirt. His vision blurred heavily, the dim light of a swaying lantern spinning before his eyes before slowly settling into focus.
A woman sitting directly across from him let out a long, ragged sigh of relief. She looked utterly spent. Dark, hollow patches of purple were set deeply under her eyes, and spots of dried-up blood colored her ragged sleeve of homespun cloth. At her side was a little girl, perhaps no more than six years old, peering around her mother's arm at Leon, wide-eyed and fearful but very curious.
Leon tried to get himself up into a sitting position, but immediately a searing pain ripped through his body. "Ahh..."
"Easy there," the woman said softly, her was voice remarkably gentle amid the rattling of the cart. "Don't force yourself. You fainted out in the barren yesterday."
"Yesterday?"
With eyes wide in shock, Leon's thoughts raced around inside his head as he looked downward toward his wounded arm. The open and bloody gash had been thoroughly cleaned and bandaged with several layers of coarse fabric. Wrapped up under the bandages was a thick paste made of crushed, bitter plants that smelled like the soil. There was definitely still pain, but at least it wasn't excruciating.
"...You took care of this?" Leon asked.
The woman nodded. "One of the elders in the other cart knew the old ways of binding wounds."
Before Leon could properly thank her, a violent, dry convulsion seized his chest, forcing him into a fit of hacking coughs. The little girl flinched, shrinking back for a second, before she carefully stepped forward. Holding it with both of her small hands, she extended a leather waterskin toward him.
Leon stared at the waterskin.
Water.
The sight of it broke his aristocratic restraint entirely. His shaking hands snatched it almost aggressively, ripping the cork free. He tipped it back, gulping it so desperately that streams spilled from the corners of his mouth, running down his neck and soaking his torn shirt. The water felt holy, an impossible luxury after wandering through the jaws of the wasteland.
The woman offered a faint, melancholy smile. "Slowly, child."
"Oh, he's woken up."
Leon froze, the waterskin still pressed to his lips. He recognized voice immediately. The leather curtain at the back of the cart was pulled aside, and the man from the road climbed inside, holding onto the wooden ribs of the wagon as it violently jolted over a rock.
"You've been dead to the world for a whole day," the man said. "Honestly thought you were going to rot right there on our floorboards."
Leon slowly lowered the waterskin, his dark eyes tracking the man's face. "...Then why did you save me? You said you didn't have enough resources."
The man stayed quiet for a long moment, staring out into the dark night enveloping the caravan. Finally, he shrugged, a bitter line forming on his lips. "Didn't feel right leaving a kid to die alone in the dirt. My conscience is heavy enough as it is."
Outside the wooden enclosure, the synchronized, haunting rumble of dozens of wagons echoed across the night. Through the cracks in the wooden planks, Leon could see the flickering amber glows of scores of lanterns moving in a solemn, endless line through the darkness.
"If the oxen hold out and nothing goes wrong, we'll reach the town before dawn," the man continued, pulling a piece of flint from his pocket. "Hopefully, the war hasn't reached there."
"War?" Leon asked.
The man paused, looking at Leon as if he had spoken in an ancient language. "What do you mean, 'War?' What else would I be talking about? The Vaeron horde is butchering our borders. They're massacring every town they see."
The moment that name left the man's mouth, Leon froze for a second
"Vaeron."
His eyes were wide in absolute horror. The stories Uncle Julian used to tell him in the safety of the candlelit library suddenly rushed back, hitting him like a physical blow. The endless bloodshed. The fallen bastions. The horrific, unstoppable magic beasts. The entire continent drowning in a sea of blood.
Svalor.
This wasn't an unknown wasteland. This was his home continent. But it was the version of Svalor that bled every day, cried every night.
Leon slowly turned his head, looking around the interior of the cramped cart with entirely new eyes. He saw the hollow-cheeked, bleeding men. The women clutching tattered blankets. The suffocating, heavy silence that hung over the entire space like a funeral.
They were refugees.
A freezing dread spread through Leon's chest. Back within the towering stone walls of the Leodrick manor, those tales of the Svaron war had always felt mythical, distant, like fables written to entertain children. The war had never been a reality to him. Even while his father and Cedric spoke of border skirmishes and knightly duties, Leon had spent his days throwing tantrums, eating spiced meats in grand halls, and watching maids pour hot tea under the glow of silver chandeliers.
But here...
Here, there was no silver. He could smell the raw, sour sweat on these people's skin. He could see terror swimming in their eyes. He could hear the muffled, heartbreaking whimpers of the little girl beside him, trying desperately to stay quiet so she wouldn't burden her mother.
For the very first time in his sixteen years of life, Leon understood what suffering felt like, what war was.
It wasn't noble knights charging with gleaming armor and banners flying proudly in the wind. It wasn't the glorious victories or heroic ballads sung by bards.
It was just regular, innocent people running into the dark, praying to live.
The caravan moved forward into the abyss of the night.
The only sounds left in the world were the rhythmic creak of the wooden axles and the heavy, sludgy footsteps of the oxen treading through the mud. The temperature plummeted, the freezing air were seeping through the cracks of the wagon. Some of the refugees had finally succumbed to sheer exhaustion, slumping limply against the wooden walls, while others simply stared blankly into the shadows, their eyes entirely incapable of closing in mourn.
Leon sat tucked into the furthest corner of the cart, pulling his knees tightly against his chest.
The little girl beside him had fallen asleep, her head resting against her mother's frail shoulder. Her small fingers were still clamped around the empty leather waterskin she had offered him earlier, holding it as if it were a prized possession. Across from them, an old man coughed violently, pressing a cloth to his mouth. When he pulled it away, Leon saw the dark, wet stains of blood, but the old man quickly hid it in his sleeve, pretending nobody had noticed.
Leon stared out the open back of the cart, his gaze entirely blank.
The throbbing in his forearm was still there, but it felt trivial now. The real agony was the storm raging inside his mind. Everything he thought he knew about the world, about his status, and about his own misery had been completely upended in a matter of days.
His mind wandered back to Uncle Julian's voice, recounting the legendary exploits of the Svalor knights fighting for justice and honor. He remembered how, as a young boy, he used to lie awake fantasizing about wearing the silver armor, wielding a masterwork blade, and achieving glorious triumph on the battlefield to make his father love him.
But there was no glory here.
There was no justice in this wagon. There were only starving, broken people desperately clinging to the fraying edges of survival. There were only shattered hearts, ruined lives, and parents who had watched their neighbors be torn apart by monsters.
A heavy, suffocating weight settled onto Leon's chest as a profound realization washed over him:
Nobody in this cart knew his name. Nobody cared about the Leodrick legacy. To these people, he wasn't a noble lord, nor was he the cursed, useless son of a warlord. He was just another broken, nameless refugee running from war.
Suddenly, the heavy rhythm of the wagon began to drag.
The man at the front of the cart reached over, roughly pulling back the canvas flap that shielded the entrance. He peered out into the distance, where the first pale, gray light of dawn was beginning to crack the eastern horizon.
He turned back toward the silent refugees, his voice was a mixture of relief and fear.
"Well... I think we've reached Givera."