Ashes of the Forsaken

Kieran stood beneath the dim candlelight, his fingers tracing the worn leather cover of the forbidden book.

The last surviving record of the war.

The war that never was.

His mind churned with questions, but he forced himself to breathe. To steady his hands.

He had spent too long chasing whispers, too long walking in the dark.

Now, finally, he was holding the truth.

And he was about to find out why it had been buried.

Kieran exhaled slowly—

And opened the book.

The parchment was old.

Not brittle, not falling apart—preserved.

As if someone had known that one day, it would need to be read again.

The first line made Kieran's breath still.

"We were never meant to win."

His pulse quickened.

He turned the page.

And the war began to unfold before him.

"It began with the sky splitting open."

Kieran's vision blurred as the words pulled him in.

Not as a story.

As a memory.

For a moment, he was there.

Standing beneath a blood-red sky, watching as the first figures descended from the rift above.

They weren't an army.

Not in the way the kingdom had expected.

No war banners. No marching ranks.

Just shadows.

Hundreds of them.

Each one moving like a wraith, silent and unstoppable.

"They did not speak our language. They did not obey the laws of our world. They did not belong."

Kieran's grip on the book tightened.

The ones who do not belong.

That was what Calderon had called them.

And now, he finally understood why.

They hadn't been invaders.

They had been something else entirely.

Something wrong.

The book described the chaos that followed.

Cities fell.

Not in battles—in collapses.

Entire strongholds crumbling overnight, their people vanishing without a trace.

Not dead.

Gone.

Erased.

"We did not understand what we were fighting. We only knew that we were losing."

The war had lasted seven years.

Not because the kingdom had resisted well.

But because they had been allowed to live just long enough to suffer.

Kieran's heartbeat slowed.

This wasn't just an invasion.

This was something else.

Something deliberate.

Something patient.

And the worst part?

It had worked.

The book detailed how the kingdom had fractured.

The noble houses turned against one another, desperate for a solution.

Some proposed surrender.

Some vanished in the night, never heard from again.

And some—

Some turned to something far worse.

Kieran flipped to the next page.

And the words made his stomach turn.

"We became them."

Kieran forced himself to keep reading.

"To defeat them, we had to become them."

The war council had done something.

Something that should never have been done.

"We opened our own gates."

Kieran froze.

"We tore the Veil open from our side, and we reached into the abyss. And from it, we pulled something far worse than them."

The kingdom had fought back.

Not with armies.

Not with weapons.

With something older than both.

Something they could not control.

And for the first time—

The enemy had feared.

Kieran flipped the pages faster now, reading the final entries.

"We won. But at a cost we will never recover from."

The enemy had stopped.

The war had ended.

Not because the kingdom had fought well.

But because they had made something worse.

And that something—

It had turned on them.

Kieran felt his breath stilling.

Because the next lines—

They weren't about the war.

They were about him.

"There were those among us who understood the price we had paid. Who saw the truth of what we had done."

"We called them traitors."

"And we erased them, just as we erased the war."

Kieran's hands shook.

The truth of his death.

The reason he had been executed.

It wasn't just because he had been dangerous.

It wasn't because he had known too much.

It was because he had tried to stop it.

The last page was not a report.

Not a military record.

It was a warning.

"The war was never meant to end. We simply buried it."

"And one day, the ones who do not belong will return."

"But this time, we will not be the ones waiting."

Kieran let the book fall shut.

The room felt too small.

His entire life—his death, his return, the whispers that followed him—

It all led back to this.

The war had not been erased to protect the kingdom.

It had been erased to hide the truth.

And now, he was the only one left who remembered it.

Kieran exhaled.

The Archivist watched him from across the table, his face unreadable.

"Well?" the old man asked.

Kieran looked up.

His voice was steady.

"I think I just found out why I came back."

The Archivist nodded slowly.

"And what will you do now?"

Kieran rose to his feet.

And for the first time since he had returned—

He knew the answer.

"I'm going to finish what I started."

Kieran stood motionless in the dimly lit Archives.

The book felt heavier in his hands than it had any right to be.

Not because of its size.

But because of the truth it carried.

He had spent so long searching for answers—why he had been erased, why he had returned.

And now, he knew.

The war had never truly ended.

It had only been buried.

And the ones who had silenced it—the nobles, the war council, the kingdom itself—

They had done it because they were afraid.

Not just of the enemy.

But of what they had done to stop it.

Across the table, the Archivist watched him carefully.

"You understand now, don't you?"

Kieran exhaled slowly.

"The nobles erased the war because they were afraid of it."

"Not just afraid of it," the old man corrected. "Afraid that one day, it would return."

Kieran closed the book.

The words still burned behind his eyes.

"One day, the ones who do not belong will return. But this time, we will not be the ones waiting."

The war hadn't just been lost.

It had been postponed.

A temporary peace—bought with blood and buried under lies.

And now, after all this time…

The past was beginning to stir.

And Kieran had been brought back to see it.

Kieran clenched his jaw, his mind racing.

His entire existence—his death, his return, his erasure from history—

Had it all been because of this?

Had he been killed because he had known the war wasn't truly over?

Had he tried to stop it?

Or had he been part of something worse?

The memories he had recovered so far—the city burning, the shadows stretching across the sky, the battle he had lost—

They weren't complete.

Something was still missing.

Something important.

And now, he needed to find it.

Before it was too late.

Kieran turned back to the Archivist.

"You kept this book hidden all these years. Why?"

The old man leaned back in his chair, his frail fingers tapping against the wooden table.

"Because history demands a witness."

Kieran narrowed his eyes.

"You knew someone would come looking for it eventually."

"I knew someone would need to."

The Archivist's voice was calm.

"And now that you have, what will you do?"

Kieran's mind was already moving.

The nobles thought they had won.

They thought they had erased every trace of the war.

But they had missed something.

Him.

Kieran inhaled, steadying his thoughts.

"The war was buried," he murmured. "But if the kingdom has been keeping its secret this long… then that means someone is still watching for its return."

The Archivist nodded.

"And that someone has far more power than you realize."

Kieran wasn't naive.

The nobles had erased the war, but they hadn't done it alone.

They had to have had help.

Scholars, mages, historians—entire bloodlines must have been dedicated to maintaining the lie.

Which meant…

There were still people alive who knew the truth.

And if Kieran found them—

He could unravel everything.

Kieran turned the book over in his hands.

"Where do I start?"

The Archivist studied him for a long moment.

Then, he spoke.

"There are three names you need to remember."

Kieran's pulse quickened.

"The first—Dame Corvalis. A knight of the old war, one of the last to survive. She was erased from the records, just like you."

Kieran's fingers curled against the leather cover of the book.

"The second—Veyren Marrow. A noble who turned against the war council before vanishing entirely. Some say he fled. Others say he was taken."

A noble who had betrayed the council?

That was rare.

And dangerous.

"And the third," the Archivist continued, "is someone you already know."

Kieran stilled.

The old man's eyes met his.

"Duke Calderon."

Kieran's breath slowed.

Calderon had already admitted to erasing him.

But had the Duke truly been part of the war's burial?

Or had he been another piece of the puzzle?

Kieran exhaled.

"If he's hiding something, I'll make him talk."

The Archivist gave him a thin smile.

"You'd be surprised how many lies a man can tell, even when he's already told you the truth."

Kieran didn't need to be reminded.

Calderon had given him answers—but not all of them.

And now, Kieran knew where to start.

Kieran turned toward the doorway, sliding the book into his cloak.

The Archivist watched him go.

"One more thing."

Kieran glanced back.

"You said you were going to finish what you started."

The Archivist's voice was quiet.

"What does that mean?"

Kieran held his gaze.

"I don't know yet."

The old man sighed.

"Then you better figure it out soon."

Kieran didn't need to be told twice.

He was standing at the center of something far greater than himself.

And whatever was coming next—

It was going to decide the fate of the entire kingdom.

Again.

Kieran stepped into the night, his thoughts sharp, his steps unwavering.

The nobles had spent years hiding their sins.

The war had been erased.

The truth had been rewritten.

But now—history was waking up.

The ones who do not belong had never truly been defeated.

And if they came back…

If the old war began again…

Then Kieran was the only one who knew how it would end.

Because this time—

He wasn't going to lose.