Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

For a long moment, no one spoke. Not Alpheo. Not Asag. Not Jarza.

The crackle of the water, the soft hiss of reeds brushing in the breeze, and the distant call of some unseen bird filled the space between them. The sun had shifted lower now, casting long, golden lines across the lake, painting the world in the colors of late afternoon. Still, no one said anything. But Egil shifted, just a small movement, a slight scrape of his boot on the dirt, and then cleared his throat as if bothered from the silence.

He was a creature of sound, and as a consequence he disliked the quiet.

"I'm not trying to be ungrateful or anything," he said, his voice lower now, less sure of itself. "Truly, I'm thankful. For what you've done, for what we've built. We have warm beds now. Bellies full of food. We're not anyone's dogs anymore. We answer to no one but ourselves."

He paused, staring out across the water. His jaw worked as if trying to find the words he really meant to say.

"It's just… sometimes I wonder. Were we happier back then? When we were just men scraping by, wandering from one job to the next? Life was simpler. All we had to worry about was where we'd sleep, how to stretch the food between us, and whether the next town would spit at us or hire us."

He gave a soft laugh that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"I remember those nights by the fire, the cold, open sky above, our cloaks drawn tight around our shoulders. We'd talk nonsense just to keep warm, passing a flask between us and arguing over which one of us would die first from eating boiled moss. There was something about it… I don't know. I think I miss that. The smallness of it all and how close we were each second."

The others remained quiet. Perhaps out of respect. Perhaps because they didn't disagree, at least not enough to say so.

Alpheo finally moved. His shoulders shifted slightly, as though loosening something heavy off his back. His eyes remained on the water, but his voice came steady, deepened by memory.

"I understand," he said slowly. "Those were happy times for you and in some small ways, they were for me too. I had my freedom, finally. I could choose my own path. I could chase after the promises I made to all of you. But for me… those days were also some of the hardest."

He paused, drawing in a breath as the wind stirred the surface of the lake. A silvery ripple rolled outward from where a fish had broken the water.

"I didn't show it, but I was scared,terribly so... Every step we took, every job, every decision, felt like stepping toward an invisible noose. I was terrified I'd lead us all into ruin, that I'd walk us straight off a cliff with nothing to catch us at the bottom."

His hands rested on his knees now, knuckles white without realizing it. His voice dropped lower, more intimate, as though confessing to the lake rather than to his friends.

"When I was a slave, fear was the only thing I truly owned. It lived in my chest, like a second heart. And when the chains were finally off, that fear didn't disappear, it just changed shape. I kept moving forward, grabbing onto anything I could: scraps of power, crumbs of hope, half-broken dreams. Anything to keep from drowning in it."

He reached down, picked up a smooth stone from the earth beside him, and turned it over in his palm.

"My answer was to feed it to ambition. To burn it like firewood. I told myself if I burned bright enough, long enough, I could outpace the dark, and while I still had a dream to aim at , I would know where to go."

The stone dropped softly back into the dirt.

"But when we finally broke free... when I looked out and realized how wide the sea really was, I also saw how small I was in it. I wasn't prepared for that kind of ocean."

The air seemed to still around them. Even the wind was quiet now.

"When Arkawatt died," Alpheo continued, his tone more bitter than sorrowful, "I thought that was the end. Not just of our time here in Yarzat, but of everything. The plan. The dream. I was furious. Furious that even a single moment of joy—of peace—had to be earned through blood. That nothing good could be mine without a fight."

He looked over at the trees, their leaves gilded with the dying sun, before casting his gaze back down.

"That day, I had to make a choice: turn back and run, or move forward, straight into the storm. Swim through it, even though I knew the sharks were circling. It was to be the most important choice of my life, one where the road ahead wasn't clear or straight"

He exhaled through his nose, slow and steady.

"In the end, we made it. But even now, I still feel the cold of that water. Still hear the teeth snapping just out of sight, waiting to pounce when I least expect it ."

As he said so, he fell silent.

No one said anything for a while. The lake murmured on, soft and silvered, as the light dimmed further and the shadows stretched long and thin across the banks.

A small, rueful smile tugged at the corners of Alpheo's lips.

"Now that I actually think back," he murmured, voice low with half a laugh, "I was really a brat, wasn't I? Stubborn, brash, full of fire and no idea where to throw it. I still wonder why you didn't all desert me when you had the chance."

That caught everyone off guard. Jarza looked up first, brows raised. Asag's head tilted, as if trying to gauge whether Alpheo was joking.

"How could we?" Asag said, bewildered by the very idea. "Everything we have now, this life, this peace, it's all because of you. You were the only thing keeping us moving forward when we didn't even know there was a forward."

"You held the ladder," Jarza added, his voice steady, thoughtful. "We had no dreams, no hopes, not really. At least, not until you gave them shape. I don't know about the others, but what kept me climbing wasn't some dream of my own, it was the need to see where you would end up. I told you once: you were our linchpin."

The memory passed between them like smoke—of a younger time, on the scorched sands of Arlania, when futures were still uncertain and death seemed always a step behind.

Alpheo chuckled, but there was no mirth in it.

"Well… ain't that funny?" he said softly, his gaze dropping to the earth.

There was a pause, a silence that hovered uncertain between them. Then, his voice again—quieter, more vulnerable than before.

"So I was what pushed you forward. And all the while… what pushed me was fear. And this wild, reckless dream that I clung to like driftwood in a storm, with a strength born of fearing to lose the only port I had in reach of my hands."

He smiled again, but his eyes didn't match it, they stared out toward the lake, distant and pensive, catching the last blush of daylight on the water's skin.

"That's all it was, back then—a fool's dream."

He exhaled slowly, the weight of years in that breath, then looked up again, this time with a clearer gaze, steadier, like someone remembering how to speak honestly to themselves.

"But after five years… I think I've changed. Maybe not entirely, but enough to see what I couldn't before. If I had kept going as I was, chasing that same fire with nothing but my fears behind me… I'd have burned myself hollow. Fallen. Dragged everything with me."

His fingers moved unconsciously across the fabric of his tunic, as though feeling something unseen, old scars, old burdens.

"The ambition, it's still there. That hunger. That voice inside me that's always clawing, always reaching. I never discarded it. Even now, with a throne beneath me and power in my grasp, I can still feel those fingers around my heart, tugging, whispering: more. That need… that bottomless hunger… it never truly goes quiet.

It's maddening really..."

The wind stirred the grass around them, and the lake mirrored the sky like still glass. Alpheo's voice lowered further, and there was something gentler in it now—like a current that had changed its course.

"And I would have gone mad if something didn't change.

But it did. Something's different now. These last few years...they saved me."

He looked to the others, then past them, toward something unseen but deeply known.

"Because I finally have a new ambition. Not one carved from fear. Not a reckless fire born just to burn. But something rooted. Something real. For the first time, what I'm building… isn't for me.

It is not mine, and I am grateful for that."

His voice caught for a moment, not with weakness, but with something deeper, something unshakable.

"It's for my son."

The words settled softly, like leaves falling onto still water.

"In fatherhood, I found the key I never knew I was searching for. A reason. Not just to fight—but to shape something better. Something lasting. I don't crave a crown or glory for me anymore. I crave a future he can walk without fear."

He paused, letting the weight of it all flow through him.

"All I do now," he said at last, "every stone I lift, every battle I choose to fight… it's not to reach for anything more for myself. It's to leave behind something worth reaching. For him."

And with that, Alpheo grew quiet once more, his gaze turned to the horizon, where the sun dipped low, and a different kind of fire began to rise in the sky.

''Isn't it amazing? What can someone who is not you do?''