Bheldur pushed open the door to the inn with a heavy hand, the hinges groaning in protest. The common room was dim, lit only by the embers of the hearth. A few locals hunched over mugs, their voices low and indistinct. He kept his head down as he crossed the floor, the weight of his axes dragging at his hips, and climbed the narrow stairs to his room.

  Once inside, he shut the door and leaned against it, exhaling slowly. The silence pressed in, broken only by the faint bustle of the street outside. His armour creaked as he slid down onto the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

  “Pull yourself together, Giantguard,” he muttered, voice rough. “You’ve been given a chance. Don’t waste it.”

  But the words rang hollow.

  The moment he closed his eyes, the memories surged back, not as distant recollections, but as vivid, merciless visions.

  The cave was colder than stone had any right to be. Damp air clung to Bheldur’s beard, and every breath tasted of rot. The flicker of torchlight barely pushed back the shadows, and in those shadows, the dead stirred.

  They came first as whispers, the scrape of bone on stone, the hiss of unseen breath. Then the tide broke.

  He had a happy memory of Brannur, the pair of dwarves, quick friends on their first adventure, of standing shoulder to shoulder in the cave mouth, Brannur’s shield raised high, his axes at the ready. The first wave of undead had crashed against them like a tide, skeletal hands clawing, rusted blades scraping. Brannur had laughed, laughed, as he shoved one back, shouting something about ale waiting for them when they got home. They’d been surprised to find undead, but it wasn’t unheard of around the world. They’d quickly progressed, smashing through wave after wave of undead, finding this easy.

  Then the laughter twisted into a scream. A jagged spear punched through Brannur’s side, and though he staggered, he fought on, teeth gritted against the pain while Torrel scrambled to heal him. In that moment Admiir surged forward, voice booming above the chaos. He shouted that something was wrong, that the magic tearing into them was far beyond what they should have been facing. Raising his shield, the veteran guardian planted himself in the breach, holding back the tide while Torrel worked. For a heartbeat it seemed he might turn the battle, his shield a wall of iron and will. But the horde pressed harder, bodies piling against him, and then the spells began to fall, searing bolts of dark sorcery that even Admiir could not shrug off. Each blast staggered him, his armour scorched and dented, his stance faltering. Even the strongest among them was being driven back. They were being overrun.

  Zendal was the first to fall. The gnome mage had stood at the centre of their formation, his small frame wreathed in fire and light. He hurled spell after spell, his voice cracking with the strain of channelling so much power. For a moment, he was brilliant, a beacon in the dark, his flames reducing skeletons to ash.

  But the dead were cunning. A shard of black magic, jagged and cruel, lanced from the darkness. It struck Zendal square in the chest. His fire guttered out mid?incantation, his eyes wide with shock. He crumpled to the stone floor, smoke rising from the wound.

  “Zendal!” Torrel cried, darting forward. The gnomish healer pressed glowing hands to his new friend’s chest, but the light faltered. The wound was too deep, too poisoned with shadow. Zendal’s lips moved once, whispering something Bheldur could not hear, and then he was still.

  Torrel’s scream was raw, but he didn’t stop. He turned his magic on Brannur, who was bleeding heavily from a spear thrust. The healer’s hands shook as he poured everything he had into closing the wound. His face was pale, sweat dripping down his brow.

  Then the horde surged again. A skeletal warrior, taller than the rest, drove a rusted blade straight through Torrel’s back. The healer gasped, his light flickering out as the steel punched through his chest. He slumped forward across Brannur, his small body limp.

  “Torrel!” Brannur roared, shoving the corpse aside as he staggered to his feet, blood still seeping from his half?healed wound.

  Bheldur’s vision blurred with rage and grief. He swung his axes in wide arcs, cleaving bone and shattering skulls, but for every one that fell, two more pressed forward.

  Their veteran guardian’s shield slammed into the horde again and again, scattering them like kindling. Admiir’s thundered over the chaos. “Something’s wrong! This isn’t just restless dead, there’s power here, darker than we can handle!”

  The darkness was relentless. Bolts of shadow magic rained down, searing his armour, staggering him. Then came the blade, a long, jagged weapon of pure night, wielded by a figure half?seen in the gloom. It slashed across Admiir’s side, cutting through steel and flesh alike. He grunted, dropping to one knee, blood spilling across the stone.

  “Bheldur!” he barked, voice hoarse but commanding. “Run. Get out. Warn the town what’s in here.”

  Bheldur froze, axes dripping with liquid he did not want to think about, chest heaving. “No! I won’t leave you!”

  Admiir’s eyes locked on his, desperate and unflinching. “You must. Someone has to carry word. If you stay, we all die for nothing.”

  Bheldur’s heart clenched. He knew what it meant for a dwarf to be told to run, to abandon his shield?brothers. It was the deepest shame, the heaviest burden. But in Admiir’s gaze he saw the truth, the plea of a man who knew he was already lost, who needed someone to live so their deaths would mean something.

  With a roar of anguish, Bheldur turned. His boots pounded against the stone as he fled the cave, the screams of battle echoing behind him.

  He risked one last glance over his shoulder.

  Admiir and Brannur stood side by side, shields smashing into the undead, weapons crashing down with desperate fury. For a moment they were titans, unbreakable, holding the line against impossible odds. But the tide was endless. Magic struck them in searing bursts, their armour blackened and cracked. The darkness itself seemed to coil around them, wrapping them in shadow.

  And then the cave mouth swallowed the sight, leaving only the echo of steel and the memory of their last stand.

  Bheldur ran on, his chest burning, his heart breaking. He carried with him the weight of survival and the shame of leaving them behind.

  He remembered the road back to Ashenfall as a blur of shadows and silence. The moon was high, but its light felt cold, accusing. Each step of his boots on the dirt path sounded too loud, like the tread of a thief sneaking home after some dishonourable deed. He kept glancing over his shoulder, half?expecting the dead to come spilling out of the dark behind him.

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  When the gates of Ashenfall finally came into view, lanterns glowing on the watchtowers, his heart clenched. The guards spotted him first, a lone figure staggering out of the night.

  “Another newbie is back! By the Stone, you made it back late!” one of them called, relief in his voice. Another guard clapped the parapet, cheering. For a heartbeat, warmth flickered in Bheldur’s chest. He had survived. He had returned.

  But then they saw his face. They saw the blood on his armour, the emptiness in his eyes, and the cheers faltered. The smiles faded. The relief turned to confusion, then unease.

  “Where are the others?” someone asked.

  Bheldur couldn’t answer. His throat locked, his chest burned. He lowered his gaze, and that was answer enough. The silence that followed was heavier than any shout.

  They escorted him through the streets, their lanterns bobbing around him like a funeral procession. He felt every window watching, every shadow whispering. By the time they reached the guildhall, his shame was a living thing, pressing against his ribs.

  Inside, they brought him straight to Ronald. The room he was in smelled of parchment and pipe smoke, the air thick with authority. Bheldur stood there, armour still stained, while Ronald listened to the guards’ hurried explanation.

  And then the talking began.

  Not to him. About him.

  “He was the only one who came back.”

  “Did he run?”

  “Was he sent?”

  “What happened in there?”

  The words swirled around him, sharp and cold, as if he were a ghost in the room, not a man. He wanted to shout, to explain, to defend himself but the shame in his chest burned hotter than fire. His tongue felt like lead. Eventually other mentors arrived. He was healed by Kal, and finally shook out of his daze. He recounted his warning, the warning Admiir asked him to carry.

  Everything blurred, a thousand voices, a thousand questions, the world spinning too fast. Until suddenly it all stopped.

  He found himself at the front of the guild hall, and the other adventurers were being told.

  He remembered the way they looked at him, the pity in their eyes, yes, but something else too. A flicker of doubt. A shadow of judgment. As if they wondered why he had lived when the others had not.

  That was the moment something inside him cracked.

  He realised then that vengeance for his fallen party would never be his. He would never stand beside them again, never strike down the darkness that had claimed them. Their fight had ended in that cave, and he had been torn from it, cast out into survival.

  The shame of it settled into his bones, heavy and permanent. He had returned to Ashenfall alive, but he had left something of himself behind in that cave, something he would never get back.

  All of it became a blur, and he sought sanctuary in the bottom of an ale barrel.

  Then he remembered the moment Ronald approached him, flanked by the two elves. His mentors boots echoed on the wooden floor, each step like a hammer striking Bheldur’s chest. He had wanted to shrink into the shadows, to vanish into the bottom of a tankard and never crawl out again. The thought of ale, strong, burning, endless, gnawed at him. If he could just drink enough, maybe the screams would fade, maybe the faces of Zendal, Torrel, Admiir, Brannur would blur into something less sharp.

  But there was no escape. Ronald’s eyes were steady, unreadable, while the elves’ gazes cut like blades. Bheldur felt their judgment even before they spoke. His stomach churned with self?pity, his mind a chorus of self?hatred. Coward. Survivor. Betrayer. He wanted to shout that he had been ordered to run, that he hadn’t chosen to abandon them, but the words stuck in his throat.

  And then Ronald had brought an elf with him, who offered him the unimaginable.

  She spoke of a new party. Of a chance to fight again, to grow stronger, to reclaim some shred of honour. To take vengeance.

  For a moment Bheldur thought he had misheard. His ears rang, his heart thudded. Him? After everything? After running, after failing, after watching his sword brothers and sister die? He stared at Carcan in disbelief, waiting for the sneer, the cruel twist of the mouth that would reveal it as mockery. But there was none. Only the offer, plain and steady, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  He remembered nodding, though his mind screamed against it. He remembered the strange warmth that flickered in his chest, fragile as a candle in a storm. The possibility that maybe, just maybe, he was not finished. That vengeance was not beyond him.

  And then the memory fractured.

  The guildhall, Ronald’s voice, the elves’ eyes, all of it dissolved, and Bheldur found himself staring into the cracked mirror of his inn room. His own reflection looked back at him, pale and hollow, the ghosts of his comrades still crowding his shoulders.

  Now, in the quiet of the inn, the shame of it burned hotter than any wound.

  He gripped the edge of the washstand, knuckles white. The shame was still there, heavy as stone. But beneath it, buried deep, was something else. A spark. A chance.

  “You lived,” he whispered to himself, staring at the floorboards. “That’s what they wanted. You lived.”

  But living didn’t feel like honour. It felt like cowardice.

  He rose unsteadily and crossed to the washstand. His reflection in the cracked mirror stared back, eyes bloodshot, beard matted with grime, armour streaked with dried blood. He looked like a ghost of himself, a hollowed?out remnant of the dwarf who had marched into that cave.

  For a long moment he gripped the edge of the basin, knuckles white. Then Carcan’s voice echoed in his mind: I don’t believe you’re done yet.

  The warmth of that thought surprised him. He had expected to be cast aside, branded a coward, his days as an adventurer over. Yet here was a party willing to give him a place, to trust him with their lives. The ember of hope stirred in his chest, fragile but real.

  He set to work. He stripped off his armour and scrubbed the dirt from his skin until it was raw. He combed the tangles from his beard, trimmed it neat, and washed the bloodstains from his gear. He polished the edges of his axes until they gleamed, the familiar weight of them in his hands grounding him. Piece by piece, the wreck of a dwarf who had staggered into the guild the night before was replaced by something steadier, sharper.

  When he finally strapped on his gear and looked in the mirror again, he almost didn’t recognise himself. Not the broken survivor of yesterday, but a fighter ready to stand again.

  The walk back to the guild was harder than the cleaning.

  Every step down the cobbled street felt like a trial. He imagined eyes on him from every corner, merchants pausing mid?sale, children whispering, guards narrowing their gaze. He thought he saw pity in their faces, the kind reserved for men who had lost everything. Worse still, he thought he caught disgust in a few glances, as if they knew he had run, as if they judged him for surviving when others had not.

  His chest tightened, and he pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. They don’t know. They weren’t there. They didn’t hear the order. But still… they must see it on me. The shame.

  He passed a pair of women carrying baskets, and one of them glanced up briefly. Her eyes slid over him without recognition, but in his mind he saw accusation. He passed a group of apprentices laughing together, and he was certain their laughter was at him. He passed a guard leaning on his spear, and he imagined the man’s gaze boring into him, weighing his worth and finding it lacking.

  Yet when he forced himself to look closer, he realised no one was staring. The merchants were too busy haggling, the guards too focused on their patrols. The children laughed at some private joke, not at him. The disgust he thought he saw was only in his own mind, shadows cast by guilt.

  Still, the weight of imagined judgment clung to him as he neared the guildhall. His boots felt heavier, his breath shorter. But beneath it all, that ember of warmth remained, the knowledge that inside those doors, there were people who had chosen him, who believed he still had worth.

  He squared his shoulders, took one last steadying breath, and pushed the guildhall doors open.

  Bhel says: “If you don’t leave a review, I’m stealing your rations.”

  Josh says: “Hit follow. It keeps the author from giving me emotional trauma next chapter.”

  Carcan just sighs. “Please. For our sanity.”