Shattered Veil

December 24, 1890

Lying in bed tonight, I can't fathom how it all turned out this way. I dreamed of being here for years — lusting after it, longing for it, coveting it. And now here I am, finally at the place I've dreamt of for the last eight years of my gullible life. But the truth is tougher than the fantasy. I'm alone. Completely and permanently alone. No support. No solace. It seems like there isn't one person who cares about the fights I've fought or the hell I went through to survive.

Survival — it's the only language I've ever spoken.

The other day, the news came to me of my elder brother's demise. How did I feel? I still don't know. There's a chill inside me, a part that felt numb and distant that has long ago come to terms with the worst life has to offer. It has devised every conceivable outcome, every barbaric contortion, and is now oblivious to the value of surprise or shock. Life, basically, has become a string of repeated emotions — love, hate, happiness, sadness, envy, jealousy. Nothing more.

We, humans, get so attached with earthly attachments, or what the religion so nicely refers to as "worldly desires", that we refuse to see the reality in its face. The fact that we are just pawns in a game that is much bigger than us—servants of our own hell— Their sins, the sins of our fathers, linger in the air we breathe, inscribed in every fiber of our existence. The truth is we are nothing but mere parasites sucking on the fringes of an ephemeral Eden.

The dirt beneath me sighs tragedy, the water I sip provides no solace, and each creature that draws close only exists to mock my grief. Yet, we cling to life. We aim higher, in pursuit of medals, ranks or milestones. It's a feed, feeding an endless loop; the grind that releases flashes of adrenaline and pulls us out from ourselves. But eventually, as the dust clears and the adrenaline settles, we're staring into the void we once called glory.

All my life I have been running in circles, chasing a mirage.

General Spears — now there's a figure completely swallowed by the maelstrom of war. Two years. Two years of unrelenting bloodshed and barbarity. He was a shadow of the man he had once been, a man destroyed by a war whose genesis now lay in greed, power and conquest. War was never about honor, it was about profit and power politics and the insatiable desire for territory.

Back from the front, Spears appeared haunted. The cramped quarters of his office — a blocky cube of brick and wood — were suffocating. His fingers fumbled along the edge of his drawer, hoping for the familiar, reassuring presence of mood stabilizers. They were his only lifeline, his own delicate tether to sanity. But the pills were no antidote to the war tearing through his mind. Feeling the walls closing in, he crawled to the balcony for air.

The cold of the winter night cut into his very bones. From his perspective, he sensed a commotion below a group of men rushing into the base. Carriages came, carting the wounded whose blood stained the snow as soldiers rushed to help the injured. The scene was chaos incarnate, a gutting reminder of the price of this war.

Linxdon, the land of men — a world ruled by machines, politics, and an unquenchable thirst for more. The leaders of Linxdon, which had been plagued by famine and drought, had coveted Xiader's fertile lands, a domain of immortals and demigods. Xiader's dirt was richer than anyone could've dreamed, its seed exploding into a myriad of crops. But the gods long ago had divided Linxdon from Xiader with a raging, everlasting thunderstorm, a wall built to protect the descendants of gods from the greed of men.

Men are nothing if not insistent, though. Their pursuit of power and glory led to rebellion. They betrayed the demigods, slaughtering them in their quest for supremacy. The gods, furious with a man's treachery, descended their rage. And their punishment was to cast humanity back the way we came, exiling us to Linxdon, a desolate wasteland, and sealing us away from avarice all evermore.

But the heads of Linxdon were not satisfied. They had been unchecked in their greed, and here we are: locked in a war of attrition, a war that has drained both sides of their lifeblood. And I, supine in this bed, must wonder: is this all we ever were meant to be? Transitory beings, scrabbling for scraps and vision-impared with grandiosity and burdened by the sins of the fathers?

The evening is cold, but my thoughts colder yet.

It was weak against the cold of the winter night, a candle, the light throwing dancing shapes onto the stone walls of Dorian's room. His breath was white with cold, puffing into the air as light clouds of vapor. The letter rested next to him now, the edges curling as though, too, it grew tired of bearing the load of truth.

Elias's death had been a tragedy—and the end for more than just the two of them; it had been the fulfillment of every dark prophecy Dorian had in the end come to believe about this war. He thought of his brother not as the man he'd last seen, broken and bloodied and pierced with the arrows of Linxdon's enemies, but as the boy who used to laugh with him in the fields outside their childhood home. A boy who wanted to believe in honor and righteousness, who wanted to believe that men could be greater than the sum of their wants.

Those beliefs had already died long before Elias died.

The sound of knuckles sharply rapping on his door pulled Dorian from his thoughts. He didn't need to respond; the door creaked fetidly open by itself and revealed a man dressed in a dark military coat, his face worn with exhaustion. "General Spears stood in the doorway, his presence heavy and oppressive like the storm raged perpetually out on the horizon.

"Dorian," Spears said, his voice hoarse from too many sleepless nights. "You're needed."

"I'm needed always," Dorian muttered, hoisting himself upright. His joints hurt, his body protesting even this small act of defiance against the inertia of despair.

General Spears ignored the bitterness that tinged Dorian's tone, stepping farther into the room, booted feet ringing off the stone floor. His pallid eyes, heavy-lidded and haunted by countless sleepless nights, turned beseechingly to Dorian.

"This is not another patrol, Dorian," Spears said in a lowered voice. "It's bigger. Higher stakes. So the council has decided… it's time to breach the storm."

Dorian stood frozen, the weight of the words falling over him like a blanket of lead. Breaching the storm? For decades now, it had been the whispered dream of Linxdon's rulers—a long shot to regain the plying fields of Xiader. But it was a gamble soaked in blood and madness, and one that had cost thousands of people their lives. The thunderstorm barrier wasn't merely a wall but a formation of divine wrath itself, a tempest infused with the anger of gods.

"You're kidding," Dorian said at last, knowing that Spears never kid.

"I wish I were." Spears folded his arms and his weathered face was grim. "The council thinks that's our only opportunity. The war is draining us, and the people are getting restless. They want hope — something to believe in."

"Hope?" Dorian's voice sharpened, flickers of rage igniting the hollow of his chest. "How is throwing more lives into that storm meant to inspire hope in anyone? It will only rack up the body count!"

Spears sighed, the burden of his own complicity in this madness clear in his slumped shoulders. "The council thinks otherwise. They believe this mission can win the war. If we can make it through the storm, take Xiader's lands…"

"Then what?! " Dorian broke in, his voice keen and intonating. "The gods will allow our beasts to walk in and take whatever we want? Once already we've been punished for our greed. What gives them the idea that this time will be different?"

Spears paused for a moment and didn't respond. An awkward silence hung between them filled with unarticulated truths. And finally, he added, "This isn't about what the gods think. It's about survival.

Linxdon can't last long. We need you, Dorian. You are the only one who can pilot this mission."

The sound was empty and humorless; Dorian laughed bitterly. "Of course. Send the grieving soldier marching to death's maw. Is that it? Another body for the pyre?"

Spears shuffled closer, his voice dropping. "I know what you have lost, Dorian. I know the pain you carry. But this isn't only about you. It's about all of us — our people, our future. And if we do nothing, Linxdon will fall to pieces." And Elias's death …will mean nothing.'"

The fact that he'd said his brother's name was a dagger to Dorian's heart, twisting its way up and reopening wounds he'd tried to close with dispassion. He turned his face away, his jaw clenching as he struggled to keep in the tempest of emotions threatening to burst out.

"What's the plan?" he finally asked, his voice flat and resigned.

Spears, breathing a sigh of relief, but not triumph. "There's a hidden passage under the storm — an ancient tunnel that is older than the barrier. It was used by the gods themselves to bridge between Linxdon and Xiader, according to the council. If we can get through it, we can avoid the storm altogether."

"And what do we find when we arrive at Xiader?" Dorian asked. "Assuming we make it there at all?"

"That's up to you." Spears paused again, then said, "But the council expects you to clear the land for Linxdon. By any means necessary."

The words lay there like a weight. "By any means necessary." Dorian's stomach twisted, for he knew exactly what that meant. It was not a general guidance — it was a specific directive. It wasn't an order from on high to be ignored. No. It was a path of least resistance — at least the kind of blood and violence and deftly enforced subjugation that had led the world to its knees in the first place. He knew what went with that phrase. He had watched it happen before, the destruction, the cruelty, the cycle of suffering that followed: And yet it was the only option. That always felt like the only option.

"I'll get my team" Dorian said, his voice flat and empty. It was like the words weren't even his, just something his mouth had to say to get through the moment. He could find no passion in him, no fight, not anymore. It took everything to keep his composure.

Spears' hand came to rest on his shoulder, a rude, solid mass intended to comfort, and which in Dorian's mind instead felt more like a shackle—like something that held him in place on this hellish mission, on this never-ending spiral of destruction. He could feel its weight, dragging him down even lower. "You're doing the right thing, Dorian," the general said, his voice low and earnest, though the words rang hollow in the deep silence that followed. "For all of us."

For all of us. The words reverberated in Dorian's brain but did not bring the supposed solace. It wasn't right. None of this felt quite right. Dorian didn't want to be the only one holding the bag for the rest. He just wasn't the guy who would throw himself into this madness, this filth of violence and death, in order for them to survive a little longer. But what choice did he have? What else was left for him? He wasn't the hero that he was cracked up to be. He was no longer even sure he was a man.

When Spears finally departed, the sound of the door creaking closed behind him, Dorian felt the silence topple onto him like a physical pressure. For long moments he stared into the door, pushing himself to move, to breathe, but his body refused to listen. He flopped back onto the cot, the weight of the decision resting on him until it felt like he was being crushed. His hands sought his head instinctively, fingers seizing his skull, as if he could hold himself together.

His eyes flickered toward the flickering candlelight in the corner, too weak to drive back the shadows growing in him. The warmth of the flame didn't reach him, didn't warm the frozen and sheared spots that had settled in his heart. His thoughts spun out, more hopeless than the last, and he could feel the grief swell inside him like a flood, crashing into him, making it harder to breathe. Anger chased right behind, furious and icy, a fire that burned in his heart, but there was also doubt — so much doubt. His mind, a storm of emotions, swirled around him — oil and water, pulling him under.

Elias would know what to do, he thought bitterly, his chest tightening. It hit him like a slap in the face, a reminder of what he had lost. Elias was always the one with the answers, the one who could see through the fog of war and confusion. Some effecter would make it through the nigh the council, defend against its insanity, take charge with faith and kann. But now... now Elias was no more. And what was left for Dorian? A mere shadow of the man he once was. A man so exhausted he could not fight, so lost he did not care.

But in the end he had no choice, torn between the cries of angels and the pleas of men, and his ears bled as he took orders from God. He no longer believed in gods. How could he? He'd seen and lost too much. He had watched the world shred itself, all for some higher power, some divine plan. And what had it brought them? Death. Suffering. Nothing else. So if the gods were looking on, if they still cared to gaze down upon the wretched thing they'd made, Dorian was too sick at heart to give a damn about them.

They have to be laughing, he thought, bitterness constricting his belly. Laughing at how we've all been duped by this. Laughing at how we continue trying to repair a wrecked world with more violence, more death.

Because no matter how valiantly he fought, no matter how much he _tried_ to cling to the fragments of himself, Dorian knew deep down, it was of no importance. Nothing mattered. The storm would come. And it would consume them all. He just didn't know how and when, but it would. It always did. The storm would arrive, and there would be nothing left.