Epilogue I: Ashes and Understanding

The battlefield lay still, yet it was not silent.

Smoke curled in the night air, mingling with the last embers of war. The scent of blood and ash lingered, thick and suffocating. The wounded still groaned in the distance, their cries blending with the whisper of the desert wind. Shadows stretched long across the broken landscape, where armor lay scattered among the dead.

The Penitential Forces had been expelled, their assault broken not by steel or flame but by something far greater.

At the heart of it all, Gharaak knelt in prayer.

The massive warrior did not stand as a conqueror, nor did he revel in his victory. He remained still, head bowed, hands resting against the pommel of Ebonshatter, his warblade embedded in the earth. The glow of the pyres flickered against his crimson armor, the firelight casting him as a titan of sorrow.

And from the ruined fortress, Irina approached.

She had left before the sky burned, before Miadryn descended in divine fury.

The fortress had been her goal, slipping past the chaos to infiltrate its depths while the battle raged outside. She had expected resistance, a desperate final stand from those within. Instead, she had found something far more damning—a stronghold that had never truly been in danger.

The Denethari had not been routed. They had not fled.

They had simply waited.

That realization alone had unsettled her. Now, she needed to understand why.

A figure emerged from the shadowed corridors, his many arms folded beneath a robe of dark silks and shimmering arcane embroidery.

Warplord Makkla.

His insectoid frame shifted with deliberate grace, his mandibles clicking in thought as he studied her.

"You came seeking truth, Judicator," he said, his voice carrying a measured calm. "Then ask, and I shall answer."

Irina did not move, her eyes narrowing. She had expected hostility. Resistance. But not this.

Her voice remained steady. "Your forces never truly broke. The fortress never fell. So why did you fight this way?"

Makkla did not answer with words. Instead, he raised a single hand. The air rippled like disturbed water.

And the past came to life.

The battle played again, but not as she had lived it.

She saw Gharaak—not as a warlord, not as a conqueror, but as a shield.

She watched as Miadryn, in all her radiant wrath, struck down toward a Denethari soldier fleeing the battlefield. The air trembled beneath the sheer force of her divine blade.

And then, Gharaak stepped between them.

The ground shattered as Ebonshatter met holy fire, the force of the clash rippling outward in a deafening shockwave. Miadryn had not been holding back.

But neither had Gharaak.

He had taken the blow meant to slaughter one of his own.

Then—Kathyrne.

Irina had only ever heard of her in whispers—the Penitent Sister. The one who watched, the one who never intervened.

Until now.

Chains of light burst forth from the heavens, coiling around Miadryn and halting her advance.

The battlefield did not shake. It simply stopped.

And then, Kathyrne spoke.

"Enough."

Irina had never heard a voice like it.

Not a command. Not a plea.

A simple word, yet spoken with such quiet finality that it drowned out the war itself.

The battle had ended in a single instant. Not through brute force, not through overwhelming power, but by the sheer weight of Kathyrne’s will.

The Penitential Forces were bound, held in place—not harmed, but restrained.

She had not come to destroy them.

She had come to stop them.

Irina exhaled, staggering back as the vision faded. The truth settled in her mind like a stone dropped into deep water, rippling outward, disrupting everything she had once believed.

Makkla remained silent.

Then, with a flick of his hand, a portal shimmered into existence—revealing Gharaak, still kneeling in the field of the dead.

Irina stepped through.

The battlefield was quieter now, though the weight of war still lingered. The scent of fire and steel clung to the air, the last flickers of the pyres casting uneasy shadows across the fallen.

Gharaak had not moved. His shoulders remained broad and still, his head slightly bowed.

Then, after a long moment, he reached forward.

His fingers closed around Einval.

Darius' weapon.

The halberd of the Penitential Order, still humming with power.

A weapon meant to be wielded in faith, in righteousness.

Now held by the man they had called their greatest enemy.

Irina watched as Gharaak lifted it.

She saw the way his grip tightened—not with pride, not with triumph.

With disgust.

The weapon sickened him.

Before she could stop herself, she spoke.

"Do you regret it?"

Gharaak did not answer immediately.

For a long moment, he simply looked at her, his ember-like eyes unreadable.

Then, at last, his deep, thunderous voice rumbled through the night.

"No."

A slow, measured exhale. "I cannot regret. I can only atone."

He turned his gaze toward the dead, exhaling. “Perhaps you can help.”

She frowned, watching as more Denethari emerged from the fortress, their movements slower now, their weapons set aside.

"In the Empire," he continued, "we honor the fallen. We return their names to their families, if we can. If we cannot..." His eyes flicked toward the charred remains of what had once been men. "Then we grieve them here."

He looked at her then, his tone unreadable. "I would like to do the same for the Order’s dead."

For a moment, Irina didn’t speak.

She had seen battlefields defiled before. She had seen victors discard the slain, leaving their bodies to rot beneath an indifferent sun.

But Gharaak did not stand as a victor.

He stood as a man who refused to let them be forgotten.

Slowly, she knelt. She reached for the Judicator’s emblem on her belt—a golden cross, the sigil of her faith—and placed it gently among the dead.

"We have rites," she murmured, her voice softer now. "We do not mourn warriors for dying. We mourn because they will never see what they fought for."

She traced a slow, deliberate pattern in the dirt, a prayer of passage.

"By the light that guides the lost, by the mercy that tempers judgment, let those who fell in battle find their way beyond these broken lands. May their burdens be lifted, their regrets eased, and their names carried not in sorrow, but in remembrance."

For a long moment, there was only silence.

Then, finally, Gharaak nodded.

Later, as the last pyre burned, he turned toward her once more.

"My people are no more, Irina."

His voice was low, dangerous, filled with a quiet, simmering rage.

"That is why I fought for the Father. And that is why I will tear him asunder."

He turned, hoisting Ebonshatter and Einval, and strode toward the fortress.

Irina hesitated, the world she had once believed in crumbling around her.

Then, her voice cut through the night.

"Then let me see it."

Gharaak paused.

A flicker of something almost imperceptible.

A smile.

He motioned for her to follow.

And for the first time, she did.