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Nithel pants, leaning back against a large tree. Dust cakes his sweating body, and he looks around. Much of his long hair had slipped from its tie, and was pasted to his face and neck with dried sweat. He waited, listening to the darkness, but most is silent now except for small wind through the leaves. Hope dying… taking its last breath.

He swallows hard, his chest aching as he looks at it all.

His son had not been found with the dead. The jeers of some men, and the sincerity of others, rang in his ears. But Nithel wasn’t sure that was preferred. He swallows hard, fighting tears, and just barely starting to catch his breath. He fingered the five wooden pieces around the leather string tied around his neck. Fingering them each, thinking of what they represented.

He’d been searching the field of dead for days. His son was not here.

The sword at his belt felt like a thousand pounds had been added to it, and the blood on his hands felt like it was stained deeper than it had been. He sighed deeply, then pushed off the trunk and straightened, not knowing if he could go on. But he had to.

But then he was falling. Falling like he hadn’t sense climbing that tree with his son years before.
And he landed on cold stones, for the first time since he was a young man. A time he’d thought was a dream.
It’s a dark hallway. Cold. No light.