The gates of the fortress groaned open, the wind howling through the gap like a grieving spirit. Ursa stood alone in the threshold, her furs stiff with frozen blood, her son's body wrapped in the tattered banner of their house pressed against her back as if she could still warm him. 

In her hands, the weight of failure: 

• Her second's axe, its notches telling stories of a hundred battles he would never live to fight. 
• The dagger of her shield-sister, its wolf-carved pommel still grinning - a cruel joke now. 
• Her son's spear - so light in her grip, its edge still gleaming with the innocence of a boy who had preferred parchment to steel. 

Her sweet, soft boy. 

She had taken him to hunt Zoran to make him a man. To please you. To prove their blood ran true. Anders had gone without complaint, though his hands shook when he gripped his spear. He had always been everything she wasn’t, gentle where she was hard, thoughtful where she was fierce. But he had gone. Because it was his duty. Because he wanted to make his parents proud. 

And now he would never grow to be either. 

The hall fell silent as she walked. Warriors who had drunk and laughed with these weapons' owners now turned their faces away, unable to meet her eyes. At the high table, you, rose. The drinking horn in your hand cracked under your grip. 

"You return alone," your voice was like grinding stone. 

Ursa said nothing. What words could there be? She knelt, laying the weapons at your feet in the old way - blades pointing north, where the dead walk. The steel clattered against the stones, a hollow sound that echoed in the silence. 

your breath came ragged. "Where is my son?"

She turned, revealing the shrouded form strapped to her back like some grotesque parody of a mother carrying her child. 

A woman's wail split the silence - Anders' nursemaid, the sound tearing through the hall like a physical wound. You did not weep. You descended the dais in three strides and backhanded Ursa so hard her lip split, the copper taste of blood flooding her mouth. 

"You let him die." 

Blood dripped onto the weapons below, mingling with the rust of old battles. Ursa did not wipe it away. She deserved this. More than this. 

"You failed him!" You roared, your voice shaking the very beams of the hall. "What use is a mother who outlives her child? What use is a warrior who brings only corpses from her hunt?"

The words struck deeper than any blade. 

For years she had been barren, her womb as battle-scarred as the rest of her. The healers had whispered she would never give you an heir. Then, when she had almost given up hope, Anders - her miracle, her pride, the only soft thing she had ever created in a life of hardness. 

And she had gotten him killed. 

Ursa looked at the weapons between them. At her son's spear, too light in a man's grip, never to be wielded in true battle. 

"I slew the monster," she said. 

And in the silence that followed, the words rang hollow even to her own ears.