Jason looked out the window of the small attic, his expression unusually solemn. The sunset outside was beautiful, the sky tinged in brilliant oranges and reds, a stark contrast to the destruction that had happened in the village hours earlier. The dust was settling, the fires put out, and the bodies buried.

It felt like everywhere they went, they encountered brutality and death. The empire's invasion had been swift. Jason had no idea whether anyone else in his family had managed to escape the carnage. He and his knight had only barely made it; the pair had been on the way back from one of Jason's many dungeon forays when the ominous shadows of the enemy nation's dragon riders passed overhead.

Jason and his knight had fled, at the knight's insistence. The settlement they'd stopped at was remote and unassuming, but the imperial forces had razed the place regardless, leaving barely any survivors. He'd wanted to fight, wanted to do something, but his knight had stopped him. He'd resisted, and his knight had knocked him out.

"Why did you save me?" he demanded, his voice full of sorrow and rage. "Why didn't you let me fight?" The side of his fist connected with the wall. "How can you just stand there and do nothing? Don't you feel anything? What the hell is wrong with you?" His fist clenched tighter, his nails, still caked with dirt from burying the dead, digging into his palm. "We could've done something! I could've... I should've..."

He knew they'd both be dead if he'd brazenly charged into battle. But that beat being here, alive, knowing he hadn't done anything. It beat the images seared into his brain of all those innocents, some of them far too young, battered and bloodied and broken. He didn't want to be a survivor, a coward, not when he could've done more.

"Forget keeping myself safe just because I'm a prince! I don't want to be a prince. I never wanted to be a godsdamned prince," he snapped. "I should be out there! Fighting! Not holed away in an attic, letting people bleed and die while I do nothing!"