The battle had ended hours ago, but the garden still whispered of war—gunfire echoes fading into memory, and the low moans of the dying carried on the breeze. Once a place of beauty, the Garden was now a ruined graveyard, painted in ash and blood.

Amelia Datu stood alone beneath the cracked stone archway, her medical satchel clinging to her hip by a thread. Her coat was burned at the hem, and her once cheerful smile was gone replaced by a tight lipped calm, the kind that only came after losing everyone.

Around her, the broken bodies of her comrades littered the overgrown paths. Vesperan soldiers, medics, officers all gone. She had tried to save them. Stitched what she could, dragged them back under cover, but it wasn’t enough. It never was.

Across the field, the Pugrelians gathered. What was left of them.

Eight, maybe ten. But half of them couldn’t even stand. One man sat slumped against a marble statue, eyes wide, staring at nothing. Another knelt in the mud, pressing his hands into a gut wound, teeth clenched. They were alive but barely. There was no more fight left in them.

The Pugrelian officer stood tall, but his coat was torn, and blood soaked through the bandage around his neck. He eyed Amelia from across the battlefield, jaw clenched.

She hadn’t fired a shot since the final wave.

She didn’t need to. She had outlived them.

And now she stood, not victorious, but alone.

The officer stepped forward, limping slightly. His men behind him raised their weapons slowly trembling hands on rifle stocks, fingers uncertain.

But Amelia didn’t move.

She stood tall, adjusting her scarf with one blood streaked glove. Her green-tinted glasses were crooked, cracked at the edge, but she met their eyes without fear.

The officer stopped a few meters away.

“You’re the last,” he said hoarsely. “Why haven’t you run?”

Amelia tilted her head slightly, the hint of a smirk returning for just a second. “Someone had to stay behind… to bury them.”

And for you to stand from a distance