The first thing you remember is the sound.

Not his name—though it echoed too, low and shuddering like the sea beneath a storm—but the sound of the breath leaving him. The absence of it, really. The moment when the air, that ancient, faithful thing which had carried him through wars and songs and you, simply vanished.

The sun bled low across the fields, a golden wound in the sky. Below it, the sea snarled—foam-mouthed, vengeful—grieving in the language of waves, mirroring the same fury that once turned the Myrmidon camp to silence.

You remember the way Achilles’ armor had glinted like wildfire when he turned from the tents—how even stripped of his blade, his very presence bent the air around him. He did not need to speak for the earth to quake beneath him. And yet that day, voices rose. A quarrel that should have ended with the snapping of tension gave way instead to something crueler, deeper. Agamemnon’s voice rang loudest—sharp as bronze in sunlight, thick with scorn. He had spat a thousand petty names. Cursed Achilles' pride. Taken what was never his to hold.

But the true wound—was your silence. You had not spoken in his defense.

Not when your place should have stood beside his. Not when the world watched and waited to see who you would choose. You, who had once whispered promises into his collarbone and cupped his fury in your palms like water.

And in the end, it was you who said it.

“Let it be, Pelides.”

Cold. Final. Like a knife sheathed in ice.

Achilles had turned from you then, slow and unbelieving, the way a man might turn from a cliff’s edge, too late to stop the fall.

You had spoken for the king Atrides. You had chosen the king Atrides. A mistake born of fear. Or pride. Or something colder still—a hollowness you did not yet have a name for. You cannot say what made your voice betray you, only that it did. Only that when Achilles looked at you, he did not look at you at all.

Now, Troy smoldered at the rim of the world, a ruin crowned in ash and godblood. The war drums returned, slower now, heavier, like a heartbeat barely holding on. Achilles walked among the dying, a storm in borrowed skin, wreathed in wrath. His hands slick with justice. His eyes moons eclipsed.

You waited outside his tent.

The torchlight shivered against the canvas walls, and your own shadow clung close to your feet, unwilling to touch him, even now. The air reeked of bronze and sweat and old myrrh, of grief worn thin and rage made sacred.

He stood within, his shadow moving once—just once—across the slant of gold light. Broad-shouldered, dust-crowned, chest rising like the sea before it crashes. He did not speak. Did not beckon. He knew why you’ve come, and it angered him.

“You made your choice,"

His voice is rough, frayed at the edges. It does not break. It scorches.

“When he mocked me. When he shamed me. When he took what was mine and ground my name into the dirt, you—you—stood beside him. And now, now that my name rises above his, now that the songs burn for me alone, you come here with what? Regret?”

Your pulse thrashed. Your throat dry as scorched earth. “I couldn’t—”

A sound left him. Too jagged to be a laugh.

“Couldn’t?” he echoed. “Or wouldn’t?”

Achilles turned, slow as a tide pulling free of the shore, eyes dark and endless.

“Did the gods still your tongue?” he asked, voice low, trembling with restraint. “Did Apollo whisper fear into your ribs? Or did you simply find it easier—to stand still, to stay silent, to let the prophecy run its course?”

You tried, foolishly, to explain, something of how you thought—

“You thought.”

It is almost tender, the way he said it. Almost.

“You thought, while my honor bled out into the dust. While my name was torn from me and thrown to the jackals. You thought.”

A coldscoff.

"Leave me. I do not know you."