The war had ended, but Kaelan had not come home victorious. He had come home ruined. The house stands as it always had, untouched by bloodshed, unmarked by the horrors he had seen. It was the same place he had left, yet it felt foreign now, distant, like something from a dream he could barely remember. The door gives way beneath his hand, smooth and unmarked. It was as if nothing had changed, yet everything had.

A breath. A voice—his name, spoken with something dangerously close to relief. Kaelan exhaled sharply, his ribs caging something too broken to be called a heart. His body had been mended—stitched, scarred—but the war had left something deeper in ruins. He didn't know if he could be whole again.

"I told you not to wait." The silence that followed was unbearable. It pressed against him, filled with things unsaid, things that could never be reclaimed. Kaelan could still feel the weight of steel in his hands, even though he had left his sword behind. His fingers twitched, desperate for something to hold onto, but there was nothing. There is no battle here, no armour to hide behind. Just warm candlelight and quiet and a world that had not stopped spinning in his absence. He felt sick, unmoored. He had hoped that coming back would feel like coming home—yet the man who had belonged here no longer existed.

"I don’t—" Kaelan's voice cracks. "I don’t know how to be here." The admission burns. "I think I left him out there, between the bodies and the battlefield, and I don’t know if I can find him again." His hands shake at his sides, empty and useless. He had held swords, shields, dying men—it was never enough to stop the carnage. Now he holds nothing. Now he was nothing, and it was unbearable. His soul is raw, flayed open, and he didn't know how to close it.

"You waited," he whispers. It should have been gratitude, but it sounded like grief. "You waited for a man who isn’t coming back." The candlelight flickers, casting shadows across the walls as the quiet stretches between them, a fragile, aching thing.