Drakken burned them.
He didn’t shift to do it. He walked to the pile in borrowed trousers and held out one hand. Dragon fire erupted from his palm, a jet of orange flame turning the pile into an inferno. The stench was immediate: burning fur, charred bone, dark magic combusting under the dragon fire. A thick column of smoke rose into the sky.
He stood there until every corpse turned to ash, fire reflecting in his gray eyes. When it was done, he turned and walked away without a word.
We buried our dead at dusk.
The Spartans built the pyre on the eastern edge of the camp, facing away from the DarkVeil and turning the fallen toward thedawn. They built it with their hands, no tools, no orders, each piece of timber placed with the careful deliberation of people building something sacred.
The warriors’ bodies, wrapped in their own cloaks, lay at the base. Weapons cleaned and placed across their chests. Insignia pins removed. Those would go back to the fortress, to the memorial wall where every fallen Spartan’s name was carved into black stone.
The camp gathered. Every Spartan who could stand. The soldiers from Greyhold at a respectful distance, heads bowed. Frost at parade rest, blood dried on his temple. Marco pale and still, bandage wrapped around his shoulder.
The heirs stood at the front. Aelindor in his silver coat, buttoned to the throat. Caspian had found a shirt but left it unbuttoned, and for once the wolf prince carried no smile, no easy charm. His green eyes were dark. Drakken stood rigid and regal, grief and rage rolling off him.
No one gave a speech.
The dead didn’t need to be praised. They needed to be mourned, honored, and remembered.
All three heirs stepped forward. A Spartan held out an unadorned torch. Drakken took it and struck the flint himself. He didn’t use his dragon fire.
Flame bloomed. He walked to the pyre and set the torch against the base. Fire climbed the structure in a rush of heat and light.
And then Aelindor began to sing.
We carried iron when the world went dark,
We held the line where the ground gave way.
We did not ask for the fire to start,
We only swore that we’d stay.
His voice was low and rich and so achingly beautiful that my breath stopped. The stark melody hit something behind my ribs like wind through ruins.
The Spartans joined him.
Now lay them down where the embers climb,
Where ash returns what the war has claimed.
Their blades are still. Their watch is done.
We speak their weight, not their name.
For the ones who stood when the ranks fell thin.
One by one, then in waves, the entire assembly started singing, a deep, rolling harmony that filled the camp and pressed against the DarkVeil’s shadow like a wall of sound pushing back the dark.
The fire takes what the earth can’t keep.
The wind will carry them past the veil.
We’ll hold the line until we sleep.
We’ll hold the line until we fail.
We’ll hold the line until there’s no one left to hold.