The Choice

In the open forest surrounded by lush trees and calm breeze carrying the stench of war. Vion walks to a hill side holding the boys hand and the boy himself just following Vion strangely without complaint or resistance.

The words of Ramona still echo in his mind causing him to shiver. However, the image of his family lingers in his mind, his drive and will to protect it floats in his mind as well. The two of them float on an imaginary scale mirroring his inner burden and turmoil because he knows that whichever side the scale tips to, he will still be met with the same feeling that makes him question his sense of morality and self.

The boy stood at the edge of the cliff, the sea stretching endlessly before them. The wind was soft here, rustling through the leaves of the open forest behind them, carrying with it the salt of the ocean and the stillness of something ancient.

Waves below crashed in gentle rhythms, colliding and pulling apart like thoughts he couldn't hold still. They reminded him of the noise in his head—reason and instinct, clarity and duty, all clashing in quiet, endless echoes.

He watched the boy in silence.

That face—familiar, almost regal. Skin like sun-kissed bronze, hair dark and thick, wild with freedom. But it was the eyes that held him.

That same storm-washed blue.

His breath hitched.

They were her eyes. His sister's. The ones that had looked up at him the day he left—though she was too young to understand. Just an infant then, bundled in soft linens, with hands barely the size of his fingers. She had stared at him with those wide, blinking eyes, unaware that the war was taking her brother from her.

The boy turned, locking eyes with him. And that was when he felt it—like the boy wasn't just looking, but seeing. His irises weren't just blue—they shimmered like tide pools after a storm, ancient and piercing. They saw past his armor, past his title, past the blood on his hands. Straight into the trembling truth of who he was.

"You're afraid, aren't you ?" the boy asked. "More afraid than I am."

The words hit like a whisper and a hammer all at once.

"I'm just going to do what is expected of me without hesitation or weakness" he replied, voice low, trying to believe, deceive convince himself to not acknowledge the trembling in his hands or his soul.

"Do you believe that?"

He hesitated. Then, quietly: "I used to think it was simple."

His mind flicked back. To the first time he was handed a sword—he'd grinned then, proud to hold steel like his father. He remembered the first swing during training, the weight of it, how right it felt. Then the first life he took—how the blood was warm and thick and the man's eyes didn't close right away. Still, it made sense then. They were the enemy. They had to be.

"It's the price of war," he finished, as if the words could still hold him up.

The boy, no more than seven, tilted his head. "And who decides what it's worth?"

That was the first crack.

How? How can he be so calm. For a child of seven he appears to possess frightening perception.

He felt it—like a tiny splinter in the foundation of the soldier he had built himself to be.

He swallowed. Looked away, toward the ocean. A soft gust lifted his cloak. Somewhere in that breeze, he heard the laughter of a child—his sister's, or a memory he made up to survive.

"I don't want to do this," he said, voice rough around the edges.

"Then don't."

"It's not that easy."

"It never is."

A sigh, then another crack. A little wider this time.

He gripped the hilt of his blade harder, as if it could keep him grounded. But his fingers trembled.

"I'm just a boy too," he whispered. And with each word, something inside him shifted—like the weight of the crown he didn't ask for was finally crushing down. " It'll be my second decade and year in this word. Just twenty one. I had to leave home when I was sixteen And I'm supposed to lead men as old as my father was when he started this war. I'm supposed to choose who lives and who dies. I'm supposed to be strong. Unbreakable. But sometimes... the thought of leaving all of this behind and going home... to where they are seeps into my mind"

The truth spilled out like something he'd held in too long "I miss the smell of hydrangeas that would waft around the palace walls because of my mother. The way she scolded me for tracking mud into the palace. I miss my sister. She probably doesn't even remember my face." His voice cracked. "I'm just trying to survive. I'm trying to protect what I have left."

The boy said nothing. He didn't need to.

The silence returned, but it was no longer empty. It carried understanding. A fragile thread of shared humanity.He looked down at the blade in his hand, then back to the boy.

And for a moment—a brief, dangerous moment—he wondered what it would be like to just let it go. To leave the sword behind and choose a world where this boy could live. Where no child had to look into the eyes of death and speak wisdom far beyond his years. A world where war didn't ask boys to be monsters.

He would trade everything for that.

The silence stretched long.

The boy didn't move. His eyes, those storm-washed mirrors, remained fixed on him—not pleading, not angry, just waiting. There was something inside them still. A flicker. A fragile, desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, the sword would not fall.

But the moment of softness—the warmth, the trembling wish for peace—splintered like a picture frame that was never meant to be whole. Its glass cracked inward, jagged and irreversible, held together only by a fading memory of what could never exist.

He rose slowly to his feet. The wind around them shifted. No longer soft and surreal—it blew sharp now, howling through the trees, rushing over the cliffside like it too could sense the fracture within him.

You're hesitating, his guardian's voice echoed in memory. You show mercy to a spark, and you may live long enough to see it burn down the world.

His thoughts twisted, linking and layering like storm clouds gathering:

A comet begins as a silent light in the sky—then falls, and shatters worlds as a meteor.

A candle flickers softly—until it meets wind, and becomes a blaze.

A ripple in water spreads—growing, changing—until it becomes a tidal wave.

A child, wide-eyed and voiceless,can become a man with vengeance in his blood.

A single spared life can become the story that ends a hundred others.

This is how monsters are made. This is how guilt begins to rot the soul.

A moment of mercy can become the story behind someone else's vengeance.

This is how war survives—through boys who are spared and come back as men with nothing left but wrath. The opposite of what he wants, he hopes and dreams of– for this accursed war to end without any trace if its resurgence.

His fingers trembled as he reached down—not for his blade, but for the boy's hands.

Small. Warm. So much like his sister's once were.

He lifted the boy gently, cradling him against his hip. The same way he would carry her when he got home.

Home.

That's it, if he doesn't waver he can almost reach it.

He could almost smell the soft linen, hear her tiny laugh echoing in the quiet.

Then the illusion faded—the boy's heartbeat thudding against his chest quietly, bringing him back to reality.

He closed his eyes, breathing in the salt of the sea, the rising wind screaming like a chorus of unseen ghosts.

His voice cracked, barely a whisper. "Forgive me."

Step by step, he walked to the cliff's edge. The wind surged, lashing at his cloak, his hair, his resolve. The ocean below no longer whispered—it roared, like it too was mourning what it knew was about to happen.

He looked into the boy's face one last time.

Still calm. Still silent. That flicker of hope remained, dying but not dead.

"Forgive me," he said again, softer this time.

And then he let go.

The wind swallowed everything—the fall, the silence, the boy's eyes. The storm-washed blue disappeared into the deep.

And in the echo of the act, something in him went with it.

He stood there for a long while, the cliff before him, the cold at his back. Numb. Hollow. As empty as the blade at his side.

And though the wind screamed, he heard nothing.

Not even the sound of his own breaking.