The Smoke Before the Fall

The memory. The echo. The illusion that let him forget, even for a breath, the weight of what had just happened. One heartbeat ago, he was back there—before it all shattered. Now, the past peeled away like torn skin, and the present came crashing back.

Andravion lurched forward, hands trembling, stomach seizing as his soul reeled from the re-entry and the weight of the memory.

A surge of bile clawed its way up his throat, and he fell to his knees, vomiting violently onto the sanctuary floor. The smell hit him next—salt, blood, something rotten beneath the surface. His fingers clawed the stone beneath him, desperate for stability that didn't exist anymore as his eyes swept around the place had been a sanctum of light—Aesyle's sanctuary.

An oasis carved into sea-polished rock, painted with soft blues and golds, scented with strange blossoms and always humming with warmth. Now, it reeked of death. The floor was slick in places where blood had mixed with spilled water. The walls, once pristine, bore blackened scorch marks. He could still hear the screams that echoed through of it's walls—some fading, some freshly born.

Of the thirty-one who entered with him, not all would leave. He didn't know how many were dead—he couldn't count.

His eyes refused to settle. But Haleel... Haleel was one of them. And that one number mattered more than all the rest combined.

His mind conjured Haleel's voice, clear and cruel in its kindness. The final words. The promise. The belief in something bigger. But Andravion couldn't feel anything noble. All he felt was the frigid void gnawing inside him—a hollow so deep it sucked the air from his lungs.

The cold inside him wasn't just a feeling—it was a wound. Something sharp and invisible, like a blade twisted into his gut and left there to freeze him from the inside out.

Haleel was gone. His best friend, his brother. The little light left in a world Andravion had stopped believing in. The one person who could cut through the noise and remind him who he really was beneath the blood and burden. And now that light had been snuffed out—so sudden, so senseless—it felt like the universe had cheated him. Mocked him.

Anger flared in his chest, hot, burning, sharp and directionless. At himself. At the gods. At this cursed war. He had led them here. He had opened the door. Haleel had walked through it with him full of hope and life—and now Andravion was left to crawl back alone, a part of him carved out and discarded on the sanctuary floor like meat from a butcher's table.

He looked up—and for the briefest moment, he swears he could see Haleel. Standing where the light cut across the ruined stone, eyes dark, mouth unmoving. And then he was gone. Just a shadow. A trick of grief. But it shattered something inside Andravion all the same.

"Keep your arms open," Haleel had once told him, laughing as if the world could ever be that simple. "You never know what might fall into them."

Andravion felt nothing in his arms now. He wanted to scream, to cry, to grieve—but nothing came. Not even a breath.

"Still your mind, young prince," Ramona whispered in his thoughts. "Grieve to your heart's content—when you make it out alive."

The words brought a little sense of clarity to his maddened grief induced state.

That's right.

I can give my fallen brothers the mourning they deserve. I can give Haleel a proper departure when I get out of here. And to do that ...

I'm going to make her pay.

He set his sights on the blasted witch that had caused the carnage and suffering. Burning inside him now was an insurgent flame roaring for revenge and he was going to make sure she was consumed by that flame.

He got off his knees, picked up his sword not allowing his sights stray from his enemy. In the corner Aesyle had shielded herself with a watery shield that covered her like an igloo.

Probably trying to buy time to recover however the shield wasn't as strong and filled with life as it first was.

I'll be damned if I give her that chance.

He reached into his pack. His fingers found the last shard of Esprits fruit, still wrapped in linen.

Deceit for the deceiver.

Poison for the pure.

His voice, when he turned to the last of his men, was a quiet storm—flat, cracked, but burning.

"We move. Now. Every second buys her strength."

He met their eyes—bloodied, shaken, full of questions no god had ever answered.

"Captain," one finally choked out, eyes shimmering. "What about our fallen brothers?"

Andravion stilled.

He looked at the boy—no, soldier—and for the briefest breath, Haleel's smile lived again in that face. A flicker of warmth in a world that had turned to ash.

Then his voice dropped low, thunder threaded through every word.

"Remember them."

"When your blade shakes, when the dark feels endless—remember them."

"Because we are what's left of them. Their hopes. Their fury. Their unfinished prayers."

"We are the flame they handed off before death took them—and I'll be damned if we let that flame die in the dirt."

He stepped forward, eyes blazing with purpose no god could unmake.

"They didn't fall so we could crawl back empty."

"They died believing—in us. In this. In something better."

"So I ask you now—will you let them be forgotten?"

Silence.

"WILL YOU LET THEM DIE TWICE?!"

The men jolted. One let out a ragged sob. Another tightened his grip on his blade. Andravion pointed to the ruined sanctuary behind them.

"Then stand."

"Light the flame. Take what's left of the fruit. Drown this cursed lake in smoke."

"One squad will draw her eye. The rest—move to the heart. Let the poison touch the source."

"And when the waters cry out, let the gods smell the smoke of our vengeance."

"Get me a flame. And carry what's left of the fruit. We're going to the lake's heart."

"One team should surround her and prod her defense keep her from figuring out our next move."

"The other should set the fruit ablaze, let the smoke seep into the water or near it's surface."

"What will burning it do?" one of the younger soldiers asked, clutching the fruit chunk like it might bite him.

Andravion's grip tightened on the hilt of his sword, jaw rigid.

"The Esprits fruit was never meant for mortals," he said. "Even unburnt, it eats through the senses, turns clarity to chaos. But when set aflame—"

He looked out toward the sacred pool that pulsed at the center of the sanctuary. The water shimmered unnaturally, still tied to her.

"—the smoke becomes venom. Not for us. For her. For what she is."

Confused silence.

"She draws her strength from the lake. The smoke will enter its depths, leech into the source. And once that happens…"

He glanced toward the dome of water where Aesyle knelt within.

"Her body may live, but her spirit will be blinded. Cut off. Unmade. The water will no longer know her. That's like cutting off her very existence."

"But, Captain, won't that kill her?"

"No," he said, voice quiet. "It'll do worse."

A long pause followed. Then a grim nod. The order was understood. No further questions.

Andravion stepped forward, sword at his side, eyes locked on the wavering dome of water that still clung around Aesyle like a dying heartbeat.

"Now," he said, voice flat as iron.

The soldiers broke into motion.

Half of them surged forward with him, weapons raised, screams bursting from their throats—not war cries, but the raw sound of grief turned into fire. Steel rang against water. The dome rippled violently, Aesyle snarling within as she threw wave after wave outward, slashing the air with liquid blades.

But her power was... slower. The water hesitated.

Andravion saw it—felt it. She was weak.

Behind the chaos, two soldiers dashed through the side corridor, hugging the shadows as they reached the sacred lake at the center of the sanctuary. One of them unwrapped the cloth with shaking fingers. The Winions fruit shard gleamed like a rotten ruby.

"Now," the second whispered, striking flint to steel.

The flame caught. The shard hissed.

The smoke that rose was heavy—purple-black and sweet as overripe nectar. It drifted low, sliding across the marble and toward the water's edge like it had a will of its own.

Back at the battlefront, Aesyle recoiled. She turned toward the lake.

"No," she breathed.

The smoke touched the water.

The lake shuddered.

Aesyle's eyes flew open—wide, frantic, afraid.

"NO!!."

"What's happening to me?!"

The word shattered the silence like a curse.

And then—

Darkness.