Winter’s Rebirth: B1 - 16. A Veil Falls (Patreon)

Winter’s Rebirth Index

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Day One, Twilight

Five hours had passed, darkness creeping in, even with his channeled amber.

Yet, blessedly, the rough blackwood timber and rope of Sera’s camp gate materialized through the gathering dusk. Victor’s legs trembled. Every step through the thick snow felt like hot lead coursing through his veins, breath steaming out of his lungs in long trails.

His vision doubled, then tripled. The chain of enhancement across twenty-five souls felt like trying to hold water in his palms—slipping, fragmenting.

There had been a few scares along the way, times he’d had them quiet down behind the large fallen trees as the shapes of giant owls passed overhead. There were several other predatory animals around, yet none of them seemed interested in their sizeable group for some reason, flying to the west.

Just a little further. Just…a little more.

He’d lost track of Kaia, taking the rear of the chain, as Sera was somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t focus on anything but his own internal, apocalyptic battle. Internally, he was scarred and exhausted, facing dozens of younger versions of himself to maintain this connection.

One more step… Finish the mission. Just one more…

Petra shifted in his arms, pain and concern in her tone as the frost numbing her severed leg thawed with the heat draught burning through her body.

“Lord Victor… Perhaps we should, mmm—we should find shrubs and thickets to make a temporary shelter before we lose what little light remains in these woods. Is that…a gate? My Lord?!”

The words dissolved into static as he took his first step into the field. His knees buckled. The snowy field rushed up to meet him as Petra slipped from his arms, and darkness swallowed everything whole.

Day Two

Fire.

Not controlled flames, but the cracks and breaks of wildfire—hungry, consuming, turning forests to ash and men to ghosts.

Victor stood in the hobgoblin champion’s memory, watching the carved ice fortress rise from the northern mountains. Thousands of hobgoblins were moving with military precision; he was only one of countless others. Commanders drilled champions. Generals dragged failed commanders to the spire to throw the cowards into a fathomless pit for failures, overseen by their glorious king.

Then the memory bled into a new picture.

Okinawa. Rain was hammering his helmet, mud sucking at his boots. The Japanese soldiers raised their rifles as they charged amidst cannon fire and a hail of bullets. The smell of gunpowder, the screams or tears of broken men, and a world’s worth of hatred made manifest.

No. Not just a company of men.

Hundreds. Thousands. An army pouring south like a tide of flesh and steel, now mixed with hobgoblin snarls and snaps.

Japanese soldiers. Hobgoblins. Mixed-race abominations.

Commanders with chained ogres as their tanks. Owl aerial support brought blizzards to freeze his settlers alive. Generals riding dire bears or frost trolls. All of them pushing south, overwhelming settlements, capturing humans, feeding an empire that stretched to horizons he couldn’t see.

His parents’ fortress was burning.

Kaia screaming.

Sera’s blindfolded face, turning toward him as shadows consumed her.

His sister…defending their uncle, dying for the bastard, without knowing the truth.

And deeper still past the hobgoblins, massive hills—no, figures moved in the northern dark. Frost giants. Colossal beings that made the hobgoblin king look like a child’s toy.

Above them all, the apex monster, leering down at them all—

The frost drakes.

The vision fractured like a mirror.

He was back on Okinawa, standing over a dying soldier—American, not Japanese—bleeding out in the mud. Then, the sky turned to fire, meteors falling, the sounds of war raging around him, the soldier’s tears, needles digging into his chest.

“You can’t save us all, Captain,” the soldier whispered. “You can’t—”

Day Three, Afternoon

Victor’s eyes snapped open and a stone ceiling with rough-hewn beams greeted him, the smell of earth and the cold mixed with…roasted meat?

He tried to sit up. His body screamed in protest, every muscle burning like he’d run a marathon while carrying boulders.

“Easy,” a familiar voice murmured from somewhere to his left. “You’ve been out for almost two days. If you try to move too fast, you’ll pass out…again.”

Victor turned his head—slowly—and found Sera sitting in a wooden chair beside the bed, eating what looked like venison from a simple wooden plate.

His focus quickly zeroed in on Seraphina. Her blindfold was in place, but exhaustion showed in every line of her posture. She sat with her shoulders rolled forward, head tilted at an angle that suggested bone-deep weariness. He’d seen it often in the trenches.

“Where—” His voice came out as a croak. Kaia and Vivian were nowhere to be seen—no one else was present. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Where am I?”

“Where else? My quarters. Nowhere else was suitable.” A ghost of her usual smile touched her lips. “Don’t get any silly ideas. Plus, it kept the camp from panicking every time you started thrashing and shouting in your sleep. I left your visions private for now.”

“I was—” He paused, rubbing his throbbing temple with fragments of nightmares still clinging to the edges of his mind. “What was I saying?”

“Nothing. Mostly incoherent, to be honest. Something about fire lords and giants and…Okinawa?” She tilted her head. “It must be one of those hellish memories you showed flashes of when we first met.”

“Just a ghost…” He shifted, trying to push himself up on his elbows—and froze.

He was in his undergarments. Just the thin cloth shorts he wore beneath his clothes.

His armor was gone. His shirt. His pants. Everything.

“Ah.” Sera’s smile widened slightly. “Yes. You were drenched in sweat when we brought you in. The healers stripped you down. Medically necessary, of course.”

“Of course,” Victor muttered, unable to help a rare brush of heat that crept up his neck. “Very professional.”

“I thought so. You would have done the same with me, no?” She took another bite of venison, chewing slowly as he tried not to feed into her baiting mental images.

“You certainly are a succubus at heart, My Lady.”

“You’d be the first to describe me as such—well, no, I suppose Kaia would take that prize,” she mulled over with amusement. Her tone soon dipped into something more serious. “Though I will say, maintaining that enhancement across twenty-five people, while also carrying someone, and marching for four hours is…impressive. Stupid, but impressive, my loyal knight.”

Victor finally managed to prop himself up, wincing as his arms shook with the effort. He felt hollow. Empty. Like someone had scooped out his insides and left only the shell.

“I’m pretty sure that knight’s verbal contract ran its course.”

“And a shame it has.” She truly sounded mournful, now leaning back and fidgeting with her hair, almost sullenly. “You barely lasted a third of a day before collapsing. I was promised a day. Humph. I think I was scammed.”

He almost smiled despite himself—she really was like aged wine, and apparently slightly younger than him, reincarnate years included. Though, he suspected her mental invasions added years of experience she’d stolen from others; it was something to consider.

“Not just a succubus, but a slave driver…” He tried not to give her the satisfaction of thinking how much his mother would enjoy this female raven in woman’s form; her returning smirk showed he failed. “We’re alive.”

“Oh, you are quite alive,” she agreed, sipping from her cup while her gaze swept his partially covered frame. “Must you think of me as an old, decrepit woman—ah, it’s a joke! How cruel. You even added wrinkles,” she sniffed.

He gestured to his muscular chest with a small smirk. “Is it fair to call this my spring, your fall?”

Taking another sip, she glanced away, hiding her face with silent laughter. “Something certainly has sprung to life.”

“I—it’s called morning wood… It happens to men.”

“How bold of you—so comfortable in your body. I’m envious. And how diabolical of you, imagining you’d check my so generously offered bed for blood marks as retaliation.”

“I didn’t say it,” he defended, forcing his gaze to remain on Sera.

“You know you didn’t have to,” she countered, tilting her head just enough to aim an accusatory stare past her blindfold. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing bleeding is for women?”

“Why? It’s just a part of your body.” He chuckled at their back and forth, choosing to move on once the topic reached this level. “In any case…how bad is it?”

Sera shifted her back to the wall, leather-clad legs crossing as she crossed her arms and stared at him. “All the little bits are still there, quite apparently, but that is the question I should be asking about you, Victor. As strong as you are…you’re reckless.”

Victor pulled the covers up to bunch at his front as he shifted to a cross-legged position to face her; she clearly did not enjoy the ‘bleeding’ comment, and she was the type to try to get the last word. He could give her that since he’d upset her a little.

“I got everyone back alive. That’s what I care about—the mission. That said, I know where my limits are. Yes, I cut it close, but I made that choice consciously. I wouldn’t call that reckless but acknowledging risks and rewards. There is a fine line on the battlefield.”

“Fair enough, I suppose,” she stated with a flipped tone that said she did not approve but accepted his assessment. “Permanent soul damage would collapse your entire settlement, and you did it for a stranger noblewoman, who has no practical value with her leg and people gone… I call that suicidal empathy.”

Victor’s mouth became a line at the disapproval in her tone, reading between the lines. “…You think far too much, Sera. It must be hard not being able to let go and fighting for space with all the ghosts in others’ minds as an observer…”

Her posture tightened, and he knew her emotions came from a place of concern and empathy, yet he had to address the core of who he was, so he continued without batting an eye.

“You’re the type to spend all your life wondering why the bad luck always comes so easily to you… I can’t see life in that light. If I did, I’d have nothing left to care for. Every decision I make, I own—I have to—and I wear every scar like a medal. My bad luck is mine to keep, and no one can take that away from me.”

Sera tugged at the back of her blindfold, showing her conflicted lilac irises before averting eye contact with him. “The worst things in life are free… Why is it that you now feel like the mind reader? You are…the most frustrating man I’ve ever had the displeasure of needing. Defiant. Strong. Understanding… Honest.”

Her shimmering irises showed the glint of near tears as they returned to his. “These last few weeks have cut so deep, and no one has seen the scars until you stripped me bare, and with such charm and ease it makes me question myself… Perhaps I am fighting with ghosts, spinning out of control.”

Sera’s nose crinkled slightly as she locked her jaw for a moment, fingers pressing her blindfold against her forearm. “I don’t know what to do, Victor… I have lost control. There is no victory in this cursed north. And you? Mmm…”

She sucked in her bottom lip to direct an accusatory glare his way, mixed with admiration and anger. “To you, there is no despair. No spiral. How can you be so stable when I want to scream?

“We have an army of monsters to our north, worse creatures spaced all across the mountains and what lay beyond. But to you, pain is merely a lesson to learn and let go… A challenge is just a mathematical problem to solve… I thought myself stronger, Victor.”

Victor listened quietly, maintaining eye contact. He let her fight for space within her own closed-off, claustrophobic heart. He held her vulnerable gaze and said the truest thing burned into his chest.

“Sera, without you, I wouldn’t even know there was a problem to solve… You’re not cursed in my mind, and you know that. Your pain is real. I can’t fix it. But I can offer you the support you need when you open that door. You are in control, Sera. And I’m here to help.”

Shifting a bit to lean forward and strengthening his tone. “In fact, I think we were born for this, Sera. I don’t care for critics or naysayers because my decisions are like physics—a force that they can’t stop. I believe we can write our own story. I struggle. I cry. I have fear…but we can choose how we act and to use the pain or be used by it.”

The dark-haired reincarnate’s gaze averted for half a second before returning to his. “And where does that courage come from? How can we fight armies with a cursed land on their side, winter coming, and with weavers, mothers, and children? Victor, I have lived in so many minds, yours included… There is no such thing as happy endings.”

Victor let her words sink into him, connecting to it and letting her words pierce him like coffin nails. He nodded slowly, glancing toward the cracking and popping fire, knowing those reflective, searching lilac irises were peering past every defense he had.

“…Is a glass half empty or full? What happened to the liquid inside? Was it enjoyed? In the war, I learned things you can’t find in books… More than brothers in arms, my men were cut from the same cloth, no matter their background.”

He saw faces in the flames, memories he’d carry of their final resting place in his soul for all eternity. “We’re not so different, you and me, Sera. We both carry many unhappy endings, yet the life before that… Loss reminds us of what matters,” he said, looking at her as a tear finally slid down her cheek, clean and true.

“So if you want to draw me one more coffin nail, I’ll pull up a chair. Paint in it my mind, warped and twisted, like our souls from the grief we hold within. I don’t know yours, but you know mine. You see I still feel guilt beneath the weight of my nightmares, for the mourning of fathers and mothers, for sons they entrusted to me I can never replace.”

He paused, and a melancholy smile lifted his lips as he showed her a tender memory of a letter his little sister send him in the hellish jungles of God-forsaken islands, reading the words that stuck with him through those months.

“For every rose, life hands you thorns; not deserving of this pain, or that cold maternal scorn you feel… Turn your head to the sky, and see my vow in the sun to be kind. I hope you feel this love I’m sending, even if there is not a happy ending to this story. You live in me.”

Sera felt him struggle through years of trench and naval warfare across the Pacific. Each time he doubted and feared for his life. Times he had been a coward. Times he had used that to rise above past scars.

“I’m not perfect, Sera… You aren’t perfect. But we can be perfect with each other… Every one of our people, working to survive. You are not alone.”

Sera forced a shaky giggle, rubbing away the tears. “We haven’t even known each other a day, and you’re already proposing to me… How scandalous. How is it possible for you to be so open and pure? You’re practically a saint, so marriage would never work with the abstinence…”

Victor sat back, smiling and letting her release the pressure boiling inside. “We aren’t so different, you and me, Sera… How can I be so open and pure? Because it’s the only way I can retain control with you. Honest truth…and no one else could ever understand what I showed you.”

Her red and puffy eyes lifted to his as he released the pressure building in his own chest. “Sera, despite all your cynicism—valid as it is—today, you’ve given me a happy ending.”

The woman twisted her blindfold between her hands, no longer able to meet his gaze, yet there was a melancholy tilt to her trembling bottom lip.

“The house inside me I call home is a crooked building of dilapidated cobbled stone… Lord Victor,” she whispered, returning the blindfold to her eyes to tie into place, “for every rose, life hands us thorns… They cut and scar us…but some wounds were meant to bleed to allow the healing to begin. Thank you for allowing me to face my doubts.”

Bridging his hands in his lap, Victor nodded. “Any time, but don’t expect a proposal each time you feel like letting down your hair.”

Her fingers slipped with her soft chuckles, barely containing her laughter while attempting to tie it in place. “Oh, you are a charmer, indeed. I pity your future wife.”

“Bold, assuming any woman could handle this,” he snickered, stretching left and right to ease off the tension he’d built over the conversation. “Who needs a wife when I’m married to a frontier partner who can literally read my every desire before even voicing it?”

“Now who is the bold one?”

“That’s the game,” he winked. “Always escalate. Never give ground. And for goodness sake, aim below the belt every time—it’s just sound strategy.”

She giggled openly now. “You are dangerous. An addiction, I might have to indulge in. It’s criminal!”

Victor flashed his teeth. “Don’t threaten me with a good time now. So, pivoting from the mental and verbal swords and shields we’ve been throwing at each other, care to summarize where we’re at? I need to be a good man and fix all of a woman’s problems. Can you believe women? Always so needy.”

He got the mental-look of a pillow thrown at his face—or a half-eaten dish—that had him laughing. And laughter, that was what kept hope alive in trenches—physical and mental.

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