Written by Mark Vass

The worst of the dying had passed, but the world had not yet remembered how to live. Roads once beaten hard by carts had gone soft beneath the spring rain. Grass pushed up through the wheel ruts. Gates hung open. In some fields, sheep wandered without bells, their wool stained brown from sleeping beneath hedges and ruined fences.

Olaria walked the old south road with Nim tucked inside the fold of her cloak, warm against her side. Ahead, Rowan walked with his wooden sword resting across his shoulder. He could never keep still. He stepped onto stones, balanced along fallen logs, and swung the sword through fern tops as though leading some unseen royal procession.

“You’re falling behind again,” he called.

“I’m walking.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

Olaria looked up through loose strands of dark hair. “You speak too much for a knight.”

“A great knight must announce himself.” He flung his arms wide. “To lurking enemies.”

“There’s nobody here.”

“That,” he said, grinning, “is why they’re lurking.”

She almost smiled.

By afternoon the road climbed into pine-covered hills. A thin rain began to fall. They sheltered in the ruins of an old chapel where part of the roof still held.

“Do you think the kingdom is still there?” she asked quietly.

Rowan gazed into the dark woods. “Yes,” he said, voice stripped of play. “Things do not vanish. Not truly.”

For the first time in many weeks, the world did not feel entirely hollow.

Morning brought a wide, gray-green river and three cottages along its bank. The smell of fresh bread reached them first—warm yeast, ash, honey. The older baker studied Olaria’s thin frame and the small shape beneath her cloak, then tore off a piece of bread.

“Keep that mouse out of the flour.”

Later she pressed two wrapped loaves into Olaria’s arms.

“Keep your coin.”

As they left, Rowan walked backward.

“See? Kindness still lives here.”

Olaria held the warm bread close and carried the sound of the bakers’ laughter down the road.

Higher in the mountains, the path narrowed through stone and roots. One evening they camped beside a narrow stream. Rowan built the fire into an elaborate fortress that collapsed almost immediately.

“The enemy breached the western gate,” he declared.

While they ate mushrooms and smoke-flavored bread, Rowan asked, “Do you remember the palace gardens?”

Olaria stared into the flames.

“White stone walls. Vines. Apple trees. A woman who sang badly while she worked—her voice cracking like a broken flute on the high notes. She used to bring me figs wrapped in cloth.”

A small, fragile laugh escaped her.

“I can’t remember her face anymore.”

Rowan was quiet for a moment.

“If you forget something, it isn’t gone. It’s only resting for a while.”

The next day mist drifted through old orchards. Through the trees they saw a house beneath two large apple trees, golden light glowing in one window. A little girl’s bright laughter spilled out as her father carried her back inside.

Olaria stopped. She stood very still, listening to the ordinary sounds as though she had almost forgotten their shape.

Later, beside a stone trough, she whispered, “I don’t remember my father’s voice.”

Rowan looked toward the fog.

“Then I will remember for you.”

Three nights later, the fever took hold. In the ruins of a watchtower, Olaria shivered while Rowan kept the fire alive. Nim curled against the hollow of her throat and did not move all night—small and warm and insistently present. She woke once, burning, and found him watching over her.

“You were there before the road too, weren’t you?” she whispered.

He smiled.

“I think so.”

An old woman at Briar Hollow took one look at Olaria and brought her inside. She offered bitter tea and no questions. That night Rowan sat by the rain-streaked window with his arms around his knees, looking out at the dark in a way too old for any boy.

By morning, the fever had broken. A church bell rang across the hills—slow, steady, calling. The old woman touched Olaria’s cheek.

“You are still here.”

In the wide valley below, farms and chimney smoke spoke of life continuing.

“What if there never was a kingdom?” Olaria asked.

Rowan’s smile was small and sad and warm.

“Then we built one in the only place it ever really stood.”

Spring rain drove them under a carpenter’s awning. Elias and Mara welcomed them simply. Their young son—Henrik—stared at Rowan’s sword in open wonder.

That night Olaria laughed—small, rusty, real—when Rowan described battling twelve extremely small bandits. For the first time in weeks, she felt still. The stillness frightened her more than the road ever had.

Morning light spilled gold across the carpenter’s yard. The boy was already swinging the wooden sword wildly beneath the chestnut trees, trying out Rowan’s ridiculous maneuvers. One ended with Rowan nearly landing on his backside in the mud. The boy howled with laughter.

When he ran over and shoved the sword at Olaria, she took it. The hilt felt warm and smooth from years of small, grubby hands. Tiny nicks and scratches covered the tip—evidence of a thousand battles that had never happened.

She looked up.

Rowan stood a little way off. Sunlight passed straight through him and the shifting leaves. He looked thinner.

“Can I keep it?” the boy asked, breathless.

Olaria’s throat closed. Rowan stepped closer and laid his hand over hers on the sword. For a heartbeat she felt real fingers, warm and solid. Then only wood.

“Some things are meant to be passed on,” Rowan said, voice rougher than usual. “Especially when another knight needs defending.”

The boy let out a whoop and tore off toward his father. Olaria stared at her empty hands for a long moment. When she finally looked up, Rowan was already farther down the path, smiling at her like someone saying goodbye after a long journey.

The road grew quieter after that. Rowan spoke less. One evening they camped in a meadow of wildflowers beneath birch trees. Stars emerged overhead.

“When did we leave the kingdom?” she asked.

“Maybe it happened slowly.”

She met his eyes.

“You stayed anyway.”

“Of course. You asked me to.”

Tears came then, old and exhausted.

“What happens when I don’t need you anymore?”

Rowan rested an arm around her shoulders.

“Then you won’t be alone enough to need kingdoms anymore.”

He kept watch long after she slept, growing lighter beneath the moonlight until he blurred into the summer dark.

She woke alone. The emptiness beside the ashes no longer felt sharp—only deep and quiet.

She walked for several more days. The road was just a road now. No processions, no lurking enemies, no voice calling her to keep up. Only her own footsteps and the country going about its business.

Nim pressed her nose once against Olaria’s ribs, warm and certain.

Farther west she reached a village. A woman with a blue door saw her hesitation and said, “You do not always have to keep walking.”

Olaria stayed at the cottage with the blue door. She mended clothes, gathered herbs, and fed the chickens. Small, stubborn acts of living. Nim discovered the garden and began to disappear into it for hours at a time, returning smelling of soil and green things, as though she too had decided to stay.

Weeks later, on a harvest evening, the village gathered under lantern light. Henrik went tearing across the grass with the wooden sword bouncing at his hip.

Across the green, where the lanterns faded and moonlight took over, Rowan stood at the edge of the road. No sword. No grand pose. Just him.

He looked at her for a long time. Then he gave her that same old smile—the one that had walked beside her through every cold mile.

Olaria smiled back, tears pricking her eyes.

When Henrik grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the music and the noise and all those living voices, she let him.

She didn’t look back.

She didn’t need to anymore.

The End.