We had been waiting, waiting shoulder to shoulder in the first line of the army, bottom line, first wave. Fodder. Dozens at least, possibly hundreds, speechless as spirits in the early morning mist, waiting for the cry that would destroy us.
Waiting for the signal.
A trumpet blast. A flag being raised. A scream. We didn't know what this time, only that it would come, and when it came, we would go. Charge. Kill. Die.
And all I was able to do was marvel at how strange it is to be this close to dying and to be so aware. Of the wind rushing past my cheek. Of the mist rising from my lips. Of my heart beating, thumping and uneven, trying to escape before I could.
They called us warriors. Volunteers. Patriots. But we knew the truth. We were bodies. Barely trained, barely equipped, barely remembered. We weren't chosen for our strength—we were chosen because no one would miss us.
And in the calm before the storm, I began to wonder what exactly we were giving up.
Not our lives—that was obvious. But our selves. Our fears. Our questions. Our right to know what was happening with us before it was too late.
They told us we had to die for the kingdom. For honor. For victory.
But no one asked us if we knew what we were losing. What life really was.
What was it?
A miracle, maybe. A frail, dying thing we're left with once, without a map. The oxygen in our lungs. The pain in our bones. The weight of memories, beautiful and cruel. The people we love, the people we lose, the things we regret. All of it. A tangle of moments, elusory all together, yet somehow always beyond our grasp.
I didn't know. I still don't.
I was just in my late twenties. Still young, technically. But in fact, I felt like an old man. Hollowed out. As though the last decade had stretched me tight and left something inside me cold and quiet.
I discovered magic as a child. I learned it. Or maybe it learned me. Back then, my world was still full of magic. I had a future. A name. A smile. I remember the thrill of crafting my first spell—"Flower Bed." A gentle thing. Innocent. Beautiful. I made it grow just to see her smile. I learned that magic for her.
But now, after all these years, magic became something else.
Something dreaded.
Something persecuted.
I lost everything because of it—friends, family, even her. And in the years that followed, I didn't live so much as I survived. I went through the world like a ghost with flesh, hiding from everyone, hiding even from myself.
I'd been living not as a man, but a curse for close to five years now. Feared. Watched. Exiled. People like me, they look upon us as though we were illness—like if we learn magic we become closer to beast than to man.
And there I stood, standing in a uniform that wasn't mine, on my way to be shoved toward a war that I knew nothing about, to an end I did not desire.
Somewhere way back behind us, the officers trotted like wolves in brass armor, shouting orders they would not themselves obey. Somewhere in front of us, through the mist and the border of the trees, our enemies—whatever they were—waited just as we did. Maybe they were just as scared. Just as hollow. Just as lost.
I looked at my hands.
A while back, they had trembled as they held a spellbook.
Now, they grasped a chipped sword that was too heavy for what little it had to give.
I didn't know if I wanted to be alive anymore. But I wasn't prepared to fade away either.
And that's the toughest kind of limbo—when you're not dead, but too scared to die.
I vowed to find one. That I'd make one if I had to. But the truth was, I was here because I had nowhere else to go.
That was what the army was made of.
Not heroes.
But the broken, the unloved, and the too-hurt-to-care.
And even in the moment of silence, I couldn't help but curse to myself:
"What is a life?"
I had no answer.
But I was poised to bet mine to discover.