The return journey stretched like an open wound across the morning landscape. What had been a hopeful ride toward rescue had become a funeral procession, marked by the slow, labored breathing of the wounded and the terrible silence of those who would never breathe again.
Haru walked beside Caesar, unable to bring himself to ride while injured knights stumbled through the grass on foot. His horse seemed to understand the gravity of the situation, moving with careful, measured steps that avoided jarring the makeshift stretchers they'd constructed.
Jean rode at the front of the column, her back rigid with the kind of discipline that came from years of command, but Haru could see the way her left arm hung limp at her side. The bandages wrapped around her shoulder were already showing spots of red seeping through the white cloth.
Kaeya walked nearby, his usual casual demeanor replaced by something harder and more brittle. Blood had dried on his face from a gash across his forehead, and every few steps he would unconsciously touch the spot where a hilichurl's axe had come too close to ending everything.
Diluc rode near the rear of the column, his red hair dulled with dust and exhaustion. He'd arrived during the final moments of the battle, drawn by the explosions and the glow of elemental combat visible from Dawn Winery. His intervention had probably saved several lives, but even he couldn't hide the weight of what they'd discovered.
The bodies they carried back weren't just the knights who'd fallen in battle. Wrapped in cloth and strapped to pack horses were the remains they'd been able to recover from the hilichurl camp—what little was left of the adventurers they'd come to save.
Nobody spoke about what they'd found. Nobody needed to.
"How do we tell their families?" Lumine asked quietly, walking beside Haru. Her voice was hoarse from crying, though she'd managed to stop the tears an hour ago.
"I don't know," Haru admitted. "What do you say? 'We're sorry we were too late'? 'We tried our best'?"
"Maybe the truth is enough."
"The truth is that we failed." The words came out harsher than he'd intended, but Haru couldn't find the energy to soften them. "We walked into a trap. We lost good people. And the people we went to save were already dead."
Echo's voice was notably absent from his mind. No cheerful commentary, no encouraging words, no system notifications. Just silence, as if even his supernatural companion understood that this wasn't a moment for performance or power-ups.
A knight near the middle of the column stumbled and went down to one knee. Blood was seeping through the bandages around his leg, and his face had gone white with pain and blood loss.
"Rest stop," Jean called out, though her own voice was strained with exhaustion.
They helped the wounded knight to a sitting position against a tree. His name was Marcus—not the adventurer Marcus who'd died in the camp, but Marcus Hoffmann, a young knight who'd joined the order only six months ago. He was barely older than Haru, with brown hair and eyes that had held so much enthusiasm during the mission briefing.
Now those eyes were glazed with shock and pain.
"I can't feel my leg," he said quietly.
Haru knelt beside him, checking the bandages. The wound was bad—deep and jagged, the kind that would leave permanent damage even if it healed properly. If it healed properly.
"You're going to be okay," Haru said, though the words felt like lies in his mouth.
"My sister's getting married next month," Marcus continued, as if Haru hadn't spoken. "I promised I'd be there. She made me promise."
"You'll be there," Lumine said, crouching down beside them. "We'll make sure of it."
Marcus nodded, but his expression suggested he didn't believe it any more than they did.
The walls of Mondstadt appeared through the morning haze like a promise of safety, but as they drew closer, Haru realized that safety was an illusion. Word of their return had preceded them, and people were gathering along the walls and at the gates.
Not to celebrate their return.
To count the missing.
Families lined the road leading to the city gates. Wives, husbands, children, parents—all searching the faces of the returning expedition for someone who wouldn't be coming home.
Sarah Brennan stood near the gate, her hands twisted in her apron as she scanned the column for her husband Thomas. When her eyes found the wrapped bundle strapped to one of the pack horses, her legs gave out. The sound she made—half scream, half sob—cut through the morning air like a blade.
"Papa?" A small voice from the crowd. A little girl, maybe seven years old, pushing through the adults to get a better look at the returning knights. "Where's Papa?"
Nobody answered her. Nobody could.
An older woman—the girl's grandmother, perhaps—scooped her up and held her close, whispering words that were probably meant to be comforting but only served to confirm what everyone already knew.
More families. More searches. More realizations.
Haru felt something crack inside his chest as he watched a young mother realize that her husband wasn't among the returning knights. She stood perfectly still for a moment, as if refusing to believe what her eyes were telling her, then slowly sank to her knees in the middle of the road.
"I should have been stronger," he said quietly, more to himself than to anyone else.
"This isn't your fault," Lumine replied, but her voice carried no conviction.
"Isn't it? If I'd been faster, if I'd been smarter..." If the system had been working properly, he thought bitterly, but kept the words locked inside.
"If, if, if." Jean's voice cut through his self-recrimination. She'd dropped back to walk beside them, her injured arm cradled against her chest. "I've been in command for three years, Haru. Do you know what I've learned?"
He looked at her expectantly.
"The 'ifs' will kill you faster than any blade." Her blue eyes were hard with earned wisdom. "We made the best decisions we could with the information we had. The enemy was better prepared than we anticipated. Good people died. That's the reality of command, and it's the reality of war."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"It's supposed to make you understand that feeling better isn't the point. Learning is the point. Being better next time is the point."
But even as she spoke, Haru could see the weight of those words settling on her own shoulders. Jean carried the burden of command with the same stoic determination she brought to everything else, but the cost was written in every line of her face.
They passed through the gates of Mondstadt like a defeated army returning from a lost war. The crowds that had gathered parted before them, not in celebration but in somber acknowledgment of sacrifice and loss.
The debriefing was a grim affair. Maps were spread across the table in Jean's office, marked with positions and casualties and the tactical details that would be analyzed and learned from. But the numbers on the paper couldn't capture the reality of what they'd experienced.
"Seventeen confirmed dead from our force," Kaeya reported, his voice professionally neutral. "Nine seriously wounded, eight with injuries that will likely end their active service."
"And the adventurers?"
"All dead. Killed at least two days before we arrived, possibly three."
Jean made a note on her report. "The enemy force?"
"Estimated at over five hundred, possibly more. Military organization, advanced equipment, and those... markings."
That was the detail that kept coming back. The red symbols on the necks of every hilichurl they'd encountered. Neither Jean nor Kaeya had seen anything like it before, and the implications were disturbing.
"Someone's organizing them," Diluc said from his position by the window. "Someone with knowledge and resources."
"The question is who," Jean replied. "And why now?"
Haru listened to the tactical discussion with half his attention. The other half was focused on the sounds coming from outside—the continuing grief of families who'd lost loved ones, the quiet efficiency of knights organizing funeral arrangements, the subdued conversations of survivors trying to process what they'd experienced.
If only the system had been working, he thought desperately. If only Echo had been able to provide the power boosts and dramatic timing that usually carried me through impossible situations. If only I'd been the unstoppable force everyone seems to think I am.
But he wasn't. He was just a nineteen-year-old kid from another world, playing at being a hero with borrowed power that failed him when he needed it most.
"We need to increase patrols," Jean was saying. "Double the guard rotations, establish forward observation posts—"
The war horns cut through her words like a scythe through wheat.
Three long blasts, then three more. The signal for massive enemy force approaching.
Everyone in the room froze. Jean's face went white as she processed the implications.
"They're not done," Kaeya said quietly.
Through the window, they could see movement on the eastern hills. Torches, hundreds of them, moving in organized formations toward the city. The hilichurl army wasn't retreating back to their camp to celebrate their victory.
They were coming to finish what they'd started.
"How many?" Jean asked, though they all knew the answer would be worse than they feared.
Amber's voice came from the doorway, breathless from running up the stairs. "The entire camp. All of them. They're marching on Mondstadt."
Jean closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, they held the steel of someone who refused to break under pressure. "Sound the general alarm. All available knights to defensive positions. Send runners to the Guild—we need every adventurer who can hold a weapon."
"Jean," Kaeya said quietly, "we don't have enough people. Not after today's losses."
"Then we make do with what we have."
As the alarm bells began to ring across the city, calling citizens to shelter and fighters to the walls, Haru felt that familiar weight settling on his shoulders. The weight of expectation, of responsibility, of being the one people looked to when everything else failed.
But this time, he thought, I'm not sure I can carry it.
Outside, the torches of the approaching army grew brighter against the darkening sky, and Mondstadt prepared for a siege it might not survive.
A / N:😭