Arc 4: Chapter 10: Hollow
I don’t know how long I knelt there on the floor, staring at the empty patch of wood where the boy I’d failed so badly had experienced his last, terrible moments. I heard the floorboards creak behind me after some time.
“Alken?” Emma’s voice. She spoke hesitantly.
I stood and turned. My squire looked up at me, and when she saw my face her own fell. She reached out and grabbed my arm.
“You fought as hard as you could,” she told me. “This was that thing, not you.”
She was right. And wrong. If I’d slain Yith Golonac in Caelfall, none of this would have happened. Dozens would have been spared. If I’d stopped the traitor knights eleven years ago, countless thousands would still be alive.
If I’d listened to Fidei…
No. That way lay madness. Yith was her kinsman. In any case, I'd gone far past avoiding blame.
I said none of that. Instead, hearing myself as though at a distance I said, “I promised Laessa I’d save him.”
“You spared him further pain,” Lias said from nearby. “He was lost to us the moment Yith infested his corpse, which happened many nights ago.”
I felt the pain, the self-loathing, the rage. I pushed it all down.
“You will find it,” I told Lias. Not a question.