The silence woke her.
Not the absence of sound - her world had never been truly quiet, not with the constant hum of defensive arrays and the distant roar of gate activity. This was different. This was wrong.
She opened her eyes to an unfamiliar sky.
Pain lanced through her body as she tried to move. Ribs cracked, certainly. Her left leg twisted at an angle that was slightly off. Something warm and wet spread across her side, soaking through her armor.
She forced herself upright anyway.
The ravine was gone. The dual gates were gone. Her soldiers -
Her soldiers.
"Commander's group, report!" Her voice came out as a rasp, throat raw from smoke or screaming or both. "Lieutenant Saevris! Anyone!"
Silence answered.
She stood, using a nearby rock for support. Her leg screamed but held. Around her stretched grassland - tall, waving stalks of something that looked almost like the grain fields near the capital, but wrong. The color was off. The smell was off.
"Report!" she called again, louder this time. "This is the Commander! Anyone within hearing, report!"
The wind moved through the grass. Nothing else.
She took a step forward. Then another. Her leg threatened to give out but she forced it to carry her weight. Pain was irrelevant. Pain could be managed. Pain was just information.
Her people were out here. Had to be. The gate collapse had scattered them, thrown them across wherever this was. But they couldn't be far. A mile? Two? She just had to search. Had to find them.
She started walking.
The first day, she called constantly.
Every few minutes, she'd stop and shout names. Saevris. Kael. Miren. The entire command roster, one by one, waiting between each name for an answer that never came.
The landscape remained stubbornly empty. Just endless grassland under a sun that felt too large, too bright. When she looked up, it hurt her eyes in a way the sun of her world never had.
She kept walking.
Found signs of passage - grass trampled, disturbed earth. Followed them for hours before realizing they were her own tracks, circling back on themselves. Her navigation was failing. The stars here were wrong. The sun's arc was wrong. She had no reference points.
Didn't matter. She kept searching.
By nightfall, she'd found nothing. No people. No bodies. No evidence anyone else had survived the collapse.
She didn't sleep. Couldn't risk missing something in the darkness. Instead, she sat with her back against a boulder and watched the horizon, listening for any sound that might be a voice, a footstep, a sign of life.
The night brought strange sounds. Calls from animals she didn't recognize. Rustling in the grass that might have been wind or might have been predators. She stayed alert, ready.
Dawn came with that too-bright sun, and she resumed searching.
The second day, her voice began to fail.
She'd been calling too much, too loud. Now her shouts came out as croaks, barely carrying beyond a few dozen feet. She pushed through it anyway.
"Saevris!" Cough. "Kael!" Cough. "Anyone!"
Still nothing.
She found a stream - clear water running over smooth stones - and drank deeply before forcing herself to continue. Her leg had gone from screaming pain to a dull, constant throb. She'd stopped feeling the wound in her side hours ago. That was probably bad. She ignored it.
The landscape was changing. The grassland gave way to scattered trees, then to a forest of some kind. The canopy overhead blocked out most of that painful sunlight, which was a relief. But it also limited visibility.
"Commander's group!" Her voice was barely a whisper now. "Report!"
The trees swallowed the sound.
She pressed on, using tree trunks for support when her leg threatened to give out. Left a trail of blood behind her, dark against the moss. Didn't care. Would worry about that later. After she found her people.
Had to find her people.
The forest eventually opened onto another stretch of grassland. She kept walking.
By the third day, she could no longer stand.
Her leg had finally given out completely. She'd been crawling for the past hour, pulling herself forward with her arms, inch by painful inch. The wound in her side had reopened. She left a dark smear across the grass.
A creek appeared before her - shallow, burbling peacefully.
She tried to pull herself forward. Couldn't. Her arms were shaking, refusing to support her weight anymore.
Just a little further, she told herself. The others might be just beyond that rise. Just a little-
Her arms collapsed.
She fell, barely managed to turn so she landed on her back instead of her face. Her head came to rest at the creek's edge, close enough that she could hear the water but not reach it.
She stared up at the sky.
It was still wrong. Still too bright, too vast. The clouds moved differently here. Everything was alien, foreign.
Her mind, freed from the desperate focus of searching, began to torment her.
I should have seen it coming.
The thought arrived with perfect clarity. The dual gates - she'd known they were destabilizing each other. Had seen the energy readings, understood what they meant. Should have ordered a retreat sooner. Should have evacuated the civilians before committing forces. Should have-
I should have fought better.
The battle played out in her mind in excruciating detail. Every decision examined, every command second-guessed. There, when Saevris's squad had been pinned - she could have sent reinforcements earlier. There, when the eastern flank collapsed - she could have repositioned before the surge hit. There-
I should have protected them better.
Millennia. Their kingdom had stood for millennia, through countless gates, through wars and disasters and everything the universe could throw at them. And under her command, in a single catastrophic battle, it had fallen.
Not just fallen. Scattered. Destroyed. Her people forced to flee their home, abandoning everything they'd built across ages of civilization. Because she hadn't been good enough. Hadn't been strong enough. Hadn't -
A sound.
Distant. Faint. But there.
Her hand moved instinctively to her hip, reaching for a sword that was no longer there. Lost in the collapse, or the transition, or somewhere during three days of desperate searching.
She had nothing. No weapon. No armor - most of it cracked or torn away. No supplies. Barely any strength left.
But she still had magic.
Her arms came up, shaking but steady. Power gathered at her fingertips - weak, so much weaker than it should be, but present. Usable.
The sound grew closer. Multiple sources now. Circling.
Until I find my people, I will not die.
The thought crystallized with absolute finality. Not hope. Not determination. Just simple, unbreakable fact.
She could not afford to die. Would not allow herself to die. Because somewhere, maybe scattered across this alien world, her people might be searching for her just as desperately as she'd searched for them.
Until I find them, I cannot die.
Will not die.
She drew a breath - deep, steadying - and felt something settle in her chest. Not peace. Not calm. Just... resolution. The kind of clarity that came when all other options fell away, leaving only one path forward.
Live. Fight. Find them.
Nothing else mattered.
The creatures emerged from the grass.
She'd never seen their kind before - four-legged, scaled, teeth like daggers. Predators. At least a dozen, spreading out to surround her, cutting off any escape.
The creatures attacked.
She met them with everything she had.
She wouldn't die here.