hanyeol sat beside the makeshift bed that Tao laid on. He had not moved from that position the entirety of the long night. His hand drifted to the agate that hung around his neck; it was colder than usual today.

Perhaps it had already failed him. Agate was a beautiful gemstone, crafted to protect, worn to receive bravery and strength. But Chanyeol felt sapped. As his finger ran over the curved ring of stone he did not feel any rush of strength enter him. He was already weak.

What was left?

He called to one of the soldiers that stood outside guarding the small village hut. The soldier came rushing in and automatically bowed to Chanyeol. Chanyeol bid him raise.

“Is there, perhaps, a guzheng in this camp?”

The soldier paused for a moment, blinking his eyes which were marked with a single white scar, confused. “General? Is there a reason you might want one? There isn’t one in this village I don’t think, but I could send someone to the nearest city and get one for you…it’ll be around nightfall.”

Chanyeol sighed. He needed to have one now. Now, when everything around him seemed to be succumbing to darkness, he needed a reminder that there was still light in the world.

“Send someone.”

He wasn’t sure if nighttime would be soon enough. Chanyeol didn’t know if he would be able to sustain hope and courage until that long. With Baekhyun forever lost and Tao dying what else did he have left?

Chanyeol had his emperor and his kingdom, but how important were they when he was destined to lose this war? What did they matter if he could not even save those closest to him?

“Tell me,” Chanyeol said to the soldier, “what do you fight for?”

The soldier was a little taken aback by the sudden question but responded quickly and without hesitation, “My family, sir, I fight for my family.”

“Are they waiting for you to arrive back home?”

The dark haired soldier nodded, a whimsical look in his face, his voice might have been slightly tinged with regret, “Yes…yes they are sir, but I wonder often if they will be disappointed. I struggle to fight, struggle to glorify my family, to become strong, to protect them, but I worry sir, I worry that when this war ends, the only thing that will return home is my dead body.”

Chanyeol’s heart shattered.

He could not fade now. His men needed him. Chanyeol couldn’t let them die…unlike him, they had people waiting for them back home. They had something to live for, Chanyeol didn’t have the right to give up their lives for them. Even if fate had already written their deaths, he could not succumb to it. As long as he still breathed, he would fight. For his men and their hope…he would fight for them.

Chanyeol turned back to Tao that still laid fainted on the bed. He wiped the cold sweat off of the forehead of the man.

“Today Tao, I will kill for you, since you are unable to yourself. But promise me, while this battle commences, you will not die on me.”

The medic had promised him that Tao would not die yet. The man was stronger than Chanyeol thought, or so the medic had claimed. Tao was a seer, a man blessed with heaven's gifts. But Chanyeol wasn’t so sure.

He hoped though. Chanyeol grasped onto that last strand of hope that Tao would recover. It was similar to the way he continued to hope that someday Baekhyun would return. For Baekhyun’s return he had hoped years, that hope was starting to fade. By now, Chanyeol knew it would only be by miracle that Baekhyun returned. And, for the most part, Chanyeol didn’t believe in miracles.

Chanyeol retrieved his longbow from the corner of the room and strapped his quiver onto his back.

“To battle.”

The soldier he had been speaking to looked up at him with bright eyes. “Yes, sir!”

Chanyeol saw the Shanxue forces arrive at the horizon line at the brightest moment of dawn. It almost hurt his eyes to stare directly; light was a blinding force. They came in a straight line, horses lined up in majestic form.

It was a direct attack, not exactly what Chanyeol had been expecting. Surely the enemy general had designed a better strategy. But Chanyeol could understand why he hadn’t. Rosecreek would fall easily, there wasn’t a need for him to maneuver around a direct attack. Shanxue was confident. It was too bad Chanyeol wasn’t someone you could just attack.

There was only one way to counter a direct attack; force. It was true that in the characteristic of pure brute, his forces were at a disadvantage. The Shanxue legend of murderous intent and men was famous. But Chanyeol knew his soldiers had one thing that the Shanxue’s did not.

His men fought not for glory. They fought for love; for the loved ones that waited for their return.

Chanyeol rose his bow into the air as a rallying symbol and his voice rang low over his men, “Today, we fight for our families, for our country, for our people. If you die today, you fall in glory.”

Then he took an arrow, silver, from his quiver and strung the bow. He pulled back on the shaft and released. Chanyeol did not need to aim, did not need to look. His skill with the bow had already been developed to the point that he and the bow were own, connected by the bonds of courage.

Chanyeol would always hit his desired target.

The arrow whizzed through the air, cutting through space until it lodged itself into the heart of one of the men at the front of the Shanxue line. The man fell and the horse with him. A deafening thud sounded over the battle ground.

Chanyeol smiled.

“Today, we fight.”

His soldiers grabbed their swords and held them up to their beloved general. On their shoulders rested the hope of the entire nation. They would die for that hope.

“Yes, sir!”

Chanyeol restrung his bow as he watched his own troops rise on horses and rush to meet the enemy. How they would fare, he did not know. His confidence was not high, not with Tao missing from his side. Sometimes it was impossible to know fate, at those times, there was only one thing he could die.

Fight.

As his second arrow lodged into a different man, scattering the Shanxue’s troops out of formation as they recognized the famous arrows of the Bow of Courage, the battle began. Blood dripped into the soil, staining it forever red.

A thousand years from now, Chanyeol knew, this field would still whisper of the dead that were slain over its land. Ten thousand years from now, the blood of men would still flow in the veins of this soil. A hundred thousand years from now, all would be obliterated but even then, the skies would remember the scene it had witnessed today. Death. Bloodshed. Murder.

♥

The battle fell into place all around Baekhyun. Blood was seeping into every inch of the field they stood on top of. He could only hear the screams of soldiers on both sides: war cries, threats, pained antagonizing wails as they fell. Everywhere he looked there were bodies. Everything blended into a shade of red; he could no longer tell which side was winning.

Both sides were suffering. The numbers were piling up. Baekhyun glanced at his own soldiers who killed one after another, then he glanced at the enemy soldiers who, too, took the life of his own by the dozen. It was already a furry of weaponry and chaotic attacks but on top of it all, there was another force.

The arrows.

From on top of the wall there stood a single man. The sun shined all around him so that it created an illusion of golden glory. The bow in his hand was solid white and then lined with more gold. It would not be wrong to say it appeared as the man had fallen from the heavens itself to protect that wall.

Light, the same light Baekhyun had been relying on to blind him, only made the image of the man clearer. Sunlight spilled in artful rays as the man strung the bow time after time. The archer did not even need to aim, trusting his hands to do its job without guidance. On the edge of dawn the man stood – embodying justice and hope itself.

Perhaps it was the sun, perhaps the breeze in the early morning, perhaps it was the way the man’s eyes flashed with a sorrow yet hopeful light each time he realized his arrows, but regardless of the reason, Baekhyun felt his heart clenching, his eyes stinging.

Never had it been clearer to the general. Here, in the bright of light, he saw more clearly than he had ever seen; the truth was more lucid now than it ever was. As the flickers of flame in the shining star of day landed on the hair of the man and the skin of his face, Baekhyun drew in his breath. Baekhyun could focus on nothing else but the fire that seemed to embody the man.

So alive. So bright.

Baekhyun tried to ignore the obvious fire, but he could not. Even if he tore his eyes away from the city’s protector, he could not see ignore the flying white arrows that one by one lodged themselves in his men. The arrows came one after another, landing one clean kill after another.

It was unfortunate that the man he wanted to ignore was also one he had no choice but to face. His men were being plucked off quickly by the arrows, he would have to do something soon or face the risk of failure.

Baekhyun removed himself from his stallion and pulled out his faithful sword from its sheath. This was the famous cold blade that the entire continent feared. It had killed hundreds, spilled the blood of friend and foe alike, today it would add even more to its list of victims. Baekhyun would quench the thirst of the blood with the bodies of all who dared to block his way.

He slashed through the bodies of the enemies in front of him easily. The feel of the blade slicing through flesh was satisfying. So the archer could kill his men? Well he could repay that favor through blade.

One by one his enemies fell before him. Not one of them were able to lodge any wound on him. He had been trained for this. The blood of the sword flowed within him. He could see each action, each attack and counter them with his own. Baekhyun treated war like a game and attacked like he was dancing through his sword. His moves were unreadable and his turns unpredictable. For the people that tried to block his way, he moved akin to wind or fog – unstoppable.

That was why he was general. That was why he was the most feared warrior in Shanxue and in the other kingdoms as well. He, Byun Baekhyun, could take down entire armies with his sword alone. He embodied the power of death.

The adrenaline he received with each additional kill made his sword swifter. His eyes were blind to the piling bodies that fell at his feet and the blood that dripped from the steel of his sword went unnoticed. Like the man that stood at the wall, Baekhyun did not need to focus on his attacks, his arm moved on instinct, trained to be an automatic killing machine.

Baekhyun wished though, that he could focus more on each of his actions. If he could avert his focus elsewhere, he wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that his eyes kept on drifting back to the golden man. He wouldn’t have to deal with the pain that thudded in his heart.

“God damn it,” he whispered under his breath as yet another man fell under his sword, “damn you, Park Chanyeol.”

Why did Chanyeol always have to be so bright? Why did Chanyeol always have to steal his heart away?

Why, Chanyeol, why?

Baekhyun tried to bury himself in bloodshed. Red leaked from everywhere around him, flicking into the air, until he was drenched in red. He did not bleed himself, but blood clung to his skin, clung to his armor; he was flooded in it.

But Chanyeol, the entire time, Chanyeol was far from the blood stains that covered every other man on the grounds. Chanyeol continued to shine in his golden glory. Baekhyun smiled slightly when he realized this.

He and Chanyeol really were at opposite ends of a spectrum. If he was dark, Chanyeol was light; if he was of hell’s wrath, Chanyeol was of heaven’s blessing. While he continued to mix with the sin of blood, Chanyeol stayed high up on an altar of gold. Baekhyun hoped Chanyeol would stay like that forever – forever unmarked by the darkness that Baekhyun, himself, was stained with.

Chanyeol was that single moment in his life that was beautiful. Baekhyun wanted that memory to be beautiful forever, that meant the man who was the epitome of that beautiful moment had to be crystalized in that pure form forever.

Baekhyun could soil his body and soul with dark acts, with inhumanity, with beast like chaoticness; but Chanyeol, Chanyeol could not, for Chanyeol carried within him the small piece of Baekhyun’s heart that was still clean.

It was then that Baekhyun realized, killing Chanyeol would mean killing that last piece of himself that was still alive. Killing Chanyeol was akin to murdering himself…yet Baekhyun would go through with it, for Baekhyun’s soul had long since died. It wouldn’t matter if he lost it completely. The moment he became general, the second he subordinated himself to the good of his kingdom, the instant he pledged his alliance to his emperor, Baekhyun had sealed his fate in stone. He had long since accepted the fact that he would live soulless, lifeless.

If winning this battle meant the giving up of the last remains of his soul, then so be it. Severance would only make him stronger, only allow him to become braver, because once that last piece of him was destroyed – that last thing he lived for and feared for eliminated – Baekhyun would become truly brave.

Thanks for all the support guys, I really do appreciate your comments! Hope the story continues to be enjoyable for you guys :3

Until next time <3