We were woken up in the morning without unnecessary words.

  No “rise and shine,” no usual jokes from the duty teachers — only a short command:

  “Wake up. A quick bite — then march. We need to reach the nearest village within three hours.”

  The bread was stale, the water cool, but after yesterday it still felt almost luxurious. We ate in silence, huddled in small, quiet groups inside the stone shelters. Only after a while did I notice that something inside had changed.

  Elinia was no longer staring into emptiness. Her face was still tired, her eyes red, but there was something new in her gaze.

  Something firm. Hard.

  I saw the same thing in Finn, in Tara, in Noy. Yesterday there had been only fear. Today, the fear hadn’t gone anywhere — but another layer lay on top of it.

  Anger.

  Not hysterical, not childish, but heavy and quiet. Like a stone someone had placed inside and said, “Later.”

  Yes. War teaches you very quickly to straighten your back.

  We formed a column and checked our bags. The earth teacher cast one more look over our temporary stone camp — as if memorizing it as another point on a map, one that could later be returned to only in thought.

  “Move out,” he said.

  We went.

  The three hours of walking stretched slowly, but after the night under the forest dome, the woods no longer felt so hostile. We encountered neither demons nor roaming squads, not even ordinary animals — only the occasional bird and the rustle of wind in the treetops.

  After some time, conversations began to return little by little.

  First — isolated phrases.

  “My legs are numb…”

  “How much farther?”

  “Any food left?”

  Then — quiet discussions.

  Finn walked beside Tara, whispering something to her. She nodded, gripping the hilt of her sword. I didn’t listen, but from their expressions it was clear: this wasn’t about homework in theory.

  Revenge is a bad motivator for a long life, but an excellent one for not collapsing right here and now.

  Three hours later, a village appeared ahead.

  At first — ordinary roofs, a couple of chimneys, fences. It looked… normal. Just quiet. Too quiet. No smoke from chimneys, no shouting, no barking dogs.

  The teachers exchanged glances.

  “Careful,” the water mage said quietly. “Stay close.”

  We approached.

  The village was empty.

  The doors of some houses stood ajar, forgotten clothes swayed on lines, an overturned basket lay by one porch. The wind tugged at the edge of a towel, as if trying to tear it away completely. Somewhere in a shed, a loosely fastened chain clinked.

  No living people were visible.

  I sensed something unpleasant tightening inside many of us. Another image: this is what everything you knew might look like.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  When we reached the central square, we saw them.

  Two of them.

  Two old men sat at a rough wooden table in the middle of the square, playing chess. Calmly. Concentrated. As if there were no war, no demons, no abandoned houses around them.

  One had a long gray beard, his fingers trembling slightly, but he moved the pieces carefully. The other had short-cropped hair, a face carved with deep wrinkles, and clear eyes. Both wore simple but clean clothes.

  When they noticed us, they both raised their heads.

  “Well, finally,” the bearded one sighed. “We’ve been sitting here wondering whether someone would come, or whether we should figure it out ourselves.”

  The teachers stepped forward. The light mage took a step ahead — not threatening, but clearly marking himself as the one in charge.

  “What happened here?” he asked. “Where are all the villagers?”

  The short-haired old man calmly moved a pawn, without looking away from the board.

  “Messengers came,” he said. “Told us: ‘Evacuate the villages around the capital. Demons.’ So we sent the people off. Some on foot, some on carts — toward Elgir. They said orders and troops were moving in, there’d be a purge, border fortifications, all that.”

  He shrugged.

  “And the two of us,” he nodded toward the bearded man, “decided to wait for someone. We figured it’d be either you, or demons, or royal troops. Either way — someone would need to be warned.”

  He neatly gathered the pieces into a pouch.

  “So here you are, then.”

  The teachers exhaled, as if part of an invisible weight had been lifted from their shoulders.

  Not the entire kingdom was burning.

  Not a single city in the world.

  Somewhere, there were still people, troops, structure.

  The balance had been disrupted — but not destroyed.

  The earth mage nodded to the old men.

  “Thank you. Are you sure it’s safe for you to stay?”

  The bearded man snorted.

  “Safe?” He glanced at the ashen strip of smoke on the horizon, where the capital lay. “Nowhere is safe anymore. But we’ll make it to our people somehow. Our legs still work.”

  The short-haired one added:

  “We were waiting for just one thing — the moment when we could take the pieces off the board and pack our things. That moment seems to have come.”

  They stood and began unhurriedly packing their modest belongings into two sacks. No rush. Just people who had lived long enough not to run from every horror.

  The teachers exchanged glances again — this time with a faint, almost imperceptible shade of relief.

  “So,” our instructor said loudly. “The demons struck the capital. Possibly other major hubs. But not the entire country. The situation is severe, but not hopeless.”

  A good, well-formed sentence. One you could use like a calming spell.

  “New objective,” he continued. “We reach the city of Elgir. There we decide what to do next. The journey will take two days. Prepare yourselves.”

  A wave of whispers rolled through the ranks. Some exhaled in relief; others clenched their teeth even harder. Hope existed — but it didn’t erase the fact that the capital was still burning in our memory.

  We set out again. Now the two old men walked with us — not as leaders, but as strange guides who knew more than they were willing to tell.

  They walked a little to the side, talking quietly between themselves, sometimes casting brief glances our way. Occasionally they tried to say something to the children:

  “Hey, boy, don’t carry your sword like that — you’ll wreck your back.”

  “Girl, if you put your cloak under you at night, the ground won’t pull the heat out of you as much.”

  “Food is a spell too. If there’s none, no magic will help.”

  They even tried to joke, telling short stories from past wars — about how someone once saved a village with a single bucket of water, or a single clay ball thrown at just the right moment.

  But the children laughed poorly.

  Sometimes someone smiled faintly, sometimes replied with a short remark. But there was no shared, light, genuine laughter. And the old men understood that. Their attempts to cheer us up were more a habit of the living than an expectation of real success.

  I walked nearby and listened.

  For some reason, it was important to me to record every one of their phrases — like small points on the map of a world that still continued to be a world, not just a continuous zone of pain.

  At some point, a thick, dense forest appeared ahead.

  The earth teacher raised his hand.

  “We stop here. No point in going farther — it’ll be dark soon.”

  We turned off the road and went deeper into the grove. The trees here were low, the branches dense, the grass soft. After stone and dirt underfoot, this place felt almost like a cushion.

  “Rest,” the instructor said shortly. “No formations. Just drop.”

  No persuasion was needed.

  The children literally collapsed onto the ground. Some didn’t even bother to spread their cloaks. Their bodies chose the priority themselves — shut down first, everything else later.

  I sat down, then lay back as well, feeling exhaustion finally catch up to everything I had stubbornly postponed for “later.”

  Nearby, the old men were still discussing something with the teachers — quietly, businesslike. Someone placed a few magical markers on the trees; someone checked the forest’s perimeter.

  I listened to footsteps, whispers, the distant sound of wind. Inside me, the image of the burning Academy still stood, the scream of the water figure above the lake, the eyes of the ents.

  But over all of that, slowly and insistently, another layer settled.

  We are moving on.

  Which means the world is not over yet.