Dishonour

They broke his sword in the parade ground at dawn, the full garrison watching. The charges were read in a flat voice — dereliction, cowardice, abandonment of post. Arjun kept his eyes on the horizon the way his father had taught him before his father was also disgraced, also cashiered, also sent to walk the roads alone. The blade had been his grandfather's. It did not break cleanly. The soldier tasked with it had to strike it twice, and the second strike was a sound Arjun felt in his back teeth.

The charges were false. He had not fled. At the edge of the battle he had seen something — a figure that wore the shape of a soldier but moved like nothing he had words for — and he had chased it alone into the forest. He had not caught it. What he had found instead was a hillside, and a stone doorway framed by carvings older than the empire, and an entrance to something he was only beginning to understand would change every remaining day of his life.