Reeds rustled with the hollow echoes of a long-lost springtime. The Drifter who was once a Soldier breathed in time with their soft melancholy. The autumn marshes were musty with the stench of decay, though summer had only ceased a mere two months ago. The cycles of the world were wrought with sadness, for every bright sunrise and bold new life faded to darkness and dust before the Drifter’s eyes. It was a bleak existence, watching the strong and weak alike crumble with the passing of time until all that remained was the solitary candle of one’s own making.

The Drifter had beheld a Sun, once, whose rising brilliance permeated all the world with a glory undying. Some hailed this beacon as a hero, praising the one who defied the pettiness and fragile mortality of the masses to denounce a status quo that no one else dared question. Others condemned the peerless commoner for the darkest of villainies: the crime of rising above one’s predestined path. The Drifter had always been a steadfast member of the former group: the first herald of a would-be revolutionary, the most devout member of the movement, and the last remaining devotee after the revolution had itself been revolted against.

To the long-ago promise of change, the Drifter had sworn loyalty—a knee bent in respect unparalleled, and a head bowed in awe never before known. No more devoted follower of the Sun King’s cause existed, and no darker deed had been done than by the Drifter’s honored duty. The Sunrise had blazed as no light the Drifter could recall before or since, and for its glad purpose the Drifter never hesitated to sacrifice all.

As the pure vision of a crimson dawn relented to the golden heat of midday, the Drifter had fought through shadow and steel for the flag of a crown that must never fall. Yet fall the crown had, as ever the days must end and the seasons turn. The Sun that had inspired a nation under its brilliance fell to the inevitable, and anarchy took hold where the Drifter’s ilk had once imposed order supreme. No sunrise ever shone with more splendor than the original, though the drifter tore the world apart seeking one; no pitiful bonfire could compete with the glory of a Sun now extinguished by a fate foreseen.

A beloved nation, united by the sole command of its fallen leader, dissipated as smoke from countless pyres. Fire consumed the nation as the Drifter defended memory from the faithless; when crown and country parted ways, the Drifter fought for one and lost both. Then came the winter of ash and despair. A new crown ascended to the golden throne, yet the Drifter would hear no command that could reign in his inferno, for trembling arms had clutched the somber crimson-stained crown that neither love nor rage could revive. Helplessness was not a sensation known before that day, nor one that the Drifter ever cared to experience again.

A little bird trilled within the reeds. Whether the sound was of delight or warning did not matter; such sweet music recalled a delight from the golden days before the fall, a weary smile from the chaos during those final battles. Fondly, the Drifter conjured the face of a brother by oath, equal and opposite, an Opponent now lost to time—not defeated, never deceased; merely lost. For long years, the Drifter had searched the living and the dead for that equivalent countenance, the noblest of knights, yet no sign of the brother ever emerged. Like the pale green fields of spring or the fair blue skies of summer, the brother was lost but never gone. The Drifter held hope, fragile as a blade of glass, that when the seasons turned, that lost artifact of a previous lifetime would return once more.

“Lost,” the Drifter murmured, heart sinking at the mournful chime of the word. It felt like the lie of a child who could not face the truth, yet the Drifter knew not what other truth might exist. Childhood had come and gone long ago, along with any inclinations toward self-deception. From North to South he had come, and though he might look back in sorrowful reminiscence, he could never return. The Drifter closed eyes that, even decades after ignition, burned with the embers of power with neither master to serve, nor charge to protect.

The Drifter remembered this brother by title only: the ever-righteous Marshal of the East. If ever Drifter or kin had possessed another name, time had stolen it from living memory. Little remained of that treasured past: a smile, not a face; a whisper of the wind and water, not a name or voice; a ghost forever sought, neither found nor forsaken. Through long years had the Drifter quested for the lost brother, facing countless cycles of the seasons in unending travels across countries far and wide, and for longer still did all efforts return nothing save weariness and failure. To a King of old the Drifter had sworn loyalty with blade and fiery prowess unmatched in the land, and to a Crown of new the Drifter had fled in avoidance of false command, yet from the lost Equal whose life had shone like a mirror through every night, no power of the Drifter could upturn even a passing trace.

The pool at the Drifter’s feet turned into a rift of liquid shadow in the dusk. It was a void like the endless depths of the black sky above, cavernous and cruel. There was no Sun here. Night loomed heavily upon the marsh, crushing color to the tasteless grey of ink and the ocean depths.

The Drifter could stand the lifeless dark no more. He reached out a hand and stroked the soft heads of the shoulder-level marsh-grasses. The tips flared like candles under his touch, heating his fingers. A golden wave spread across the marsh. Light embraced every reed, lunging for the sky with spears red as the dawn. Birds cried their sweetest song once more, and then no more thereafter. The Drifter closed tired eyes to the warm springtime within that music, but never did the darkness lift. At last, he raised his hand and blew out the flames rising from his fingertips. Fair and bright the fire shone, yet still it was no match for the Drifter’s fallen Star.

After every fire, there remained ash, plain and grey as a winter wasteland under the weak rays of a new dawn. The marshes were cold and still when he arrived, the mere Shadow of a Bounty Hunter in sable passing over the parched, colorless mud to inspect the crumbled remnants of plant life. Feet wrapped in mud-caked midnight cloth brushed the ground, their light step evoking no sound from the hardened silt. The Shadow raised dark fingers to the still-smoking shell of a reed. The white stalk crumbled into dust at the touch. Fire had visited the peaceful countryside on this night, yet the source of this destruction was already long gone.

For years, the Shadow had tracked this quarry across the barren deserts and charred forests that scarred a once-prosperous nation. It had been thirty months since the Shadow first set eyes upon the bounty offered on a certain Madman’s head, and a dozen since the Crown redirected most of the gold from that bounty toward more practical ends. The Shadow last spoke with a living person five months ago. Oftentimes, standing in the wake of the latest inferno, the Shadow wondered whether he would encounter one again before the day he perished. Many had called him mad in his own right for pursuing this hopeless quest.

No matter how many clues the Shadow investigated, his efforts turned up nothing save silence: no ruthless warrior of times past, nor an aged fanatic of the previous regime, nor even a trace of the fire-toting Madman that innocent townsfolk spoke of in fearful whispers. There was only a lifeless wake of stone and dust. The bounties vanished like whims in the wind, yet the Shadow pursued his elusive quarry without promise of rest or reward, turning up naught but ash upon bleached meadows, clouds of smoke looming upon the horizon, and exaggerated tales of the Madman with unequaled sorcery.

A flash of white between grey powder and black mud caught the Shadow’s gaze. One bright flower yet bloomed in this colorless wake. Steady hands brushed dust away from the hidden blossom, revealing bleached bones. The pale petals were in fact the delicate twigs of a ribcage, white against the black cloth of his gloves. Nibs of ruined feathers fanned out from the shriveled wings of a bird that had perished in the blaze. The Shadow scooped the small body into his hands. Above a hooked beak, two gaping holes stared accusingly out of a skull half the size of the Shadow’s palm.

The bird was a kite.

Bitter laughter burst from the Shadow’s mouth, startling and raucous in the stillness. He must indeed be as mad as the rumors claimed—he, the Shadow who in more peaceful days dared draw blade against the Madman, was defeated time and again, and yet lived on by unprecedented luck; he who now dared hunt the one who taught him to hunt. One day, the Shadow’s skull would be the one staring out of the dust, a warning for some heedless future hunter.

With swift strokes, the Shadow scooped a small patch of the grey earth aside and planted the bird within true soil. All around, dozens of other skeletons peeked from the ash. The Shadow could not bury them all, but he would still try. Acknowledging those fallen prey to the Madman’s fires was habit alone—a trail of buried crumbs for anyone who might care to trace the Shadow’s path.

What was one more tally when there were already too many to count? The more the Shadow toiled, the more his work seemed meaningless to anyone but himself. Perhaps it always had been.