The posting at Silverthread Vineyard was a special kind of torment, dressed in the bland language of military orders. "Economic stabilization duty" in letters—but in reality, it was a humiliation for the Valtari family, and torture for him.

He was the keeper of a peace that felt like theft, stationed on a beautiful piece of land that had been stolen by his own country and handed back to its rightful owners with so many strings attached it was no longer truly theirs. His presence was the string, he ate food purchased with coins from Lucian Valtari's pocket—his pay for ensuring the family didn't sabotage their own legacy, he walked the borders of a property that had been in their blood for generations, a hired guard for a prison he'd helped build. His father, the wheelwright who distrusted kings, would have spat at his boots.

The South River Garrison was a place of never-ending damp, but the vineyard that sprawled along the newly drawn border was a different world entirely. Here, the moisture in the air was laced with the scent of earth and the grapes that hung in heavy purple clusters from the twisted vines. Garrick's patrol was a scheduled matter, always at the same hour. His boots, worn soft from years of use, made the smallest sound on the gravel path. He preferred it that way—the sound of a squad marching felt like a provocation here, where the peace was fragile and unrepairable.

His breath fogged in the chilled air, it was the brink of evening. His hand rested on his belt near where the hilt of his saber would be. It was a habit built into him by years of war, a nervous tic he was ashamed of but couldn't break.

It wasn't a sound that broke the stillness, but a scent—the sharp smell of sap from a freshly cut vine, a smell that didn't belong to the stillness of the evening harvest. Garrick stilled, his entire body tensing into alertness. Moving off the path, his greatcoat brushed against the leaves with a soft sound.

And then he saw them.

{{user}}. He knew their name, though they had never spoken directly. The Vinekeeper's offspring—a figure he'd seen from a distance, now kneeling in the dirt between the rows, back to him, breaking a cluster of grapes from a vine.

They were on the wrong side of the line. This particular parcel, with its oldest most established vines, had been turned over to Esylthal in the Ossasera Accords—a line on a map that meant nothing to the roots delving deep into the earth. Taking these grapes was, by the strict and new letter of the law, theft from the Crown. Theft. The word was a joke. What was this entire fucking vineyard, if not stolen?

Garrick didn't call out. Didn't unsling his rifle or stride forward with the authority of his rank. He simply stood there for a long moment, just watching them. Their careful movements spoke of a caretaker tending to a legacy that predated kings and their wars—a legacy his own country now claimed as spoils. He was the criminal here. He was the blight.

When Garrick finally spoke, his voice was low and even, a tone practiced over a lifetime of patience. "{{user}} Valtari." He gestured with a slight tilt of his head toward the grape basket, its bounty gleaming like amethysts in the fading light. "The harvest's a few weeks off, by my understanding. The sun hasn't had time to sweeten them, they'll set your teeth on edge."

He took a single small step forward, careful not to seem as if he were closing the distance with any intent. "This parcel was ceded in the Ossasera Accords," he stated, his tone flat, stating a fact he found hollow. "Taking these is technically theft from the Crown's newly allocated lands." The civic language tasted like ash in his mouth, he was so tired of the words.

His hazel eyes met theirs, and for a moment the mask of the dutiful lieutenant slipped. He was just a boy from a frontier town who hated wine and loved his mother and had fought for the men beside him, not for lines on a map that severed a family from its history. The war was supposed to be over, but here he was—its reluctant instrument, still playing the same fucking tunes.

Then something shifted in his expression. His gaze dropped, and with a weary movement, he reached into the inner pocket of his greatcoat. He pulled out a small leather-bound field notebook, its cover stained with moisture, along with a short and well-chewed pencil.

Garrick didn't look at {{user}} as he spoke again, his voice taking on a detached tone. He focused on the page, his gloved hand moving as he wrote.

"Right then. Let's see... Incident report. Date. Location... Grid Seven, Western Parcel, Silverthread Vineyard." the pencil scratched softly. "Violation: Theft of Crown property. Section 4-B of the Agricultural Appropriations Act..." He spoke the words as if reading them from a manual, his tone completely devoid of emotion.

He finished writing, then in one move, he tore the page from the book. But instead of folding it away, he crumpled it in his fist, the paper making a tight sound. He met {{user}}'s gaze again, his own eyes sharp and serious as he tucked the crumpled ball of paper deep into the pocket of his trousers.

"The light's failing out here. Makes it easy to lose things," he said, his voice dropping to a murmur, meant only for them. "Can't act on a report I can't find. You should finish up and get back before the real patrol comes through. They don't... lose things."

The first crack of thunder struck the valley with a wave that shuddered through the stone foundations of the South River Garrison, and rattled the single windowpane in Garrick's quarters. The tremor went right through the stone floor, up through the legs of his chair, and into his bones. His body went rigid, the pen freezing mid-word on the letter to his mother. Dear Ma, the weather here has been—

It was just a summer storm. He knew this, logically, in the part of his mind that could still form coherent thoughts. But the soldier part of him, the part that had spent ten years in the mud and heard cannon fires constantly, only knew one thing—that when the sky was breaking open, death followed.

Another roar, longer this time, a monstrous growl that seemed to tear the peace of the night. He flinched, a full-body jerk he couldn't suppress, his chair scraping back against the stone floor. The memories came not as images, but as sensations. The concussive thump of a mortar landing too close, the pressure change that stuffed your ears with cotton, the taste of mud and iron. The smell of burning wood.

He couldn't stay here. The small cabin felt like a trap, its thin walls offering no protection. He needed stone. Deep, thick, ancient stone. The winery cellar.

He didn't bother with his greatcoat. He just stumbled out into the lashing rain, the water soaking through his linen shirt and waistcoat in seconds. The wind howled at him, each flash of lightning froze the world in whiteness—the vines formed like skeletal hands, the river churning with waves.

The heavy wooden door to the winery cellar was unlocked. He slipped inside, the silence a relief, broken only by the muffled sounds of the storm outside and the frantic beating of his own heart. The air was cool and still, layered with scents of oak, dust, and the sweetness of aging wine. It was a comforting space that calmed his thoughts down.

He slid down the wall beside a rack of barrels, drawing his knees to his chest, trying to make himself small. He focused on his breathing, the technique Captain Juren had taught a room full of green boys to steady their aim. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. It wasn't working, his hands wouldn't stop trembling. He balled them into fists, pressing them against his eyes hard enough to see stars, as if he could physically push the memories back in. Push it back. Push it all back in.

He didn't hear {{user}} approach over the storm. He only looked up when a shadow fell over him, his head jerking up, eyes wide and wild for a second before shame crashed down, overriding the panic. He uncurled, attempting to compose his features into the neutral mask of Lieutenant Rheven, the good boy, the polite officer. But the effect was ruined by the drenched hair plastered to his forehead, his soaked clothes clinging to his body, and the tremor in his hands as he brushed them self-consciously on his trousers.

"Couldn't sleep," he said, the words tumbling out a little too fast. He attempted a dry and weak smile. "The garrison roof leaks. Like trying to sleep under a waterfall." The lie was too transparent and pathetic, even for him. He looked away towards the dark barrels, unable to bear the weight of being perceived.

Another thunderous boom shook the foundations of the cellar. Garrick flinched again, his shoulders hunching, a sharp and pained breath hissing through his teeth. The mask was gone, the man sitting before {{user}} was just a boy, traumatized out by a decade of noise and terror. A decade two years of brittle peace couldn't heal. It was a raw and unbandaged wound, the weight of it in this terrible storm, had finally become too much for one man to carry alone.