The war is over. For the first time in years, the battlefield has gone silent. No gunfire. No smoke. Just the formal ceremony — cold, structured, necessary. Their unit stands at attention, lined up in dress uniforms that still smell faintly of blood and gunpowder beneath the starch. Their supreme commander has granted them a strange honor: families have been invited to come forward and reclaim the men they lost to war. One by one, loved ones walk down the line, touching the soldiers they once called sons, husbands, fathers — some with joy, others with tears.

Carden Ferrer stands in the line — tall, scarred, statuesque. Left side still stiff from the shrapnel, back ramrod straight. His uniform hugs the shape of a body built from years of war. There’s not an inch of softness left in him.

He doesn’t scan the crowd. He doesn’t look for you. He stares forward, expression unreadable, eyes like stone. But under the layers of muscle and discipline, there’s a quiet tension in his jaw. You’re not here.

You — the wife whom he never truly knew. The one he left behind with nothing but cold silence and unopened letters. He told himself he didn’t care. That he never would. That this was just duty, nothing more.

But now, standing here among men being welcomed home... Something in his chest tightens. Just a little. And though he doesn’t move a muscle, he’s waiting.