October 11th, 2025
2:39 AM
I was without my swords on that fateful day. Unarmed, trusting, blind to the darkness within those woods.
I’ll never let that happen again.
Ember says there’s a heaviness about me now. He says I haven’t looked the same since the incident. I know what he means. When I look in the mirror, a stranger looks back at me, dark-eyed and wary.
He hasn't been the same, either. He keeps on smiling as always, but I can see the guilt in his eyes. He blames himself for this. He doesn't say it - Ember never says what's bothering him - but I can feel it.
I wonder if anyone wonders where I went. I stand at the head of the track. I do not cheer or smile or laugh. I am not a leader. There is nothing to sing for.
My body may be free, but my soul is stuck in Legion territory, caught on the barbed wire fences outside the prison. The girl I was six months ago is dead. She bled out on the floor of that concrete cell.
I've spent many a sleepless night talking to Ember. He says five days is a long time to be... treated in the way that I was, and that he can never imagine how it all must feel for me. If I was any good at all, I would have been able to handle it. I would have escaped on the first day and not let this all happen. I wouldn't have paraded off into the jungle unarmed, like some kind of reckless, bumbling apprentice with no survival instincts. Sun's light, Sauda, you're a fucking idiot.
Every night in my sleep, I feel their hands all over me. Choking me, smothering me, stripping away all the dignity and pride I once held dear. Every night, I drown in their touch.
They reached inside me. They pulled out my soul, wrung it out into cups, fermented it in a barrel, and got drunk off the wine.
And who am I, now that I've been stripped of everything that made me useful? What kind of a warrior am I now?