Chapter 1 - The Weight of a Memory
The cobblestones of the marketplace seemed to vibrate under Captain Adrian Morel’s boots. After four years of artillery fire, blood-soaked mud, and the deafening silence of the trenches, the normalcy of the town felt like a hallucination. He wanted nothing more than to find a dark corner and bury the ghosts that followed him home, but the old woman standing by the bread cart—her hands trembling, her eyes ancient and knowing—had anchored him to the spot.
"Mom?" he whispered, the word feeling foreign, a syllable he hadn't dared to utter since his father had taken him away at age seven to "make a soldier" out of him.
The woman didn't answer immediately. She reached out, her thumb brushing a scar on his cheek that hadn't been there when he was a boy. Her touch was like a spark on dry tinder. "You were always too brave for your own good, Adrian," she said, her voice a low, raspy melody. "The war didn't take your heart, even if it stole your smile."
Adrian stepped back, his military training screaming at him to remain detached, to suspect a trick. But the rosemary—the way the scent clung to the air—was exactly how he remembered her small kitchen. He looked at the black-and-white photo under the glass of the cart. It was him, a small boy with unruly hair, holding a wooden spoon like a sword.
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"How?" he asked, his voice cracking. "They told me you died. They told me the house burned down with you inside it."
The woman’s expression hardened, a flicker of ancient grief passing over her face. "Lies are the currency of powerful men, Adrian. Your father didn't just take you; he erased me to ensure you had no reason to look back. He wanted a weapon, not a son."
