The Last Man Standing

Vorlag watched them go, his face a mask of granite. He did not see a principled departure; he saw a mass desertion, a betrayal of everything he held sacred. The silence that settled over the training grounds was not peaceful. It was the silence of a battlefield after one side has inexplicably laid down its arms and walked away.

He turned to the loyalists who remained. They were the hard core, the ones for whom the old ways were not a choice, but a creed. He saw in their faces a reflection of his own grim resolve. They were fewer now, but their purpose was purer, harder. The weak had been culled.

‘They have chosen their path,’ Vorlag’s voice was low, but it carried across the empty space, a stone skipping across a frozen lake. ‘They have chosen the comfort of questions over the certainty of the storm. We will show them what they have abandoned. We will dance a storm that will shake the very foundations of their quiet little world.’

It was not just a promise; it was a declaration of war. He was no longer just a senior dancer; he was the self-appointed guardian of a dying flame, and he would burn down the world to keep it from being extinguished.