I’m a bored teen with no time, so I read, write, and draw :) I’m currently writing my own bl novel, so if you have the patience to read, please continue. Here is the first chapter, so I’d like some feedback. I actually have ambitions for this!








<Trigger Warning: content includes themes such as imprisonment and self-harm, as well as suicide and killing.>


<Content includes LGBTIA+ themes of love between men>


 Chapter One: Ash and Blood

“Survival is not the same as living.”

The battlefield did not smell of death.
It smelled of rust, damp soil, and old blood—thick and heavy, like it had soaked the land long before this war and would linger long after. The bodies were still warm in some places, which meant Troy had arrived early. Early enough to scavenge before the crows did. Before the rot truly settled.

He moved without sound, steps deliberate, cloak dragging over broken helmets and bloodied spears. His fingers were pale with cold and stiff from hunger, but his grip was steady as he pried a ring off a severed hand and slipped it into a pouch.

Looting dead men didn’t make him feel anything.

Most things didn’t anymore.

He crouched beside a fallen soldier—young, probably no older than seventeen. Blond curls matted with blood, eyes staring upward, lips parted as if caught mid-breath. Troy reached for the satchel at the boy’s waist, hesitated for half a second. Then took it. Dried meat, half a waterskin, a letter stained beyond recognition.

He didn't read letters anymore.

Another few steps took him to the center of the carnage—what might’ve been a vanguard formation before it broke apart. The bodies here were mangled worse. Limbs severed. Armor peeled back. Something feral had swept through at the end, not just swords and steel.

Troy stepped over a corpse with three claw marks gouged into its chest.

Beasts had come in the dark.

He looked to the horizon. The sun hung low, filtered through smoke and ash. The sky was bleeding too.

And that was when he saw him.

At first, just another body slumped against a shattered tree trunk—armor gleaming faintly, one hand still clenched around a sword half-buried in the dirt. But something felt off. The position wasn’t right. Too rigid. Too… alive.

Troy drew a knife. He approached slowly.

Closer now, he saw the man's chest rise—shallow, but steady. Blood soaked his side, running in thin lines between the engraved plates of his armor. He was tall, broad-shouldered, face ghost-white with blood loss. His black hair clung to his skin, streaked with ash and dirt. But his features—angular, noble, clean even in ruin—marked him as someone of rank.

A knight. Or more.

Troy’s grip on the knife tightened. He should walk away. Leave him to die like the rest. He had no use for a half-dead noble.

But then the man's eyes fluttered open. Pale blue. Icy. Lost.

“...help…”

The word rasped out like wind through dead leaves.

Troy took a step back.

No. Don’t get involved. Not again.

He turned.

Took three steps.

Stopped.

A low, bitter sound left his throat.

He swore and dropped to his knees, tugging his pack around. He ripped a strip of linen and pressed it to the man’s side, hard. The knight gasped but didn’t move. He was barely conscious.

“You’re lucky I’m still too stupid to mind my own business,” Troy muttered.

The knight didn’t respond.

“Don’t die,” Troy said, voice flat. “Or I’ll be really pissed.”

By nightfall, he had dragged the man far enough from the battlefield to make a rough camp—a shallow alcove beneath a craggy hill, sheltered by stone and shadow. He had no fire, no time. Beasts came when the light died.

He bound the knight’s wound as best he could. The bleeding had slowed, but the man still hadn’t stirred.

Troy sat down with his back to the stone wall. His cloak, now soaked in blood, lay discarded beside him. He rubbed a hand over his face, fingers grazing the long-healed scar above his blind eye.

He wouldn’t sleep. He never did.

He watched the shadows stretch. Watched the trees sway like breathing things. The forest whispered beyond the rocks, low and wet and hungry.

He closed his eyes.

He was back in the dungeon.

The smell hit first—mildew, rust, sweat, rot. The clink of chains. The hiss of a whip dragging across stone. He was on his knees, naked, bleeding, bones showing through bruised skin.

A voice above him. Sharp, amused.

“Still alive, mongrel?”

A boot slammed into his chest.

He choked, coughing blood.

The chains cut into his wrists.

“Say thank you.”

He opened his mouth to scream.

Troy jolted awake with a sharp breath, heart racing, nails dug into his arms so hard he’d drawn blood. He looked down—his skin was torn again, just beneath the old scars. Crimson welled up under his fingers. He wiped it on his pants, not caring.

The knight was still unconscious.

Good.

No one needed to see him like this.

The night was long, cold, and cruel. But it passed.

And by dawn, Troy was still breathing.

He hated that part the most.