"When I first returned from the battlefield, I felt an indescribable emptiness. Out there, the calamity had devoured everyone. Only I made it back to the city-state, where the people held a rather joyless banquet for me. Yet I felt as though I had remained on the battlefield, and only an empty shell had returned."
Beneath his helmet, Gnaeus's face flickered with a rare trace of memory. "It was already late at night when the reception ended. Dizziness washed over me as I staggered back to the barracks alone. And it was on that walk back that I met someone. He was a mad scholar, rambling to the night sky by the roadside. I tripped over him, yet felt no anger. Perhaps feeling that I was far too much like him, some inexplicable impulse drove me to ask him—"
" 'Do you think it would be better if we just died by the roadside like a pair of stray dogs?' "
Chapter 349