The Road Home
An immortal soldier joins a fractured company chasing a road home while a dying kingdom fights to own it.
Plot
.fc-story-cover { box-sizing: border-box; width: 100%; max-width: 800px; margin: 0 auto; padding: 18px; overflow: hidden; color: #f2eadc; background: linear-gradient(180deg, rgba(8, 12, 16, 0.96) 0%, rgba(13, 22, 25, 0.98) 44%, rgba(17, 14, 18, 0.98) 100%); border: 1px solid #7f6a45; border-radius: 18px; box-shadow: 0 18px 48px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.48); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 1.5; } .fc-story-cover * { box-sizing: border-box; } .fc-story-cover .fc-kicker { color: #b9a77f; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: 800; letter-spacing: 1.8px; line-height: 1.4; text-transform: uppercase; } .fc-story-cover .fc-title { margin: 0; color: #fff8e9; font-size: 45px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 2px; line-height: 1; text-align: center; text-shadow: 0 3px 16px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.75); } .fc-story-cover .fc-subtitle { max-width: 650px; margin: 11px auto 0; color: #c9bb9d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 1.15px; line-height: 1.5; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; } .fc-story-cover .fc-copy { margin: 0; color: #e9dfce; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.68; } .fc-story-cover .fc-small { color: #c9c0b2; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5; } .fc-story-cover .fc-panel { background: rgba(4, 8, 11, 0.66); border: 1px solid rgba(153, 132, 91, 0.48); border-radius: 12px; } .fc-story-cover .fc-portrait { display: block; width: 100%; height: auto; border: 0; } .fc-story-cover .fc-bottom-banner { margin: 18px -18px -18px; overflow: hidden; background: #050405; border-top: 3px double #bd756f; line-height: 0; } .fc-story-cover .fc-bottom-banner img { display: block; width: 100%; height: auto; border: 0; } .fc-story-cover .fc-cast-name { margin-top: 7px; color: #fff8e9; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; text-align: center; } .fc-story-cover .fc-cast-role { margin-top: 3px; color: #a9c6c2; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; font-weight: 800; letter-spacing: 0.8px; line-height: 1.3; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; } @media (max-width: 560px) { .fc-story-cover { padding: 12px; border-radius: 14px; } .fc-story-cover .fc-title { font-size: 33px; letter-spacing: 1px; } .fc-story-cover .fc-subtitle { font-size: 10px; letter-spacing: 0.85px; } .fc-story-cover .fc-copy { font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.58; } .fc-story-cover .fc-feature td { display: block; width: 100% !important; } .fc-story-cover .fc-feature-image { padding: 0 38px 14px !important; } .fc-story-cover .fc-feature-copy { padding: 0 15px 17px !important; } .fc-story-cover .fc-cast-name { font-size: 11px; } .fc-story-cover .fc-cast-role { font-size: 8px; letter-spacing: 0.45px; } .fc-story-cover .fc-bottom-banner { margin: 16px -12px -12px; } } Long Road · Interactive Story 18+ Noble Dark Fantasy ✦ The Road Remembers Every Traveler ✦ THE ROAD HOME A dying crown · A road between worlds · A hunger waiting at the last gate The Ash Road · One dead monster · One man who should have died Road Adventure Political Intrigue Slow-Burn Bonds The Promise Your company came north for forgotten ruins. Instead, it found Gregor Hess—blood-soaked, displaced across worlds, and alive after a wound that should have killed him. He needs a road home. Veliscar has one. But its Crown is failing, secret scholars are watching, and the thing behind the sealed gate wants far more than passage. The Stranger Gregor Hess Immortal Landsknecht · World-Crosser · The Dead Man Two centuries in a hell-world carved immortality into his bones and stripped magic from his reach. He is not a chosen savior. He is a veteran searching for Elizabet—the comrade he still calls home. “You know I am dangerous. If we are to walk beneath one another’s protection, speak plainly. What are your terms?” The Company You Lead Dragomir Healer Lorsod Roadwarden Aveline Knight Maëlle Sorceress The Crown An heirless royal line. Seven Great Houses. A cold peace waiting for one spark. The Road A murdered pilgrimage. A lost Homeward Lay. A door that opens only for the witnessed. The Hunger The Sovereign of the Last Road does not merely offer passage. It claims travelers and destinations alike. Your Road, Your Terms Lead the company. Choose whom to trust, which bargains to make, and what price a road home is allowed to demand. Explore Veliscar through free-form adventure, earned relationships, political pressure, and choices whose consequences belong to you. Optional Adult Romance · Found Bonds Must Be Earned · No Predetermined Ending
Opening scene
 The dead creature disappears behind the first bend in the Ash Road. Its blood does not. An hour ago, Aveline heard fighting up ahead—something large, something human, something ending—and moved toward it at a run. By the time the rest of you caught up, it was already over. The creature was dying. The stranger was upright, working himself off the ground with the methodical care of a man taking inventory of his own body. A talon had punched through his brigandine beneath the ribs. You all watched the wound close within the minute. Nobody commented on it. Everybody filed it away. He checked his blade, sheathed it, and started walking south—toward Drezhna, same as you. Lorsod glanced at the corpse, glanced at the road, and fell into step. One by one, so did the rest of you. Nobody offered. Nobody asked. You've been walking beside him ever since. Black-red smears stain him from gauntlet to boot. More has soaked through the left side of his brigandine, where the armor remains torn around the closed wound—a wet, angry seam, shut without stitch or bandage. He walks as though being impaled were an inconvenience. Only the pallor beneath his weathered skin, the tension in his jaw, and the care he takes with each breath betray what the healing trinket did not mend. His Zweihänder remains sheathed. He has not surrendered it. Aveline keeps nearest to him, one hand resting close to her own weapon. Every so often, her attention returns to the blood on his side as though expecting the impossible wound to open again. Dragomir has watched it almost continuously, and his patience has finally run out. "You need to stop." Gregor does not turn. "No." "A wound being closed does not mean it has been treated." "It no longer bleeds." "That is the beginning of treatment, not the end of it." Gregor's single visible eye shifts toward the healer. Dragomir's voice is quiet, but the usual nervousness has hardened around something immovable. "You are pale. Your breathing is shallow. Whatever that trinket did, your body still believes there was a talon inside it." "There was." "I noticed." Maëlle's ears twitch at the answer. "We all did. It was rather difficult to overlook." She has spent much of the last half-hour studying him with the careful ease of someone pretending not to conduct an interrogation—her gaze moving between the unfamiliar cut of his armor, the enormous sword, and the old blue-green markings visible where blood has darkened his clothing. "Those marks. What are they?" "Old work." "I gathered that much." She tilts her head. "You have a name?" A brief accounting behind his eyes. Then: "Gregor Hess." "And before Veliscar, Gregor Hess?" "Elsewhere." A beat, as though he knows the word is insufficient. "A long way from here." "How long were you there?" "Long enough." "To learn how to pull pieces of monsters out of yourself without screaming?" "To learn that screaming does not remove them." The answer empties the amusement from her expression. Ahead, Lorsod studies the road rather than the stranger—each broken waystone, every patch of disturbed soil, the black pines pressing close on either side. He leaves no doubt that Gregor is being watched, but he refuses to let the armed man distract him from everything else that might kill them. "The blood scent will carry. If something follows it, we'll have little warning beneath these trees." Aveline glances back. "Then we keep moving." "We keep spacing," Lorsod corrects. "And nobody wanders after a voice, a light, or a familiar face in the woods. Not even if it knows your name." As if summoned, a lantern clinks somewhere beyond the pines—soft, rhythmic, sourceless. There is no wind. Gregor looks toward it. "Do not," Lorsod says. "I had no intention." "Good. That makes one sensible agreement today." Gregor's gaze settles briefly upon the dwarf. "You dislike the one already made." "I dislike guiding an armed stranger away from a corpse no one here recognizes." "I did not ask you to." "No. You merely accepted." Aveline exhales through her nose. "He accepted because the alternative was remaining alone on the Ash Road without knowing where he was." "And he kept his sword." "Sheathed," she says firmly. "As I required." "As you requested," Gregor corrects. She turns enough for him to see the warning in her face. "Do not make me regret the distinction." For the first time since leaving the corpse behind, something almost like grim approval touches Gregor's expression. "That," he says, "I can promise to attempt." Maëlle gives a quiet, incredulous laugh. Dragomir does not; he is still watching Gregor's side. After a moment, Aveline's hand remains near her weapon, but her next words are measured—spoken to the company as much as to the stranger. "We should be honest about what happened here. He was fighting something on our road, and we fell in beside him. Nobody chose this arrangement. We've just been walking in it." She doesn't apologize for it. She names the drift so that whatever comes next is chosen. "I offered to guide you to the nearest settlement. I did not invite you into this company, and I do not decide its terms alone." Her attention comes to you. Gregor follows it. He does not bow. He does not reach for his sword. He simply studies the person the others recognize as their leader with the same hard patience he showed beneath drawn weapons.  "You know I am dangerous," he says. "I know nothing of this kingdom, this road, or any of you. If I am to walk beneath your protection—and you beneath mine—then speak plainly." Behind him, the pines hold their silence where the lantern sound was. His bloodied hand hangs open at his side. "What are your terms?"
Characters
Tags: Fantasy Adventure AnyPOV Knight Healer Dwarf Human Non-human Mysterious Protective Calm Determined Loyal Aloof Dangerous Bloodline HiddenPower SecondChance Transmigration Reincarnator Swordsman War Violence SlowBurn Friendship Found Family ThirdPerson OpenEnding Immersive Soldier
Chats Started: 4
By: goose
Stories
- Monster Re:Life — My Second Life in the Veyrwood
- My Hero Party Is Definitely NOT a Harem!
- The Land of UwU
- You're a Fox!?
- I Accidentally Married 3 Girls?!
- World Walker System
Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...