It was gone, all of it. My home, the place I had spent my entire childhood was desolate before my very eyes.

Glass crunched under the heel of my riding boots, my footsteps the only sound around for miles.

I could almost hear the echo of children playing from my own memory. The joy I had felt back then, the carefree optimism and innocence of youth.

And my friends, all of it, gone. Vanished.

My heart ached and my eyes burned with tears as everything hit me hard and brutally.

My friends, my family. I had no way of knowing if they were still alive!

Broken pieces of wood and debris was scattered everywhere, every building had at least one broken piece of glass. Doors lay open, some barely hanging on their own hinges.

Every building was the same. Desolate and barren.

Foolishly I had held hope that my own home, the home I had grew up in and the home my family still lived in, had been spared.

But as soon as I found myself outside the very building I knew the truth. It was deserted, just like the entire town was.

With a heavy heart I walked up the overgrown path to where the front door used to be. It had been red, a telling by the red splinters that lay imbedded in the empty frame.

I peeled off my gloves, a gift from the king himself, and lay my hand on the the empty frame.

I had made a promise to my family that I would return. No matter how long my journey would take me I vowed to them I would return.

But they were no longer here.

And I had no way of finding them, if indeed they were even still alive.

My once noble ambition had been my greatest triumph and my greatest heartbreak.

I bowed my head, my hand slipping from the broken door frame as the tears I had managed to hold back until now, broke free from their hold and ran down my face. My knees buckled, no longer being able to support me and I sank down until I was kneeling, my hands covering my face close to the floor.

I should never have left! I should have taken them with me! My mind screamed at itself while my heart lay broken and defeated, just like the house in front of me.

I was nothing more than a shell of the person I had once been.

I had kept my vow. I had returned. But it was too late…