War. A rciless concept—one forged not from courage, but from necessity, delusion, and inherited fear. It doesn’t knock. It doesn’t ask. It takes.
The dread crawls beneath skin, into bone. The fear—oh, the fear—lives in the eyes of the enlisted, in the tears left behind on wooden floors, in the last kiss of a mother to her child. n and won, barely more than shadows of who they once were, march not just to protect—but to gamble their lives on the slim hope of returning. They leave behind warmth, laughter, nas written on nursery walls.
For what?
For duty? For country? For the illusion that violence can preserve peace?
They say they fight to protect. To protect their hos, their joy, their fragile patch of sky. But sowhere along the way, protection becos annihilation. The noble instinct to shield the innocent becos twisted into a frenzy of bloodlust and righteousness. Why, oh why, must we kill just to say we love? Why must we ravage, burn, and carve wounds into the world simply to preserve sothing precious?
And what of the children we claim to protect, when their parents never co ho?
What of the cities turned into silent graveyards of ash and mory?
This is the lunacy of it all.
Or perhaps... it is sothing deeper. Sothing darker.
A truth too terrible to na.
Steel sings. Swords collide. Spears pierce flesh with a squelch that no man forgets. Armor shatters. Bones crack. Screams rise like a prayer to a god that has long since turned its face away. There is no poetry in the clash—only madness, only chaos.
Blood boils beneath boots, seeping into soil that can never be cleansed. The ground becos a mirror of hell.
So ca with skill—warriors, proud and honed. Others ca with trembling hands and no idea how to grip a blade. They all fought. They all scread. They all bled. They all fell.
Because in war, death is not selective.
It does not care for the brave, the cowardly, the experienced, or the innocent.
War does not crown heroes. It consus them.
And in the end—when the fire dies, when the flags rot, when the trumpets are silent—it is not the strong who remain. Not the noble. Not the skilled. Not the gods of battle or the legends sung.
It is the lucky.
The cursed.
The ones who flinched at the right mont. The ones who tripped and missed the killing blow. The ones who bled just slow enough to crawl away. They remain.
Not because they deserve it.
But because fate is cruel, and war is crueler.
And that is the truest horror of all.
The ground bled beneath their feet.
Blue fire scread from above, a divine punishnt cast downward like heaven itself had chosen a side. The earth cracked with heat, flas consuming wood, cloth, flesh—indiscriminately, violently, rcilessly.
"You called for back up...right?" Denish asked, voice hoarse, black soot on his lips.
Claire didn’t answer at first. She was watching the sky burn. The flas had beco sothing living, gnawing at the edges of her mind, like guilt always had.
"For fuck’s Sake...yesss," she finally replied. Her voice ca distant, as if she weren’t truly present. "I explained the situation... reinforcents are on their way. But they lack—"
"Ti....i know..."
The wind howled. It wasn’t natural anymore—it carried death in its breath. The kind of wind that had passed through corpses and ruin, brushing the cheeks of the living like a whispered promise of what was to co.
They marched.
What remained of the mages raised their hands, incantations thick in their throats, as though even the spells were choking on ash. Each spell circle flared like a heartbeat, then vanished into the inferno. The heat distorted reality, warped their forms—Claire wasn’t sure if she rode with warriors or the dead anymore.
Their numbers had once been enough to terrify kingdoms.
Now? They were bones waiting to be scattered.
The warrior kings still stood—three of them, towering like the last vengeance of old gods. They moved with purpose, but even they were losing breath. Their armor ran slick with the blood of friends and enemies alike. Their eyes no longer shone with pride, but with that distant fog of soone waiting for the inevitable.
And the knights of Berkimhum ca like an avalanche. Uniform in their chaos. Screaming nas no one would rember. Every swing of their blades said: Please rember .
The crafts—the floating vessels—had been destroyed. What remained was ground, mud, and fire. No elevation. No strategy. Just slaughter.
Glory? It was buried under the bodies now.
And Claire, though she rode with purpose, felt it hollowing her from within. Why had she survived this long?
Why had he?
But then again... had he?
"Find His Highness! Find Prince Atlas!" Denish roared over the flas, his sword raised high, dripping from tip to poml.
"DENISH OF BERKIMHUM!" a deep voice thundered back—one of the warrior kings, blood-crusted blade in hand, "I AM YOUR CHALLENGE! I AM YOUR DEATH."
Denish didn’t flinch.
He slayed three n with a single arcing strike before responding, voice gravel and storm: "Your challenge..."
He slid from his horse.
"...I accept."
And in the breath between silence and battle—
Tang.
Steel to steel.
A sound like history being written in screams.
Claire kept riding.
Her horse kicked up charred dirt, dodging fallen shields, torn limbs, and burnt flags that no longer bore aning. The world had beco a battlefield of relics. Each corpse a story abandoned mid-sentence.
The deeper she went, the more frantic her heartbeat beca.
Atlas.
Atlas.
The na pulsed with each step of her horse, like a second pulse, separate from her own. She had left him. She had warned him. And now, with the sky caving in, she prayed—not to any god, but to whatever cruel fate that had tied them together in the first place—that she wasn’t too late.
And then she saw it.
A crater. Not from magic. From sothing older. A raw, carved hollow where the blue fire had dug into the earth, consuming everything it touched.
The healer rode behind her—one of the few who still lived. Her eyes were hollow but sharp.
"There," she pointed.
Her eyes followed her hand—and found them.
Atlas.
Collapsed.
Unmoving.
And beside him—her. That woman. That Bitch.The one Claire had always suspected. The one who had hovered around him like a moth to sothing bright and dangerous.
"Atlas!" Claire shouted. Her voice cracked. Her legs trembled.
She saw that wretched woman holding him like he was hers—like Claire hadn’t bled beside him, fought beside him, dread beside him.
Claire’s voice shattered through the smoke.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM!"
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