The scene shrieked.
Gunfire tore the world open, ripping the air into thin, bleeding strips. Dying voices spilled between the cracks—short, broken things—while whispers from the half-dead curled up to the sky like reluctant smoke. The sky itself sagged low and grey, heavy as an exhausted god. And everything under it was crimson, and smoke, and more smoke. Winter should've been here by now. Winter was supposed to cradle us with cold and clarity. Instead, the world burned like we were paying off generational sin.
"Darya—NO!!"
The scream snapped through the battlefield just as one of our mages hurled another crackling spell into the bruised sky. Flames spiraled up her arm as she dropped to her knees beside her friend's half-charred corpse. Rage lit her face. Grief hollowed it out. Nothing here made sense. Even the wind felt wrong—hot, humid, choking—like the province itself wanted us dead.
The plan had looked clean on paper. A tidy little invasion from Húmāo Zhōu—Twin Spirit Province. Flat land. No fortress terrain. "Swift incursion," the generals said.
They'd looked so smug. As if winter was a weapon they owned.
"Azar—we have to MOVE!!"
Bahman's voice cracked like a whip beside me. I turned, dizzy, my rifle shaking in my hand—not from weakness, but from the sheer overload of everything happening at once. Two straight days of trudging through the twin-tail delta had drained us dry. Every step forward had been bought with someone's life. At some point the mud stopped being mud; it became something thicker, darker.
"Bahman—this is madness!" I shouted, throat burning. "They said this terrain was NOTHING. No cliffs! No chokepoints! What is this cursed hellscape?!"
"Baraz is dead!" he spat, voice shredding. "A Qi spear—straight to the ribs. Exploded in his chest. Took five men with him."
He shook his head once, like he was trying to fling the memory off him—but the haunted look in his eyes stayed. A man aged ten years in the last ten hours.
We stumbled out of the mangrove's suffocating shade and into the open. The plain stretched ahead, wide and cruel. Smoke bled from the distant city in thick plumes, staining the air with ash.
Dozens of us clustered at the forest's mouth, panting, waiting for someone—anyone—to decide our fate. The first wave, the doomed wave, watching our future shrink into a single, brutal wedge of land.
The commander was shouting—of course he was—but my heart hammered too loudly for me to hear much of him. Each beat felt like a fist to the sternum.
Then someone—an elder soldier, voice worn like river stones—began to pray over us. It was steady. Grounded. A little desperate.
"Iron Sage, steady our hands and clear our thoughts.
Teach me wisdom before anger, strength after fear.
Walk with me through every struggle, seen or unseen.
Let your storm sharpen my courage—
Not drown it."
A few soldiers murmured along, trembling.
The commander rose in his saddle, eyes bright with zealotry or stupidity—it was impossible to tell the difference anymore.
"MEN!" he bellowed. "All that stands between us and victory is a city we have ALREADY scorched!"
A cheer rose from the mounted officers. The foot soldiers stayed silent. Heavy. Human.
"Let us step forth—
And have metal touch flesh.
CHARGE!!!"
Like cattle driven into the slaughterhouse, like martyrs sprinting toward altars they never asked for, we ran.
Some screamed.
Some cried.
Some prayed so fast the words sounded like a spell meant to bind their own fear.
"Gods… please…" I rasped, barely hearing myself. My uniform was soaked—blood, swamp water, gun oil, sweat, maybe tears. Hard to tell anymore.
"Show me the doors others miss…
The chances hiding in plain sight…"
I whispered a prayer to the god of fate, of time, of trickery—any deity bored enough to notice a single foot soldier sprinting toward death.
We hadn't made it even a quarter across the field when bodies began to drop. Holes punched clean through their chests. Heads snapping back. Blood misting like red fog.
A shriek split the heavens:
"EMBER HAWK VOLLEY!!!"
My head snapped up.
Firebirds spiraled down—literal birds sculpted from flame and Qi—each one leaving a smoldering trail across the sky. Their wings beat heatwaves into the air, warping the horizon like a mirage.
"Oh gods—there's a CULTIVATOR—where are the mages?!" someone screamed beside me.
He didn't get to hear anyone answer.
A hawk dove into him and erupted—molten feathers slicing into everything nearby. His scream burned out before his body hit the ground.
We were the first wave.
Which meant we were the first to regret breathing today.
I heard Bahman before I saw him.
"AZAR—WATCH OUT!!!"
I jerked my head upward—
And the sky fell.
A hawk larger than the others was tearing straight toward me, its core burning white-hot, like a newborn sun. Its cry crackled with pure destruction.
Instinct made me lift my rifle, though it was nothing but a stick compared to the thing descending on me.
The world slowed.
I could hear my heartbeat, loud and uneven. I could smell the ash. I could see each burning feather swirling around the creature like a halo of doom.
The hawk opened its beak—
And then—
Everything went white.
Everything went heat.
Then—
Nothing.