The Rammaset Empire wore war the way some men wore old injuries.
Not as an open wound.Not as a fresh scar.
But as something that had healed badly—split open again and again until the pain became background noise, until no one remembered how it felt to stand without it.
The war with Rinnett had outlived songs, seasons, and promises. It had grown older than the children fighting in it, older than the men commanding them. Peace was no longer something people remembered. It was something they imagined, vaguely, like a story told by a drunk grandfather who couldn't quite recall the ending.
War was not an event. War was the climate.
...
The March
Dawn had not yet broken when the southern barracks stirred.
Boots struck packed earth in steady rhythm, raising dust that clung to skin and uniforms alike. Rifles were checked without conversation. Armour straps tightened with practised fingers. Horses stamped and snorted, uneasy with the smell of oil and powder hanging thick in the air.
A lieutenant walked the line, his voice sharp enough to cut through fatigue.
"Third Battalion moves in twenty minutes. This is not a drill. Rinnett crossed the Grey Ridge last night. Expect artillery by noon."
No one flinched.
A young soldier leaned close to the man beside him, whispering as they adjusted their packs.
"How long you think this one lasts?"
The other didn't look at him.
"Long enough to miss winter," he said. "Maybe long enough not to see spring."
They fell silent as the column began to move.
They marched anyway.
Because soldiers did not get to choose which world they fought for—only which orders they followed, and how quietly they learned to die.
...
The Frontier
Far from the capital's clean stone and measured streets, the war had carved its name into the land.
Villages near the frontier lived like animals under constant threat. Doors were bolted at dusk. Windows boarded. Livestock kept in cellars rather than fields. Burned homes dotted the horizon like broken teeth. Entire forests stood as blackened skeletons, stripped bare by decades of shelling.
Some nights the sky glowed red with reflected fire.
Other nights, it glowed faintly blue.
On those nights, parents pulled their children close and sang softly, voices trembling:
Sleep, little star,the cannons are far—but the Veins know where you are.
It was meant to comfort. It never did.
...
Lies That Sound Like Hope
In the capital, the Broadcast Towers filled the air with calm, polished voices.
"Our forces advance with discipline.""Morale remains high.""Rinnett losses exceed expectations.""Victory draws near."
The words drifted through markets and taverns alike.
But in those same taverns, mugs were lifted more slowly. Conversations dropped to whispers. Rumours passed hand to hand like contraband.
A battalion swallowed overnight by a fog that smelled of iron.
Trenches found empty, weapons scattered as if dropped mid-step.
Strange lights burning in the eastern sky.
Soldiers waking from dreams of a place they'd never seen of oceans under silver clouds, cities of glass and somehow knowing its name.
Terra. The Empire called it hysteria.
The people called it memory.
"The Veins are remembering something," they whispered. "And wars always get worse when the world remembers."
...
Across the Line
Rinnett was no innocent mirror.
Their banners bore iron and frost. Their generals traded lives for territory without hesitation. Their nobles spoke of stolen ancestral land with religious fervour. In the north, their Scientists listened too closely to the mountains, whispering to things that did not answer kindly.
Yet their people feared Rammaset as much as Rammaset feared them.
Because war, prolonged enough, erases difference.
Two nations bleeding long enough begin to resemble one another in cruelty, in desperation,in the quiet acceptance of the horrors of war.
...
The Emperor Watches
At the heart of the capital, Emperor Alaric Valen stood beside a window taller than most homes, his hands clasped behind his back.
Smoke coiled on the distant hills.
His advisors waited behind him, shifting uneasily.
"The treasury resists further funding," one said.
"The Rinnett envoy threatens siege," another added.
"The people are restless," a third warned. "They fear the Veins' pulse more than the enemy."
The Emperor did not turn.
"We cannot yield," he said.
His voice was calm. Certain.
"Rammaset survives," he continued. "That is the law of our blood."
No one argued.
They all felt it—the truth beneath the words.
Survival had replaced justice long ago.
...
The Thread Unseen
The war burned lives like fire through dry grass.
The Empire prepared itself for another cycle of loss.
No one noticed the quiet barrack on the edge of the outer districts.
No one marked the name of the soldier who slept there, with no visitors, no family worth remembering, no future beyond orders and battle.
No one knew that the next fracture in history would not begin on a battlefield, or in a palace, or beneath a temple's dome.
It would begin with a summons.
But for now, the world churned.The war raged and the Veins pulsed.
And Zues held its breath.