Behind the mighty walls of Iskhalin, the noise of drills and marching feet create an illusion of strength. Rows of soldiers moved with perfect discipline. The clang of weapons and synchronized steps echoed like a song of unity. But beneath that surface, something fragile stirred. Not a weakness of steel or numbers, but a quiet splintering of belief.
"Sometimes I wonder," whispered a young Iskhalin soldier to his comrade while stacking shields inside the armory. "is victory really worth more than the faces we'll never see again?"
His comrade, Khavid, turned slowly. His face was hardened like the earth in late autumn, but his eyes held the rain that never fell. "You're still thinking about that village, aren't you? The one near the river border?"
The young soldier nodded subtly. "I grew up near there. We used to trade crops…. My mother was once healed by one of their women. But yesterday I saw their bodies scorched by the fire we lit ourselves."
"Keep your voice down," Khavid warned though without malice. His grip on his sword tightened. "We can't talk like this."Yet even Khavid wasn't immune. The same memories gnawed at him in silence – cries, smoke, and the acrid stench of burning flesh. His nights were riddled with dreams that left him gasping, unable to speak of them.
In the shadows of the rear barracks, where laughter and shared prayers once echoed, new kinds of conversations began to grow-unseen, like mold in damp wood."Are we still human?" the young soldier asked one night, with only Khavid for company. "Or are we just the fingers of a madman's amition?"
Khavid didn't answer immediately. Instead, he sat heavily on a wooden crate, eyes blank as he started at the Iskhaling flag hanging across the wall. "Sharrfan… he never sees the faces we kill. To him, it's just numbers. And war games."
Outside, the thundering of war drums continued. Their commander barked commands with a thunderous voice, as if the sound alone could drown out the doubts blooming among the ranks."Train until sweat drains your body. Better that than bleeding on the field!" shouted Commander Baghiah.
But in the pauses between commands, some eyes turned toward the ground. Some feet hesitated in their steps. A splinter of uncertainty had pierced through armor.
"If this is truly for Iskhalin," Khavid pondered during formation, his step lagging for half a heartbeat, : why does it feel like we're slowly burning ourselves alive?"
An older soldier nearby noticed and muttered under his breath, "We all know, lad. But knowing and daring t act, those are two different things."
Up above, on the tower's balcony, Sharrfan stood still, his eyes scanning the horizon. Smoke curled faintly from the far edges of the west, clearly from Eirindale's war drills. No unease marred his face, only a thin smile of someone who believed the outcome was already decided."Let them come," he murmured. "The more they strike, the deeper they fall into the trap I've prepared."
Behind him, Zahill, his cold and cunning advisors, delivered his report."There are murmurs, my lord. Whispers of doubt among the soldiers."
Sharrfan turned sharply. His expression hardened like chiselled stone. "Cut out any tongue that whispers. A spark can grow into a wildfire if left alone."Still, his command could not erase the guilt taking root below.
In a forgotten corner beneath the barracks, a soldier had scribbled on the wall with charcoal, not plans of rebellion, but a poem:
"If this land is washed by blood that does not deserve it,Then history will not call us heroes,But ghosts haunting the memories of orphan children."Another soldier read it in silence, tracing the word "orphaned" with trembling fingers. He did not erase it. He knew it to be true.
As the drills resumed, a coldness crept among them, not of the wind, but of conviction slowly eroding."Are we still on the right side of this war?" asked a weary young soldier during their evening rest."Asking questions like that," his senior replied, "can make you disappear. But… I wonder too."
Doubt spread like hairline cracks across a sheet of glass. And with the distant drums of Eirindale growing louder by the day, more soldiers began to question what they were really fighting for.
Back in the strategy room, Sharrfan stabbed a dagger to the map."They'll attack from the west. We'll be ready. We strike first, we cut off the dragon's head before it breathes."
The commanders around him nodded. But some shared glances-subtle, uncertain. They stood tall, but their eyes had lost their fire.
In the hallway behind, Khavid heard whispers from a soldier passing by:"It won't be long now. This burden is too heavy for our hearts."Khavid replied quietly, "If war comes, I don't know who I'll kill. The enemy or my self."
The smoke on the horizon thickened, Eirindale's preparations rising in defiance. And though most of Iskhalin's troops remained sharp and unwavering, a quiet war had already begun inside a few of them.What tey didn't know, what none of the generals knew, was how close some were to breaking
**
Zahill's Hidden ThreadWhile drills continued and formations held strong, Zahill moved through the halls like a shadow. He watched everything, but his eyes saw only what served him.
"The ranks hold steady," reported one officer.Zahill nodded, but his lips curled into a faint sneer. "Of course they do," he muttered, more to himself. "Fear is the glue. And fear, my friend, sticks tighter than loyalty."
In secret, Zahill had begun preparing contingency measures, not out of fear of Eirindale, but of weakness within. He had ordered secret surveillance on certain soldiers, especially those who served in the border villages
"You think they will break?" one of his spies asked.."They already have," Zahill answered coldly. "But their bones still move. That is all that matters."In private, Zahill kept a ledger of names, soldiers marked not as traitors, but as 'unstable'. His plan was not to counsel them, but to discard them at the right time. Quietly. Efficiently.
Yet, he never reported these findings to Sharrfan.To the tyrant ruler, everything was perfect. Zahill preferred it that way. He needed Sharrfan's delusions intact, because in them, Zahill could act freely.
"Let the cracks widen," he whispered one night as he dipped his pen in ink. "Cracks make perfect places to plant poison."Unseen by the rest, Zahill's true allegiance was not to Sharrfan, nor to Iskhalin. It was to control, pure, absolute control.The war ahead, to him, was just another theatre.
And as the night deepened and war drums echoed faintly from Eirindale, Zahill looked out the window with a smirk."Let them burn," he murmured. "In fire, new shapes are forged."
Behind him, the soldiers trained and sweated, oblivious. The commanders barked, the drums beat, and the young soldier whispered a prayer he wasn't sure should reach the sky.
No one knew what cracked deeper that week, the stone beneath their boots, or the hearts that still beat behind the armor.And so, Iskhalin marched on. Uniform in shape. Fractured in soul.