The night sky bled red, as though the crescent moon itself had been wounded—its pale curve marred by the blood spilled upon the earth below.
The city I had lived in all my life no longer recognised me, and I scarcely recognised it in return. Even stripped of light, it spoke in thunder. The distant roar of heavy artillery rolled across the fields like an oncoming storm, each report pressing against the ribs. My hands trembled around the stock of my rifle.
Boom.
The sound tore the air apart—then silence followed, thick and watchful.
The cultivators had held the line as best they could, but the shape of the war had soured. Supplies thinned to memory. Reinforcements had not come. Hope, too, had become a rationed thing, portioned carefully so it would not run out all at once.
"Oh—Abrar. There you are."
Kayna dragged herself from a crawling position and pressed her back against the broken wall beside me, clutching her gun as though it were a charm against fate itself.
"How did you know it was me?" I asked, forcing my breath into order. My heart felt as though it had been stabbed and forgotten.
She gave a small, brittle laugh. "The silhouette," she said. "It fits you."
I followed her gaze upward, toward the wounded moon, and released a breath I hadn't known I was holding.
"Do you think they made it to the next province?" she asked. Her voice was thin—like life used to be, before the world learned new ways to kill.
"I think so," I said. "It's been three days."
It sounded like reassurance.
It was a prayer.
After our last victory, the enemy had grown patient—and clever. Steel had given way to distance. Artillery now spoke where blades once had, and their mages carved the heavens open with fire and frost.
"You know," Kayna murmured, her breath misting in the red winter air, "I always wanted to be a cultivator. I used to pester my father endlessly—beg him to take me to one of the sects."
I looked at her then, and remembered why I had enlisted. Not only to feed my family, but because I, too, had grown up on stories—of great cultivators, of ascents beyond flesh, beyond fear, beyond dying nameless in the mud.
"Do you think help will arrive?" she asked suddenly.
"Like the sun tomorrow," I replied.
The earth answered instead.
A streak of ice tore through the sky like a fallen star. The ground convulsed beneath us.
"Kamom is dead," she said when the echoes finally faded.
Then, quieter still: "Pricha was struck by a fireball earlier."
Her arms tightened around her weapon.
"He wanted to travel the world one day."
I stared upward, mute. The heavens offered no reply.
By now it was clear—the enemy knew our condition. They smelled weakness. My feet were numb, my stomach twisted with bile, yet my body refused the mercy of emptiness.
Boom.
Fire ripped across the sky. The air filled with blood, ruin, and things that should never have been torn from the human form.
For a moment—a shameful, fleeting one—the thought of running crossed my mind. Desertion coiled at the back of my neck like a bad knot, tightening with every breath.
I let it pass.
I thought of my family. I hoped they had escaped. I longed for the day this would end—for the moment I could see Mother and Sunan again, and know the world had not taken everything.
"I pray I don't die tonight," Kayna whispered, her eyes fixed on something far beyond the battlefield.
Qi surged through the heavens—ice screaming across the firmament like a comet possessed, its voice a war cry torn straight from hell. Across what had become no man's land, power fell like meteors, each impact biting with the unforgiving cruelty of winter.
I reached into my coat and produced the rice balls I had saved, pressing one into Kayna's hand.
"Thank you," she said quietly. After a pause, she added, "I heard the cultivators might be planning to summon a mythical beast."
"Oh," I breathed.
I wasn't sure whether to hope—or to mourn in advance.
Then—
Whirr.
The sound was wrong. Too smooth. Too deliberate.
"What is that?" I asked, lifting my gaze toward the sky.
Against the red moon, something emerged from the darkness—vast, angular, unmistakable.
"An airship," Kayna said, springing to her feet, awe and terror warring in her voice.
An airstrike.
The thought struck like ice through the spine.
I raised my rifle, gripping it as though it were the last thread tying my mind together.
"Am I… not going to look back when the sun comes tomorrow?" Kayna whispered.
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