Silence.
Noise.
The wind soft and calm.
The air carried the smell of blood, iron, and gunpowder.
Silence dragged longer across the battlefield.
Soldiers ran.
Fell.
Died from bullets.
Carnage everywhere.
Tankers fired.
Rifles screamed.
Bullets rained.
Iron clashed against iron.
Soldiers crawled, stood, and fell again.
Commanders shouted orders,
their voices buried under explosions.
1... 2... 3... 4...
Boom!
"Run!"
"Ruuuun!"
"Run for your lives!"
Voices shattered through the smoke.
"Survive!"
"Free yourself!"
Soldiers from both kingdoms
Arian and Naryan
screamed, ran, fell, bled.
This wasn't war anymore.
This was the end.
No one fought for victory now.
They fought just to breathe.
Just to not die.
Only twenty Naryan soldiers remained alive.
No more. No less.
The Arian side twenty-two,
counting their two commanders:
Commander 9th,
and Commander Cruella,
who was given her title after the deaths of
Commander Stone and Commander Knight
9th's twin brother.
Silence again.
Then chaos.
The ground trembled as a giant figure stepped forward,
covered head to toe in steel
a war suit glowing red from fire and blood.
Commander 9th.
He swung his hammer,
the earth cracked.
He tried to dodge,
but an explosion hit him from the left.
He fell.
Hard.
As he tried to rise, Ema fired.
Bullets tore through the smoke.
Cruella shouted, running toward him,
firing to cover 9th.
The entire Naryan force
all what was left of them
rushed like wolves toward one man.
They didn't care about rank or honor.
They wanted to kill a ghost
the last of the Arian warlords.
9th struggled to lift his gun,
his armor shaking,
his blood dripping through the cracks.
Then BOOM.
Blackwell's cannon fired.
A single shot.
Silence followed.
When the smoke cleared,
9th's helmet rolled on the dirt
blood spilling from the steel.
A hole clean through his head.
Cruella froze.
For a heartbeat, she couldn't breathe.
Then she screamed
rage and despair in one sound
and ran forward, firing at the Naryans.
But it didn't matter.
The world was ending.
The war was over,
and both kingdoms were dead.
No side was winning anymore.
No side was standing.
Arian or Naryan
all of them were already gone.
And the battlefield,
once loud with war cries,
now echoed only with
silence.