The first weapon hit the ground at 09:47.
A sword — standard Crushist infantry issue, forty inches of Earth-domain blessed steel that weighed three and a half pounds and that the man who dropped it had carried for eleven years. He didn't throw it. He didn't slam it down in rage or defiance. He opened his fingers, and the sword fell, and it landed in the mud with the soft, final sound of metal meeting earth — the sound of a man leaving a career.
His name was Corporal Orek Stonepath. Minotaur. Thirty-four years old. He had been walking south for three hours — just walking, because marching required formation, and formation required orders, and orders required a chain of command that had been severed by a Ghost with a long knife. One foot and then the other foot and then the first foot again, the mechanical process of a body in motion whose mind had checked out at approximately the moment when three blocks of amber fire had descended from the sky and the world had ended.
