And there was Salvatore.
Fighting like a demon, his bronze edge carving wide arcs through flesh and armor. He moved with fury, with fire, with pride bleeding from every motion. But he was only one man.
And pride could not save the ten thousand.
And if I didn’t act now, neither could I.
My jaw locked. Rage rose like bile.
“Cover me!” I roared to my men.
And then I ran—straight into the storm.
The battlefield swallowed me whole. Blood and mud dragged at my sandals. Severed limbs twitched in the churned earth. Arrows hissed overhead like serpents. Fires crackled from overturned carts—the air stank of burnt flesh. Screams blurred together, one endless howl.
But I had one focus.
If this army had a spine, it stood at the storm’s center.
The warlord of the Sea Peoples.
He loomed like a pillar in the chaos, ringed in corpses. His armor was lacquered black, etched with bone and feather. The remnants of human skin were stretched and dried across his shoulders as grotesque trophies. From his neck hung carrion birds, their shriveled wings whispering against the metal.
Then he turned. Saw me.
And grinned.
The grin of a godless man who welcomed death only so he could feed it to others first.
He lifted his weapon—broad, jagged, brutal, a bronze edge shaped like the rib of some ancient beast. His grin never wavered as he crooked a finger, beckoning me into the storm.
And still—I ran.
Not as a soldier.
Not for gold.
Not even for the war.
I ran for every man already fallen.
For the ten thousand who would never see home again.
For Amara—whose name pounded in my chest like a war drum.
The enemy warlord raised his blade.
I raised mine.
And in that instant—amid the smoke and screams, beneath the echoes of a thousand broken cries—I did not move as a general. I did not strike as a warrior.
I lunged as something else entirely.
I was every broken vow.
Every buried body.
Every scream that had died unheard.
