A few days passed peacefully in the capital, the same could not said about the battle field though.

  They had stopped calling it the front weeks ago.

  There was no front anymore — only wasteland.

  The ground had forgotten what grass was. Every step sank into mud slick with the colour of liver. The air smelled of rust, sweat, and sweet decay and of the perfume of men who had lived too long beside death.

  Enough blood had flowed trough the lands to even make the wells have red water.

  The soldier’s name was Rahn. He didn’t remember when he had stopped having a last name. The war had eaten it, like it had eaten everything else.

  The morning began in silence. Then, somewhere across the ridge, a Rinnett cannon spoke.

  The sound didn’t echo — it collapsed the air.

  Dirt sprayed upward, hot, carrying bone and wire and pieces of a tent.

  “Down!” someone shouted, but the command came too late.

  A boy, barely sixteen, with freckles and a mismatched helmet — was caught mid-step.

  One moment, he was whole.

  Then there was just a pink mist where his chest had been.

  The mist drifted back down as rain.

  By the time Rahn and his unit reached the trench line, the world had gone monochrome — brown mud, grey sky, and the dull red of everything else.

  Their orders were simple: “Burn it all. Bring back what’s still breathing.”

  The corpses had begun to freeze in the night, hardening into shapes that looked sculpted. Some still sat upright, helmets filled with stagnant water. Others were half-buried, their fingers clawing upward as if the ground itself had swallowed them mid-breath.

  The Rinnett camp lay across a field of ruins there were shattered engines, collapsed bunkers, a graveyard of machines.

  They went in at dawn.

  The fog was so thick that the fire from their rifles painted ghosts on the mist. Rahn advanced crouched low, bayonet fixed, breathing through his teeth to keep the stench out.

  A Rinnett soldier leapt out from behind an overturned carriage, screaming in a language Rahn didn’t know.

  He stabbed before thinking.

  The bayonet went in under the ribs, once, twice — the sound was wet and small.

  The man’s breath came out in bubbles. His eyes, pale green, stared right into Rahn’s for a moment before they glazed over.

  Rahn twisted the blade free and let him fall. He had been in this hell scape for more than three years now.

  People said you remembered your first kill, but for his first kill he had planted bomb in the tunnels beneath the rinett cam, blowing about fifty soldiers to high heavens.

  Someone behind him was screaming —it was not a battle cry, but the sound of someone discovering what was left of their leg.

  Blood pulsed from the stump in thick, rhythmic arcs, painting the mud in circles. Another soldier tore his own uniform into strips, pressing them down with both hands, yelling prayers into the mud.

  The prayers were useless. No god had come to save them, and no god planned to, because if some god had wanted to, this war would have been over 290 years ago.

  Finally the blood stopped, only because there was none left to flow.

  They found the Rinnett camp after an hour of fighting. It wasn’t a camp — it was a slaughter pen.

  Bodies were stacked in trenches, half-dissolved from the rain.

  The tents had melted into the ground, fabric fused with flesh. The banners were unreadable — only the colors of burned cloth and the faint, copper smell of rot.

  Inside what used to be a command post, Rahn found a child’s shoe.

  He stared at it for too long, wondering what kind of soldier had brought his son’s shoe to war.

  Then he realised it wasn’t leather. It was skin.

  “Clear!” someone shouted, though nothing here was clear.

  Rahn moved to the centre of the camp, torch ready. The signal flare went up — green.

  A single command crackled through the radio:

  “Burn it. All of it.”

  The first flames took slowly. The humidity of the world resisted the fire like an old wound refusing to heal. Then something caught — the oil drums, maybe, or the soaked linen but the fire grew teeth.

  The air screamed. The corpses ignited. The wind turned orange-red.

  Rahn dropped the torch and fell to his knees as the heat slammed into his face. His skin prickled, his hair smoked.

  Behind him, someone began laughing hysterically — the kind of laugh that comes when the body forgets how to cry. Enough pain can do that to a man.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Another soldier muttered over and over, “They were already dead, they were already dead,” as if trying to convince himself of anything.

  When the fire had eaten enough to be satisfied, what remained of the squad limped back to camp.

  Half of them were missing pieces. For some it was fingers, for some it was ears and eyes....but what most of them had lost was Sanity.

  Rahn’s arm was sliced open from wrist to elbow, but he didn’t feel it. The blood had already dried into his sleeve, making it stiff.

  The medic asked him what happened. He said nothing. There was no language left that could make the truth less ugly.

  Two days later, they brought him before Prince Cyran.

  The command tent was large but smelled of the same burnt oil and rot as the field. Maps covered the walls — red and blue lines bleeding into each other.

  Cyran stood over the table, uniform immaculate despite the mud that swallowed everyone else. His expression was carved stone. He was trying to be regal but the tired body rebelled.Compared to the soldiers he seemed almost too unbearably human.

  When Rahn entered, he saluted weakly with his good arm.

  Cyran looked up from the reports. “You were at Cathar Ridge?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” Rahn rasped. His throat was raw from smoke.

  “What did you see?”

  Rahn swallowed. “Nothing left to see. Just the rot left behind by the war, sire."

  For a long time, Cyran said nothing. He just stared at the map, the neat lines, the orderly chaos of strategy — and saw in his mind the faces behind the ink.

  At last, he spoke quietly. “They told me war was a test of honour and courage. But it feels more like disease.”

  Rahn blinked. “Disease, sir?”

  Cyran nodded slowly. “A sickness. The longer it lasts, the less anything matters — except surviving it. What else can a victim do but endure it. It's not a test of one's choosing, it is imposed.”

  He reached across the table and poured a measure of water into a tin cup, handing it to Rahn.

  “Drink,” he said. “You’ve seen enough of what victory will cost.”

  Rahn hesitated. “And if it doesn’t end, sire?”

  Cyran looked toward the tent’s opening, where the rain still fell in endless grey sheets.

  “Then the rot will eat away at the bones of the empire and then claim the crown,” he said softly. “And we’ll all be buried in the same mud.”

  When Rahn left, the prince remained alone in the tent, staring down at the map.

  His hand hovered over the red markers representing his dead men, and for the first time, he closed his eyes as though praying — not for victory, but for an ending.

  Outside, the rain kept falling, washing blood into the rivers that fed the empire’s heart.

  ...

  The rain over Rammstein never stopped anymore.

  It slid down the palace spires like molten glass, each drop carrying the faint scent of iron from the old furnaces in the eastern wing. The nobles said it was a blessing from the gods. Renard thought it smelled like rust and lies.

  He stood alone in the Hall of Laureates, staring up at the mural of the first conquest. The painted warriors bowed to the Dragon Throne, their faces blurred by centuries of smoke.

  All kneeling. All forgotten.

  He wondered how many of them had believed their loyalty would save them.

  Footsteps echoed across the marble.

  Lord Merris approached, his robes whispering like paper over stone. The minister’s face was ageless — not young, not old — carved smooth by politics and something less human.

  “You called for me,” Renard said without turning.

  “I rarely call for princes,” Merris replied, his tone smooth as oil.

  "Yet you did. Is this about the Order?" The prince asked.

  "Maybe." The minister replied. "I invited you to remember what you are owed.”

  "And what might that be?"

  "Don't act sly in front of me, My Prince. I have known you since you were twelve."

  Renard smirked. “Owed? My father gives everything to Cyran. Discipline this, diplomacy that. He treats me like a sword kept in its sheath for show.”

  "Maybe he thinks the Sword has no edge left, to cut the enemies." The minister said. “Every king needs his heir, and every heir needs his shadow. If you are not meant to polish the throne, My Prince. You were meant to claim it.”

  Renard’s eyes narrowed. “That’s treason.”

  The minister’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Only if you fail. The History is always written by the victors.”

  They moved into Merris’s private study, a room heavy with parchment and incense.

  The curtains were drawn, but the light from a single rune-lamp washed everything in pale silver. In the center of the desk sat a small obsidian disk etched with a crescent swallowing the sun.

  Renard paused. “You always keep that thing around?”

  “A reminder,” Merris said, fingers brushing the symbol. “the Night-bound Order. believes that power is not born from light or darkness, but from the moment one consumes the other. Balance is stagnation. Dominion lies in the eclipse.”

  "I know what it represents. I am a part of it." The prince answered. "What if someone see's it, like the minister of faith."

  "We don't need to worry." Merris replied as he opened a drawer and drew out a silver vial. Inside, something thick and black shimmered faintly — not liquid, not smoke.

  He handed the vial over. It was warm — disturbingly warm. It was pulsing faintly against Renard’s skin.

  “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Drink it,” Merris said simply. “You are ready. The Order has watched you since your campaigns in the southern provinces. We know your hunger, your brilliance, your fury. The throne deserves a ruler who will seize it, not one who waits to be offered it.”

  Renard turned the vial in his fingers, watching the dark fluid catch the lamplight like a starless sky.

  “And what does the order get in return?”

  "The favour of the future King."

  Later that night, Renard returned to his chambers overlooking the gardens.

  Cyran’s window burned faintly with candlelight across the courtyard — the dutiful heir still awake, no doubt reviewing battle plans like a saint doing penance.

  Renard popped the seal on the vial.

  The scent was faint — cold metal, dust, and rain. He brought it to his lips and almost laughed at himself. A prince drinking darkness because a priest in a robe told him to.

  He didn’t drink.

  He just whispered, “If you want me, come find me.”

  The shadows in the corner of the room moved towards him.

  Renard froze. The air thickened; the candle on his desk flickered sideways, bending toward the corner.

  Then the whisper came it was low, distant, and powerful.

  “You opened the door, little wolf.”

  He didn’t reply. Couldn’t reply.

  The voice chuckled with satisfaction.

  “Ambition is a kind of prayer. I always answer prayers.”

  The flame went out.

  At dawn, the servants found Renard still awake, sitting by the window, eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun met the storm clouds. His hand still held the silver vial, empty now, but pulsing faintly under the skin where a drop had fallen.