The war chamber stank of smoke and sanctimony.

  Torchlight flickered against polished obsidian walls, casting twisted shadows over the grand map spread across the central table—veins of gold threading through battle lines drawn in red. Outside, thunder rumbled, distant but insistent, a warning none of them would heed.

  Strategos Dareth stood at the head of the table, one gauntlet still slick with blood from the morning’s execution. His gaze swept over the eastern front with clinical detachment.

  “They’ll be overrun within the week,” he said, voice clipped. “Less if the weather turns.”

  “That flank was a mistake from the start,” muttered Lord Karl, reclining into velvet, as if he were not condemning hundreds to die. “Too exposed. Poorly supplied. We sent boys instead of soldiers.”

  “No. We sent expendables,” Dareth corrected.

  Karl smirked. “Same thing.”

  At the far end, General Ras leaned forward, his face lined with the wear of war, eyes sunken but still burning. “And now you want to send another?”

  Dareth slid a sealed scroll onto the table. “Not just another. Dawncrest’s failure.”

  A pause.

  Karl raised a brow. “Draven? I thought we buried that embarrassment behind a title and some rusted armor.”

  “We gave him a commander’s insignia,” Dareth said. “That’s more than he ever earned.”

  “He’s unfit,” Ras growled. “Barely passed his last field trial. Doesn’t even bear the Eos Sphere—”

  “That’s exactly why he’s perfect,” Karl interrupted smoothly. “He’s already broken. Send him to the slaughter with a banner and a noble death. The soldiers get their morale. We clean our hands.”

  “Like offering a lamb to wolves and calling it strategy,” Ras muttered.

  “Like offering a corpse to prophecy,” Karl replied.

  Silence fell.

  Rain pattered against the high windows, soft as ash. Beyond, the city moved on—unaware that their discarded prince had just been traded for time.

  “He won’t return,” Dareth said flatly. “And if by some miracle he does... perhaps we were wrong about what lies inside him.”

  Karl smiled, lazy and cold. “We never cared what lay inside him.”

  They sealed the decree.

  The war had been brutal.

  The Eastern Front had long been abandoned by any semblance of hope, a battlefield churned to mud and blood. The air reeked of death and decay. The sky above had bled to ash, and now, as the rain poured in torrents, the earth seemed as if it would swallow the fallen whole. Broken men, torn armor, crushed dreams.

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  Draven stood in the heart of it, already shoulder-deep in the chaos, his sword a blur of deadly light.

  His eyes burned with the power of Divine Eos, that cold, brutal force which surged through him with every strike. It did not feel like salvation. No. This was not the light he had imagined in his countless silent prayers. It was a weapon—too powerful to control, yet too valuable to squander.

  His feet sunk in the muck as he cleaved another Nyx soldier in half, the dark figure collapsing beneath his sword. The battlefield roiled with carnage—anguished cries, the clashing of steel, and the roar of the storm that mirrored the chaos below.

  "Fall back, fall back!" someone screamed from the distance, but Draven didn’t hear them. He had no need to. There was no retreat in his mind now.

  He moved like a predator, each motion fueled by the tempest inside him. His soldiers fought beside him, but hesitantly. They had heard the rumors of what he had become, of the unnatural glow pulsing beneath his skin. They did not know what he was—a god, a demon, or something worse.

  Draven’s sword cleaved through the air, carving a path through the chaos as Nyx forces pressed against his lines. Their jagged, cruel blades were born of destruction itself. But Draven was unyielding, his weapon cutting through them as though they were insects.

  But anger gnawed at him. These weren’t the faces of the enemy he hated most. No, it was the ones who had abandoned him. Those still hidden behind their walls, unsure whether to call him savior or executioner.

  He pushed the thought aside and focused. His soldiers needed him. Even if they didn’t understand why.

  A figure emerged from the throng of Nyx soldiers, towering over the smaller ones like a shadowed giant. This one was different. Darkened armor etched with ancient sigils. A blade forged in the depths of some forgotten abyss. It was a general—commander of this wave of destruction.

  Draven locked eyes with the creature.

  The general sneered. “So, you’ve come to play hero?” it growled, voice like grinding stone.

  Draven didn’t answer. His lips barely parted as he raised his sword, the power of Divine Eos thrumming beneath his skin. He stepped forward.

  The general laughed, its voice a rasp. "You think you can stop me? You’re nothing but a broken puppet of fate. Your power is a joke—a fragment of something far greater than you can control."

  Draven’s grip tightened around his sword, knuckles white. He took another step forward, pushing through the pain, the corruption, the battle itself. His body was a weapon—divine yet tainted. The general moved, its blade flashing through the storm like a serpent, striking fast, aiming for his throat.

  Draven parried with ease, his sword ringing out with each block. But the general was relentless, an embodiment of destruction.

  "You’re a fool," the general hissed. "You can’t win. The Nyx will consume everything."

  The general’s blade came crashing down, aimed at Draven’s heart. But Draven was faster, his blade slicing upward with violent force. The strike connected, splitting the air as the general’s body was cleaved in half, collapsing at Draven’s feet.

  As the general’s corpse fell to the earth, Draven stood amid the ruin—breathing, but barely human.

  The wind howled louder, carrying the scent of smoke and decay. The battlefield writhing with dying cries. Steel clattered. Thunder cracked, and in that flash of skyfire, a scout emerged through the haze, bearing the sigil of the capital.

  Young—too young to be here—but his face was pale with fear, not of death, but of the man before him.

  “My Lord Draven,” the boy said, kneeling quickly. “A message from the capital. From Lord Karl.”

  Draven didn’t speak, just turned his head slightly, eyes glowing faint beneath soaked strands of hair.

  The boy, trembling, continued. “He says the Eastern Front is expendable. No reinforcements will come. He advises a strategic withdrawal... or surrender.”

  Draven’s silence was a scream.

  Surrender. They would sacrifice this front, sacrifice him, just as they had always planned. A pawn in their council games.

  He turned his gaze to the scout. “And what did you think would happen when you came here to deliver that?”

  The boy flinched. “I—I only carry words, my Lord…”

  Draven exhaled slowly. “Then carry this one back.”

  With a twist of his blade, he drove it into the mud beside him, and Divine Eos crackled into the sky like a beacon of rebellion.

  “Tell Lord Karl—there will be no retreat. No surrender. This front will not fall. Not because of them. But because of me.”

  The boy nodded rapidly, stumbling back into the storm.

  Draven turned again to face the chaos, jaw clenched.

  Let them play politics. Let them whisper from their golden towers.

  He would carve survival into the bones of this battlefield—alone, if he must.

  Far beyond the storm, beneath a sky that did not bleed but devoured, the Realm of Nyx stirred.

  The void pulsed with slow, terrible rhythm—like a god breathing in its sleep. Shadows danced where light was forbidden, and the air tasted of ruin.

  In a citadel of bone and starlight, they watched.

  At the center, a figure emerged from the dark mist—tall, robed in tattered silk shimmering like oil on water. Its face a mask of ever-shifting shapes: wolf, woman, wraith, child.

  It spoke without voice, its presence rippling through the chamber like gravity bending time.

  “The broken one has chosen.”

  Another shape stepped forward—a general, draped in jagged armor blacker than the space between stars. “He defies them. Even now, surrounded.”

  The Nyx entity drifted in thought—or something older than thought.

  “He shines.”

  “But he bleeds your name,” the general replied, hesitant. “The Eos in him cracks.”

  A long pause. Then, a whisper like fate unraveling:

  “Good. Let the fracture widen. Let him feel the peace we offer. No chains. No thrones. Only truth.”

  The general lowered its head. “Shall I strike him?”

  “No.”

  The voice became a caress of shadow.

  “He walks toward us. Let him come.”

  Far above, in the fractured sky, a new star flickered into existence.

  And then vanished.