(Planet Ixtal, the Cult Army, a random soldier's POV)
As the Cult army landed on Ixtal in waves, the anger its soldiers felt over the destruction of its holy soil became boundless.
Standing over its destroyed historical sites, as they bent down to touch the harrowed grounds beneath their feet, many of them felt something inside their chests crack open in a way that battle never had.
This was not the clean ruin of war.
This was erasure.
All across the planet, the land told the same story.
Historical sites were reduced to skeletal outlines scorched into the ground, academies that once trained legends collapsed into blackened stone, streets that had carried parades and laughter now buried beneath layers of glassed soil and drifting soot, as if the planet itself had been flayed and left exposed to the stars.
Ixtal was supposed to be sacred.
