The battlefield was fire. Smoke. Screams.
And blood.
It clung to General Kael Ardyn's hands like ink. Thick, warm, and deep crimson. It soaked through the grooves of his armor, tracing each line like veins like it belonged there.
The youngest general in the Empire's history stood on a ridge of broken stone, overlooking the burning camp below. He was seventeen.
The war drums had stopped.
Because the men who beat them were dead.
"Retreat!" someone screamed from the charred plains. "We're surrounded!"
They weren't wrong.
But it was too late.
Kael's grip tightened around his sword, the once-glorious blade now chipped and scorched. His mind raced. The enemy had moved in from behind the eastern ridge an impossible maneuver. It had been their strongest flank. The one they couldn't have reached.
Unless… someone betrayed them.
His breathing grew shallow.
A sharp pain bloomed in his chest. Not fear. Not shock. Something else. He looked down. A spear. Thrust clean through the gap in his bullet proof armor.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed onto the cracked earth, the world spinning around him. Voices blurred. bullets shots like distant bells. The sky was blackening.
No…
Not here.
Not like this.
He had dreamed of victory, of peace. Of returning home.
Home…
Where his father waited.
"You'll come back, right?"
His father's voice echoed in memory. That quiet, tired smile. Always scribbling notes in his office, piles of parchment all around him. The smell of old ink and warm bread.
"Just don't die before you read the ending. I think you'll love it."
Kael coughed. Blood spilled from his mouth.
His vision blurred, then darkened.
The world faded. But his lips still moved.
"…the book," he whispered. "Let me read it. Just once."
His favorite story. The one his father wrote.
"The Rise of the Hollow Core."
He never reached the final page. Always saving it. For the right moment.
Please… just let me finish it.
The pain faded. The sounds disappeared.
And then...
Darkness.
Silence.
Nothing.
End.