"If death wants me," Leroy roared, voice carrying like thunder across the valley, "then let him cross this river himself!"
The wind seized his words and hurled them across the field. For a heartbeat, the enemy's advance faltered, the soldiers pausing, caught between courage and the creeping dread that rippled through the air.
The river behind him surged, dark and wild, as though stirred by his defiance. Its surface frothed and boiled, swallowing the banks, the sound of the current roaring like the growl of something alive. Beneath their boots, the earth shuddered, a deep, low tremor that no human army could command.
And though Leroy did not know it, far below that trembling ground, something ancient stirred, something that had once breathed fire into kingdoms and felt the pulse of his bloodline thrum awake above.
He lifted his sword again, blood running down his arm, his breath coming ragged and uneven. His eyes burned fiercely, unbroken, and the color of defiance itself.
