The mud was cold, but my body burned.
Every nerve felt flayed open, every vein too empty to carry what it should. My breath stuttered and scraped, the sound of it louder in my head than the clash of armies surrounding me. My cheek pressed into earth soaked with blood—his blood, my blood, the blood of too many men to count.
I tried to lift my head.
The world dragged against me. Smoke, screams, steel, all of it thick as water I was drowning in. My hair clung to my brow, sticky with sweat and crimson. My vision blurred in pulses—clear for a heartbeat, then smeared into shadows.
I remembered.
The commander's eyes, the furnace of them, locked with mine until the moment my blade pierced his chest. His fire extinguished, but not gone. No. It was inside me now, seared into marrow, burning me from within.
He had said it: all things break.
I could feel it—my body was already splintered.
