Chapter 13 – The Great War (Part I: 1914–1916)
The storm that broke in 1914 was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
Ivar had lived through the fall of Rome, the Crusades, the Mongol thunder, revolutions and empires. He had seen steel give way to powder, kings give way to republics, and yet nothing compared to this. The Great War was not fought for survival, or freedom, or even conquest. It was fought because nations had tied themselves in knots of pride and fear — and when one thread snapped, the whole rope dragged the world into the abyss.
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Sarajevo, June 1914
He was in the Balkans when it began. Sarajevo was a city tense with ambition and resentment, a chessboard of Austrians, Serbs, and shadows whispering in alleys. Ivar knew the scent of war, and it hung heavy in the air that summer.
He was there on the day the Archduke fell.
Not close enough to stop the shot, though his instincts had screamed at him that the parade route was a mistake. He heard the crack of Gavrilo Princip's pistol echo down the street, saw the chaos explode — horses rearing, soldiers shouting, citizens screaming. Blood spread across the Archduke's white uniform like a cruel flower.
Ivar caught the sight of Princip being dragged down by guards, his face a mask of fanatic triumph. He did not interfere. This was not his war to stop. He only bowed his head. He had seen such sparks before. He knew what came next.
And he was right.
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The Storm Breaks
By August, Europe was ablaze.
Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized to defend the Serbs. Germany marched to defend Austria. France moved against Germany. Britain joined in after Belgium was violated.
It was a chain reaction — a storm of alliances. By the time the dust settled, the whole world was marching to slaughter.
Ivar enlisted not under a single flag, but under many. His face was young enough to pass for a soldier in any army. His experience made him valuable wherever he fought. He did not care for nationalism, nor for politics. He fought because he knew the gods demanded survival, and because he refused to sit idle while men butchered one another without learning the lessons of history.
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The Western Front – 1914
The Western Front was madness.
Ivar first saw it in Belgium — green fields torn apart by shells, villages reduced to rubble, civilians fleeing with only what they could carry. The Germans advanced like a machine, disciplined, efficient, relentless. The Allies resisted with equal fury.
At the Marne, he stood among French soldiers who sang defiantly as they charged. Machine guns cut them down like scythes through wheat. He moved through the chaos with his twin swords, cutting paths where rifles jammed, breaking German lines in flashes of steel. A French officer called him l'Ange de Tempête — the Angel of the Storm. The name spread.
But there was no angel in the trenches.
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Trenches
By late 1914, the war bogged down. Trenches scarred the earth from the North Sea to Switzerland. Mud, rats, lice, and death were constant companions.
Ivar lived among them. He ate the same stale bread, drank the same foul water, huddled in the same freezing mud. Soldiers whispered about him — that he never seemed to fall ill, that wounds closed too fast, that he fought with the endurance of ten men. He laughed with them, sang with them, carried the wounded on his back.
In the dark, when the shells stopped for a moment, he bowed his head in silence. Not prayers of begging — never begging. Only gratitude. Thanks for survival. Thanks for the chance to endure another dawn.
The gods, he believed, were watching. And he would not fail them.
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1915 – Gas and Fire
In April 1915, he saw the future of war at Ypres.
The Germans released chlorine gas into the wind, a yellow-green cloud that rolled low and silent. Soldiers coughed, choked, clawed at their throats as lungs burned. Horses screamed. Men fell clawing the mud, dying without a blade touching them.
Ivar threw himself into the chaos, dragging soldiers out of the gas, forcing rags soaked in urine over their mouths to filter the poison. He did not choke. His blood, blessed by gods, rejected the poison. But he felt the water in their bodies searing, tearing them apart from within. He bowed his head when the gas lifted, surrounded by corpses.
The world had crossed a line. The storm had found new teeth.
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Gallipoli
That same year, he fought in Gallipoli, where Allied troops tried to break through the Ottoman lines. The beaches became slaughterhouses, soldiers cut down before they could even reach cover.
Ivar led charges up ridges where bullets fell like rain, his twin swords flashing as he cut trenches into Ottoman defenses. He fought beside Anzac troops, Australians and New Zealanders who joked even as they bled. They gave him a name: The Immortal.
When the campaign failed, when ships withdrew leaving fields littered with dead, Ivar whispered thanks again. For surviving. For learning. For carrying the memory of the fallen when no one else could.
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Verdun, 1916
Then came Verdun.
A battle that lasted nearly a year, where French and German armies hurled themselves at each other over a strip of land already reduced to mud and bone.
Ivar was there from the first shell. He fought in the tunnels beneath the forts, his blades flashing in the dark, steel meeting bayonets, blood soaking the stone. He carried ammunition, hauled wounded men through mud waist-deep, cut Germans down when trenches were overrun.
He saw men lose their minds, screaming for mothers, clawing at their own faces. He saw entire units erased in an instant by shellfire.
Through it all, he survived.
"Why do you never die?" a French soldier asked him once, trembling in the mud.
"Because someone must live," Ivar answered.
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The Somme
In July 1916, the British launched the Somme offensive. On the first day alone, 60,000 men fell.
Ivar charged with them, running across no man's land as machine guns tore lines into their ranks. He moved faster, ducked lower, cut through barbed wire with steel when others were shredded. His swords gleamed as he reached German trenches and carved paths where bullets failed.
The slaughter was unimaginable. But Ivar kept walking, kept fighting, kept surviving.
At night, when the guns quieted, he whispered thanks once more. Thanks for living. Thanks for the gods who let him walk through fire and return.
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End of Part I
By the end of 1916, Europe was exhausted. Verdun and the Somme had drained nations dry. Millions lay dead. Millions more wounded.
And yet the war continued.
Ivar stood in the mud of the trenches, blades sheathed, eyes turned to the sky. He whispered gratitude, not complaint.
"Every battle is a gift," he murmured. "Every scar, an offering. Every survival, a prayer."
The storm was not finished.
It would only grow.
And Ivar would endure it all.
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Do you want me to roll straight into Chapter 14 – The Great War, Part II (1917–1918) — covering America's entry, tanks, planes, the final push, and the armistice — or would you like me to add a small interlude chapter between Part I and Part II to show Ivar's mindset in the brief pauses between battles?