Damien’s POV……

War did not arrive with a scream.

It arrived with a silence so thick it pressed against my skull.

The battlefield stretched before us like a scar torn across the earth—fields once green now blackened, veins of corruption pulsing beneath cracked soil. The sky above churned unnaturally, clouds rotating in slow, violent spirals as if the world itself were being dragged toward some unseen abyss.

I lifted my fist.

Behind me, my warriors halted as one.

These were ...