Fourteen months ago.
The battlefield camp in Ganlop was cloaked in a suffocating silence, the air heavy with the bitterness of defeat. Soldiers moved like shadows, avoiding their vice-commander like the plague, whose reckless charge into battle had sealed their fate. Their loss hung over them, but none felt it as keenly as Iyana.
She sat, hunched over on a cold stone, the dying embers of a campfire flickering weakly before her. Her gaze was hollow, empty, as though the very light had been drained from her life. The world around her was distant, muted—an unbreathable haze of grief that pressed down on her chest.
She had thought that throwing herself into the chaos of war might distract her, might silence the storm inside her. But even here, amidst the carnage, her soul screamed for him and only him.
His words echoed in her mind like a broken record that she couldn't stop, no matter how hard she tried.
