The soldiers lined up without hesitation. Joel led the advance, muscles tense, his heart beating at a ferocious pace. The field was a sea of ??screams, steel and magic sparking like broken lightning. Fire was in the air, and the stench of blood permeated everything.

  Joel's formation collided with the enemy, and the world reduced to a brutal choreography of blades, thrusts, magic, war cries, and pain. Joel advanced through the chaos, using every inch of space in front of him, dodging and slashing with precision, trying to keep the group together as the lines dissolved in a whirlwind of death.

  At times, he lost all sense of direction. The women's screams among the trees urged him forward. Every face he saw among the bodies made him fear it was Liria's. Desperate, he scanned each fallen figure, each familiar strand of hair amid the blood and dirt. His group disrupted the enemy line, opening a gap.

  "Cover them! Regroup on my signal!" he roared, and his men followed him like a shadow.

  Finally, among the bodies, Joel spotted her. Liria was on the ground, clutching her left thigh, her face pale but composed.

  "It's nothing lethal," she said, seeing his expression.

  Joel knelt beside her, assessing the wound. It was bleeding, and the muscle was damaged. Without care, she wouldn't be able to walk, and that in that field meant death.

  He looked around. His group had suffered casualties, but they remained relatively cohesive. The enemy forces were retreating, but they would soon regroup. There was no time to hesitate.

  "But you can't walk," he told her.

  "Obviously," she replied, forcing a mocking smile.

  Joel nodded to himself. He turned and shouted, "Retreat! Take the wounded and retreat south!"

  His men formed a perimeter and began to retreat, dragging other wounded with them, obeying Joel's determined voice more than common sense. The battle still raged around them, but Joel knew that staying would doom them all. The march was slow and tense, amid broken terrain and distant sounds of battle.

  "You look worse than me," Liria murmured, her voice hoarse, as he carried her on his shoulders.

  "I always look like this when I'm carrying heavy things," Joel replied, without turning his head.

  She smiled slightly, but her eyes never left the horizon. Neither of them spoke for the rest of the walk.

  In a nearby clearing, they came across a larger allied group, led by several officers. One of them, a man with an angular face and immaculate uniform, stepped forward when he saw Joel carrying Liria.

  "You're part of the center formation, right?" he asked, without waiting for confirmation. "Well done, the battle is already won. While you held the main line, the commander moved the veterans to flank from the west. They attacked the deep rear, destroyed the support units, and collapsed the enemy from within."

  Joel tilted his head, keeping his gaze fixed on the officer. "So that's what we were? A diversion?" he asked, his tone unchanged.

  The officer nodded indifferently. "A classic maneuver. We needed to keep the enemy's attention focused while the real blow was executed."

  "We lost more than half our platoon." Joel spoke without emphasis, but each word cut like a knife.

  "It was a necessary cost. The commander is pleased with the results... And truth be told, many didn't expect so many to survive."

  Joel lowered his gaze for a second, reflecting. Then he understood: they hadn't been soldiers in battle, but sacrificial pieces in a larger game, bait for the hook. His group, most of them inexperienced, had been offered up without hesitation.

  "So it was a game of calculation," he murmured.

  "War always is," the officer replied with a cold smile.

  Joel held his gaze for a moment longer, then walked on without another word, still carrying Liria.

  Before reaching the camp, during a brief stop along the way to reorganize the wounded, Joel pulled Liria away from the group and laid her down on a mossy rock. Wordlessly, he began cleaning her wound with water from a small wineskin. He took out a cloth bag containing makeshift bandages, dried leaves, and a dab of medicinal ointment.

  "Do you know what you're doing?" Liria asked, her expression unreadable.

  "Just enough so you don't lose your leg," Joel replied, tying the bandage securely.

  "Looks like you've done it before."

  "Let's assume so."

  She watched him for a few more seconds, but didn't insist. Joel continued his work with sure, swift movements. When he finished, he sat silently, still breathing heavily, his back straight and his gaze distant.

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  "I didn't expect it," Liria said after a pause.

  "No one expects to bleed," Joel murmured.

  "I meant you, appearing like that."

  Joel glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "I didn't expect it either."

  Their faces showed no emotion, but their eyes held something deeper. A silent understanding, difficult to name. They both remained silent as the wind blew through the trees.

  As they resumed their march toward the camp, the weight of the battle began to show on everyone's bodies. Men and women walked with slumped shoulders, their clothes soaked with sweat and blood, dust clinging to their skin like a rough second layer. Some dragged their feet, others leaned on comrades to stay upright.

  With every step, Joel felt the throbbing in his body pounding in his temples. His back burned from the effort of carrying Liria, but he didn't complain. He looked around: exhausted faces, blank stares, dry lips. And yet, amidst that human landscape overwhelmed by fatigue, something else was noticeable: relief, a collective, silent sigh at having survived. Although they didn't yet understand the magnitude of what they had faced, the order to retreat had been an unexpected balm. Not only tactically, but because it allowed them to live a little longer. The glances they gave Joel were subtle and respectful. He was no longer just another companion; he had become something closer to a role model, even though he completely ignored it.

  And as they walked, still amidst the distant echoes of the war, they all knew they would never forget that moment. The battle was over, but Joel couldn't help thinking that something had changed. In the camp, in them... and within himself.

  When they finally arrived at the camp, they were greeted with the same cold indifference that had greeted them on the first day. There was no applause, no words of recognition, only apathetic glances from the attendants and a quick directive for the wounded to be treated in the medical area.

  Joel stood by the main gate, silently watching as the rest of the survivors returned, some on stretchers, others staggering, and some with blank stares, as if still caught in the heat of battle.

  Images of the confrontation assaulted him without permission: the screams, the clash of steel, the explosions of magic, the blood, the metallic smell that clung to his skin. He remembered the enemy faces, distorted by fury and fear, and he couldn't find anything different about them. They were young, like him, with fear in their eyes and the same sweat on their foreheads. The only difference was the color of their uniforms, no insignia, no emblems, just bodies trying to survive, like his own.

  And then he understood with a clarity that almost made his head hurt: there were no good or bad guys in that war, only pieces, pawns moved by distant hands on a board they would never see complete. Everything else—the flags, the anthems, the speeches—were excuses.

  Joel looked away from the horizon and lost himself for a moment in the ebb and flow of his breathing. Then he walked into the camp, still carrying the weight of something more than just his own body.

  It was then that he began to notice something strange. From the edge of the camp, a group of figures dressed entirely in red appeared in a row, advancing silently. They were no ordinary soldiers, for they walked with solemn coordination, carrying bodies wrapped in blankets or held directly by their arms, as if they were broken dolls. Joel took a few steps closer, observing more closely.

  The corpses presented unnatural features. Their faces were pale, without a trace of blood. Veins were visible beneath the translucent skin, their eyes sunken, and their limbs thin, as if they had been drained of something essential. There were no visible wounds on some, but all of them seemed dry and withered, closer to a melted wax statue than a human body.

  Those in red were transporting them to a building apart from the rest of the camp, a sturdy, rectangular structure crowned by a gigantic chimney that constantly spewed black smoke. The air around them smelled of ash and burnt metal. Joel knew without anyone telling him: that was the crematorium.

  As the figures disappeared behind the iron gate, Joel watched the smoke rise into the gray sky. It was a macabre, repetitive dance, indifferent to the pain. The flames didn't distinguish between heroes and cowards, only flesh and blood. The smoke continued to rise, and without a word, he walked back in the opposite direction, his face more serious than ever.

  That night, as the survivors gathered in the camp's central mess hall, the atmosphere was strange, a mixture of exhaustion, silence, and a dull tension that crept up the walls. No one spoke much; everyone ate their cold rations on long wooden benches, surrounded by a muffled murmur of spoons and bated breaths.

  It was then that the mess hall doors swung open. A high-ranking officer, wrapped in a dark dress coat with metal trim, strode in. He was followed by several men pushing large, reinforced wooden crates. His presence imposed an immediate hush, and everyone stopped eating.

  The officer raised his voice, passionless, in a mechanical and rehearsed tone:

  "Congratulations on your victory. Your valor has been recorded and recognized by the high command."

  No one applauded. No one smiled.

  "As a reward, each of you will receive a portion of the spoils of war," he added. "Don't ask for the details; there's no need to know more."

  One by one, the soldiers pushing the crates began handing out thick, rough, dark glass bottles. Each one contained a deep red liquid, with a density that seemed closer to blood than wine. It had no label, only the cork sealed with black wax.

  Joel took his without expression. He held it between his fingers as if weighing the weight of a decision he didn't yet fully understand.

  The veterans, without hesitation, began to drink, one after another, as if it were routine, as if the red liquid were as familiar as water. Watching them, the rookie recruits—those who still held a trace of fear—began to follow suit, with some hesitation at first.

  Joel observed everything. He looked at his bottle, swirled the contents slowly, and finally drank. The taste was bitter, coppery, and unnatural. As if each drop was something special, something that didn't belong to him.

  At first, he felt nothing, but then a heat began to rise in his throat, spreading like liquid fire through his chest, his abdomen, his arms. It was as if something was igniting from the depths of his body. His muscles tensed, his pulse quickened, and an unnatural clarity flooded his mind.

  His physical strength increased. He felt it in the tension in his joints, in the sudden lightness of his arms. But there was something else, something darker, older, a murmur, barely a whisper, hidden in the depths of his mind. Distant echoes, beyond all logic, that vibrated with a disturbing familiarity. They weren't voices, they were fragments of who he was, and of what he didn't yet understand.

  Joel said nothing, simply closing his eyes for a few seconds, as the warmth settled in his bones. No one seemed to notice his reaction, for they were all too busy feeling their own transformation, or perhaps they simply didn't care.

  When he opened his eyes again, something in his gaze had changed. It wasn't visible to the naked eye, but it was there, a silent depth, a barely dormant promise of something that hadn't yet fully awakened, but was already beginning to observe from within.

  And Joel, for the first time, didn't know if that was good... or terrifying.