Servaenn 500 Km away from the capital

  The gunfire never stopped.

  Dry bursts.

  Mortars thundering in the distance.

  Jets carving through the gray sky above the disputed region like black blades.

  The mud shook with every impact.

  Blood of the Throne pushed forward through smoke, fire, and broken bodies, reclaiming meter after meter of the passage Seravenn had spent weeks trying to retake.

  Irhena Draeven led the charge.

  Tall, streaked with soot and blood, her black hair plastered to her neck, red highlights flashing where the fire caught it. Her greatsword came down in a diagonal arc and split a soldier clean in half. Blood sprayed across her face. She didn’t blink.

  To her left, Thessia’s crystal whip sang through the air, her smile razor-thin. Every strike ripped a different scream out of the line—pain, terror, confusion so deep the men no longer knew where their bodies ended and the nightmare began. One soldier dropped to his knees and emptied his rifle into enemies that weren’t there. Thessia left him like that, laughing as she moved on.

  Several paces behind, Maren held one of her fields together. Dark orbs circled her staff, dragging the spirit out of the enemy front. Men who stepped into her range lowered their weapons, trembled, forgot why they had been fighting in the first place. Some simply collapsed where they stood, too hollowed out to keep pretending they wanted to live.

  Vaelyn slipped between trenches and wreckage with her segmented spear floating around her like a broken halo. She drove it through one soldier’s throat, snapped the weapon back through the air, stole the edge of a nearby gunner’s magic, and smashed the woman’s face into a shattered wall.

  Lureya advanced as if pain had no claim on her. A bullet tore across her arm. She didn’t even look. Her mace came down with a wet crunch on one helmet, then another, then a barricade already half-fallen. Under her breath she sang a Seravenn war hymn, off-key and devout, every blow sounding like prayer.

  The passage was breaking.

  At last.

  Then the shell came.

  A tank round cut through the smoke and slammed into Irhena from the side.

  The blast shoved her half a step back.

  Earth split beneath her boots.

  Her left shoulder lit up in pain.

  Her magical uniform tore open from collarbone to abdomen.

  Irhena lifted her head, blood—hers and everyone else’s—streaked across her face.

  She smiled.

  — Again — she growled.

  Then she hurled herself forward wrapped in fire.

  The chains around her greatsword ignited, and the next swing ripped three bodies off the ground. One spun away missing an arm. One hit the mud burning. The third didn’t land in one piece.

  A few yards away, something failed.

  Maren made a small, sharp sound, almost startled.

  A bullet had punched through the edge of her field.

  Just for a second.

  The smallest opening.

  It was enough.

  An enemy soldier burst through the smoke and drove a bayonet into her chest.

  The blade sank halfway in.

  Maren didn’t scream at first.

  She only widened her eyes, as though she still couldn’t quite understand that steel was already inside her.

  Lureya moved first.

  She cut off her hymn mid-line, tore through the mud in three strides, and brought the mace down on the soldier’s skull hard enough to fold the body sideways into something that no longer looked built to stand.

  Thessia turned too late.

  Vaelyn spat a curse.

  Irhena saw the blood.

  And something in her snapped.

  She left the last enemy in front of her half-open, turned on her heel, and crossed the field like a beast on fire. She hit the knot of soldiers still pressing near Maren and butchered them without slowing. The greatsword rose and fell. A torso split open. A jaw ripped loose. One man carved from waist to throat. Another burning while he tried to crawl.

  When she stopped, no one close enough to lift a weapon was still alive.

  Irhena reached Maren.

  The youngest of the squad was still standing.

  Barely.

  Her breathing had shattered into pieces.

  The bayonet was still lodged in her chest.

  Her staff trembled in her hand.

  Irhena gripped her shoulder.

  — Don’t move.

  Maren, pale as something already halfway gone, pulled a crooked little smile.

  — I’ll be fine.

  Then she ripped the bayonet out of her own chest in one brutal yank.

  Blood poured hot and heavy down her stomach and thigh. Maren tried to take a step, as if proving she could still walk.

  And folded.

  Lureya was already there to catch her before she hit the mud.

  — I’ve got her — she said, steady, hauling her up against her like something holy.

  Irhena looked over the passage.

  Smoke.

  Twisted metal.

  Enemy bodies mixed with mud and fire.

  A makeshift Seravenn banner at the far end, hanging crooked between ruins.

  They had taken this stretch back.

  Barely.

  Irhena spat blood into the dirt and raised the greatsword.

  — Lock the passage down — she ordered. — Five minutes. Then we move.

  Thessia smiled.

  Vaelyn wiped her spear clean on a corpse’s uniform.

  Lureya carried Maren without a single complaint.

  And above them, the jets kept cutting across the sky as if the war had no intention of ending.

  Five minutes at the front did not mean rest.

  They were permission—brief and ugly—not to die on your feet.

  Lureya set Maren down on a slab of broken concrete half-buried under dirt and ash. She kept a hand on her until she was sure she wouldn’t slide off, then adjusted her head with bloodstained fingers.

  — Don’t bleed out on my uniform — she said, firm. — It’s the only one I have left that still looks halfway respectable.

  Maren let out the smallest laugh and immediately folded into a cough.

  — I’ll do my best.

  Blood still ran down her stomach, darkening the torn fabric of her suit. The hole in her chest was closing slowly and badly, the way battlefield wounds always did when there was no time to let them heal properly.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Thessia appeared beside her, the whip already dissolved into gray fragments of light around her wrist, smiling far too brightly for someone covered in gore.

  — You looked better with the bayonet in — she remarked, crouching down. — It gave you presence.

  Maren rolled her eyes.

  — Good. I was afraid you were going to say I looked weak.

  — You always look weak — Thessia replied, brushing a damp lock of hair off her forehead with two fingers. — At least today you made it entertaining.

  Vaelyn came in next, mud up to her knees, one eyebrow split open, breathing still too hard. Her segmented spear broke apart into floating shards and vanished.

  — If you open a pretty little gap like that in your field again just to get skewered, I swear I’m leaving you there next time — she said, nudging a canteen toward her with her boot.

  Maren looked down at the canteen.

  — That was almost affectionate.

  — Don’t confuse habit with affection — Vaelyn snapped. — If you die, I have to cover your zone, and your zone smells like wet despair. No thanks.

  Still standing behind Maren, Lureya began wiping the blood from her neck with a strip of cloth ripped from a dead enemy. She did it with the careful reverence someone else might reserve for a sacred relic.

  — You wouldn’t be talking this much if a lung had been punctured — she muttered.

  — It wasn’t a lung — Maren corrected, voice thin.

  — Close enough — said Irhena.

  She had appeared without any of them hearing her approach. The fire around her greatsword was already dying down, reduced to embers clinging to the enchanted chains before the weapon dissolved into red sparks and smoke. The weight of her presence remained. The side of her suit was torn open. The fabric at her left shoulder still smoked. Dried blood traced her jaw.

  She crouched in front of Maren and, without asking, pulled her hand away from her chest to inspect the wound.

  Maren grimaced.

  — How romantic.

  Irhena didn’t smile.

  — Open your field like that again and I’ll chain you to your staff so tight you won’t drop it even dead.

  — Yes, commander.

  — Don’t answer me like I didn’t watch you collapse a minute ago.

  Maren tilted her head the tiniest bit.

  — I didn’t collapse. I chose to lie down violently.

  Thessia barked out a dry laugh.

  Vaelyn exhaled through her nose.

  Even Lureya made a strange sound that, in anyone else, might have passed for amusement.

  Irhena pressed two fingers beside the wound. Maren tensed all over but didn’t look away.

  — This is going to hurt.

  — It already hurts.

  — Good.

  Irhena’s magic couldn’t heal, but it could cauterize what still bled. Controlled heat passed from her fingers into the torn flesh. The charred cloth around the wound sent up a thread of smoke. Maren clenched her jaw until Thessia shoved the canteen into her hand.

  — Bite that if you want to keep your teeth — Thessia told her.

  Maren obeyed.

  Lureya braced her shoulders.

  Vaelyn stayed half-turned toward the passage, fingers open, testing how much power still answered beneath her skin.

  When Irhena pulled her hand away, the bleeding had slowed.

  — You’re not walking on your own — she said.

  — I can—

  — No.

  Maren looked at her in silence.

  Then nodded once.

  Lureya leaned closer.

  — I’ll carry you when we move.

  — You weigh as much as a cathedral — Maren muttered.

  — And you weigh as much as a badly kept promise — Lureya replied.

  Thessia crouched on top of a shattered helmet and wiped a streak of blood from Maren’s chin with her thumb.

  — The bastard who put that in you was lucky he died fast.

  — You would’ve made it last longer — said Vaelyn.

  — Obviously.

  Irhena stayed on her feet, eyes sweeping over the reclaimed pass. Smoke. Bodies. Broken armor. An overturned vehicle still burning. Beyond it, Seravenn’s crooked banner held on in the filthy wind.

  Her squad was still breathing.

  Broken, bloodied, half-ruined—but breathing.

  That was enough.

  — Reserves — she ordered, without raising her voice.

  Vaelyn closed her eyes for a second and opened them again in irritation as she felt the partial hollowness in her magic.

  Thessia summoned only the handle of her whip; several emotional crystal spines appeared cracked before dissolving again.

  Lureya ran her palm over the ritual inscriptions on her mace, still glowing beneath the blood.

  Maren tried to call one of her orbs. She barely managed to light it before it flickered out in spasms of black light.

  — I’m fine — she lied.

  — Not enough — Irhena said.

  Lureya lifted the canteen to Maren’s mouth.

  Maren drank twice, coughed, then spat mud before letting her head fall back.

  — It tastes like metal.

  — Everything tastes like metal here — Irhena said.

  A second of silence.

  It wasn’t peace.

  It was habit.

  Thessia lifted one eyebrow, looking at Irhena’s damaged shoulder.

  — They hit you good.

  — Not good enough.

  — One day something’s actually going to rip your arm off.

  Irhena looked back at her with amber eyes full of exhaustion and fire.

  — When that day comes, you can sew it back on.

  This time Thessia’s smile was real.

  — Happily.

  And for a moment, between mud, smoke, and blood, Blood of the Throne looked exactly like what they were:

  not only a shock squad,

  not only one more weapon of Seravenn,

  but five women who had learned violence…

  and also the crooked way of caring for each other inside it.

  Irhena’s communicator crackled with a burst of static, almost swallowed by the distant thunder of artillery.

  — Blood of the Throne squad. Report immediately to temporary command, sector eight.

  Irhena didn’t even lift her eyes from the newly reclaimed pass.

  — Received.

  Maren was still leaning against Lureya, pale and forcing her breathing into something steady. Thessia dissolved the last trace of her whip into a gray flicker of light. Vaelyn spat mud to one side and wiped the dried blood from her brow with the back of her hand.

  — Those five minutes sure lasted two — she muttered.

  — Shut up and walk — Irhena said.

  No one argued.

  They moved together through scorched ruins, split-open armor, bodies half-sunk in the muck. Temporary command was a prefabricated structure reinforced with magical plating, generators, and sandbags stacked up to half the windows. Everything smelled like hot iron, oil, sweat, and reheated coffee.

  When they stepped inside, several soldiers looked up. Some dropped their eyes at once. Others couldn’t. Blood of the Throne had that effect even when they were caked in mud and blood.

  The sector commander stood over a table of projected maps. His gray uniform was open at the throat, dark circles hollowed beneath his eyes, and he had the face of a man who had been losing soldiers for too many hours in a row.

  — Draeven — he said the moment he saw them. — Good timing.

  Irhena didn’t answer the greeting.

  — Speak.

  The man swallowed. Maybe because of the way she looked at him. Maybe because of what he was about to say.

  — We lost air superiority over the eastern corridor. Two hours ago. Eiswacht deployed a major technological upgrade in their interception wings… something new. Our models aren’t holding.

  Vaelyn cursed under her breath.

  The commander went on.

  — Lumina Umbrae has already been sent to retake control of that sector. The problem is that moving them leaves another front exposed. We expect an attack there in under six hours. You’ll cover the gap.

  Irhena looked down at the map. One sector, marked in red, pulsed north of the pass they had just taken.

  — And this front?

  — The regular army will handle it.

  Silence.

  Irhena wanted to say something.

  It showed in her jaw.

  Rose hot from her chest, like everything in her always did.

  But she said nothing.

  She knew perfectly well it would be useless.

  The commander had already received the order.

  An argument would only waste minutes.

  Maren, still held upright by Lureya, studied the map with those huge dark eyes of hers.

  — They’ll lose this pass the second we leave — she murmured.

  — I know — the commander replied, with a kind of honest exhaustion that almost sounded like apology.

  That was worse.

  Irhena looked away before she broke someone’s face just for saying the truth out loud.

  In the back of the command post, a radio coughed out static between casualty counts, weather updates, and logistics reports. No one paid it much attention until a clearer voice cut through the interference.

  — …and in other international news, the leaked images from Orion’s Reef in New Althameria continue to spread, showing one of Seravenn’s so-called “foreign goddesses” in a series of intimate photographs with Lysandra Cane, prominent entrepreneur and public figure of the southern coast…

  No one spoke at first.

  The radio kept going, light, almost amused.

  — …the material, already replicated across thousands of accounts, shows the foreign commander kissing the lounge owner in what several outlets are now calling “the most elegant scandal of the summer”…

  Irhena didn’t move.

  Only that tiny thing happened.

  That minute tic beside her eye.

  The microscopic shift in her jaw.

  The smallest variation, one her sisters knew far too well.

  Thessia noticed first. Her smile vanished.

  Vaelyn frowned.

  Lureya straightened further, adjusting Maren’s weight against her without asking.

  Even half-folded in pain, Maren lifted her head slowly.

  Irhena was still facing forward, but she wasn’t seeing the map anymore.

  Or the commander.

  Or the command post.

  Only one phrase, brutal and dry, hammering inside her over and over:

  What the fuck is happening?

  The radio went on, delighted with itself.

  — …far from sparking condemnation, the images have been met with fascination by the Altham—

  Irhena turned and shut the radio off with a single blow.

  It wasn’t theatrical.

  She didn’t shout.

  She didn’t smash anything else.

  But the silence she left behind was worse than the static.

  — We move — she said.

  Her voice came out low.

  Too low.

  That alone made even the commander tense.

  Irhena turned and started walking without waiting for confirmation, without waiting for transport, without waiting for anyone. She moved fast—too fast—with the brutal rigidity of someone who needed to be in motion before she let herself think.

  Thessia followed first.

  Vaelyn behind her.

  Lureya carried Maren, even though Maren was already trying to push herself free.

  They crossed the edge of the command post perimeter.

  Passed the first trucks.

  The first deployment vehicles.

  And Irhena kept walking.

  — Commander — Lureya said.

  Irhena didn’t answer.

  She took four more steps.

  — Irhena — Thessia called next, sharper.

  Nothing.

  It was Vaelyn who finally let out the most irritated snort.

  — You’re not walking a hundred kilometers to the target, idiot.

  That made her stop.

  Irhena tore her arm free in a hard jerk from Thessia’s hand—one she hadn’t even noticed had landed there.

  She went still.

  Back turned.

  Shoulders rising and falling just barely.

  One second.

  Two.

  Then reason reached her again.

  She knew Vaelyn was right.

  She knew there was nothing she could do yet.

  She knew if she opened her mouth right now, fire might come out instead of words.

  So she stayed silent.

  Lureya exchanged a brief look with Thessia.

  Maren, still held against Lureya’s chest, watched Irhena with a clarity far too sharp for someone who had just pulled a bayonet out of her own chest.

  None of them asked.

  None of them were stupid.

  Only the wind kept moving across the mud, the dried blood, and the smoke of a front that was still hungry.

  And Irhena, for the first time in hours, was no longer thinking about the next kilometer.

  She was thinking about New Althameria.

  And about something that felt dangerously close to wanting to rip answers out of the world with her bare hands.