The sun bled across the sky like a wounded beast.
It sank beneath the horizon in streaks of crimson and gold, casting the battlefield in a light too beautiful for the carnage it revealed. The crater was no longer just a strategic depression in the earth...it had become a grave for hundreds. Smoke coiled from shattered trench walls, rising through the settling dusk. The smell of scorched flesh clung to every breath. The ground itself felt soft beneath the boots of those still alive...soft not from soil, but from the sheer density of bodies strewn across it.
The war had not paused.
It had only changed rhythm.
*****
Major Gresham crouched beside the field desk inside the shattered command trench, using a slanted plank of half-burnt wood as a writing surface. His right hand gripped a quill slick with blood and grime. His left pressed down the edges of parchment already smudged with soot. There was no candle. The glow of distant fires would have to do.
"To the Blue Countess,
