Two thousand three hundred soldiers stood outside beneath a star-pocked sky, their breath rising in pale puffs that vanished into the cold night air. The moon was absent—lost somewhere behind the clouds or perhaps hiding from what was to come—leaving the world in a pitch-dark hush that wrapped around steel and sinew alike.
Armor clinked softly as men shifted in place, half-awake, eyes wide and confused. Their weapons—spears, swords, axes, and bows—rose into the blackness, but without the moon to catch them, they gleamed not. It was a silence of iron. The kind that breathes down your neck just before something breaks.
They had been roused without warning, torn from thin rolls of hay or the ground, from their restless sleep by barking sergeants and captains with wild urgency in their voices. No answers, no speeches.
Only orders. Armor on. Weapons drawn. Stand in formation.
