The battlefield spanned the world.
Five million soldiers churned across a continent cracked by war. Trenches overflowed with corpses, and craters boiled with fire and broken bones. Mystic artillery shattered the sky in thunderous arcs, while spellfire scalded the clouds. Steel clanged like the voice of dying gods.
And still, they fought.
In one of the outer trenches, buried behind ruptured plating and twisted barricades, three Realizers sat in exhausted silence, huddled shoulder to shoulder. Their Scriptures had dulled. Their confidence had died.
Laren Valen was the oldest — twenty-seven, once a commander's aide, once someone who smiled easily. A Mystic 3rd Step Realizer of the Law of Flame, he had mastered combustion sigils before his twentieth birthday. Back then, people called him Sun-Hand. He had written poetry about fire, called it beautiful.
But now his gloves were burned to the thread, and his eyes no longer held anything but ash. His fingers still clutched a warped talisman he hadn't activated in hours, as if refusing to let go might mean he hadn't yet failed.
Beside him leaned Deyne Oskar, a thirty-one-year-old farm boy turned soldier. Mystic 2nd Step, Law of Strength. He had once split boulders with bare hands and held back a collapsing mine to save trapped civilians. They said he could punch through tanks. He never confirmed it.
But in truth, Deyne was tired. His knuckles had cracked from beating back monsters that didn't bleed right. His shoulders ached from holding shields that no longer blocked spells. And his eyes, once bright with fury, now looked at war like it was a joke he was too old to laugh at.
Curled up in the far corner was Kett Marrow — nineteen. The baby of the group. Mystic 1st Step, Law of Blood. His talents let him feel circulation, sense pain, even pull vitality from wounds. He was supposed to be a support Realizer. A medic.
He hadn't slept in three days.
He had written letters home but never sent them. His little sister liked to braid his hair when he visited; he'd kept it long even here. She wouldn't recognize him now. His armor was more bandage than steel. Blood trailed from his nose again. He didn't notice. His focus had been… fading.
No one spoke at first.
The air was thick with spell smoke and the scent of burned nerves.
Then Laren broke the silence.
"Five million men," he muttered. "And none of it matters."
His voice didn't hold bitterness. Just resignation.
Deyne didn't look at him. "Maybe that's the point."
Kett's head twitched. "They're not dying anymore."
Laren blinked, turned. "What?"
"They're just stopping," Kett said, voice distant. "East flank. They… froze."
He gestured with a shaky finger.
Across the ravaged ridge, soldiers stood mid-step. Mid-swing. Kneeling. All motionless. Not dead. Not breathing. Not anything.
"Like they forgot what being alive is," Kett whispered.
Laren stared for a long moment. "That's new."
"Started ten minutes ago," Kett murmured.
Deyne adjusted a cracked shoulder plate. "Maybe we're lucky."
"How?" Laren asked.
"They're done fighting," Deyne said. "We're still here. Still dying. That's all this means. We're next."
Kett flinched. "I don't want to be next."
"No one does," Laren said. "That's what makes it war."
Another blast shook the trench. Screams filtered down like dust. Somewhere, a Reality Cannon misfired, turning a dozen soldiers into rusted statues.
Kett's voice cracked. "I thought being a Realizer meant I could protect people."
Deyne scoffed. "It meant you could survive long enough to regret it."
Laren looked at the younger boy. "You said you had a sister, right?"
Kett nodded slowly.
"You ever tell her what you do here?"
"No." His voice was small. "She thinks I work logistics. She's eight. She writes me stories."
Laren swallowed. "If she knew you were here..."
"She'd cry."
"No," Laren said. "She'd beg you to come home."
Kett didn't reply. Just hugged his knees tighter.
A long silence passed.
Then Deyne asked, "When did you two stop believing we'd win?"
Laren gave a soft laugh. "When they told us the war had a purpose. And then changed it. Five times."
"I stopped," Kett said, "when I felt a whole battalion's heartbeats vanish in under a second. No spell. No attack. Just… gone."
Deyne nodded. "I stopped when I realized I didn't remember what we're fighting for. Just the formations. The drills. The reports."
Laren whispered, "We're the last page of a book no one's reading."
Then it happened.
Kett straightened like a puppet pulled upright.
His eyes widened.
"Someone just stepped onto the field."
Laren turned. "What?"
Kett shook his head slowly. "Not one of ours. Not theirs. He wasn't there. And now he is."
Deyne climbed to the trench edge. "Another Realizer?"
"No signature," Kett said. "No Law trace. Just presence."
All three looked out.
And saw him.
A man walked alone through the center of the battlefield.
Wearing a pristine black suit.
A white mask on his face.
In his left hand, a book with a cracked-glass cover.
He walked casually.
Between corpses. Through fire.
The earth didn't scorch him.
The air didn't weigh him down.
He moved like he owned the silence.
Laren's mouth went dry. "Do you feel that?"
"Yeah," Deyne muttered. "It's wrong."
Kett clutched his chest. "His presence is… folding things."
"Like what?"
"Like me."
The man stopped.
Raised his hand.
Opened the book.
And spoke.
"You were never born."
And then a million soldiers vanished.
Just like that.
No bodies. No blood.
Just un-being.
Like the world had corrected a typo.
And Kett screamed.
Laren was the first to feel it — not in his body, but in the way the world responded.
The heat from the trench fires suddenly stopped warming his skin. The blood-soaked talisman in his hand dimmed into something lifeless. His name, Laren Vale, felt... distant. Like he was remembering a story he once told about someone else.
"Did I…" he whispered, fingers tightening on the stone. "Did I exist before this?"
He turned toward the battlefield — where the central legions had stood.
Gone.
A full million. Not slain. Not even ash. Just gone.
Laren felt his heart collapse in his chest. Not physically. Existentially.
For the first time in his life, he understood what it meant to be small.
He was fire. He had always been fire.
And now, he wasn't even smoke.
Deyne Oskar, who once stopped collapsing tunnels with his bare hands, suddenly couldn't feel his arms.
They were still there. Bruised, bandaged, trembling — but they felt like frauds. Like props held on by memory.
The man in the black suit hadn't raised a weapon. Hadn't even looked angry.
And yet three times as many people as Deyne had ever seen were simply… gone.
No effort. No resistance. No glory.
He gritted his teeth, trying to feel his strength. To remember the weight of his training, the pain that shaped him.
But it felt childish.
Like flexing before a storm.
He looked at the figure in the white mask and thought:
That's not a man. That's not a Realizer. That's a GOD
Deyne, who had once cracked boulders with his fists, now clenched his hands only to feel them shaking.
And Kett — poor, broken Kett — was already on his knees.
He could feel every living pulse within three hundred meters.
And now?
There were holes.
Entire zones where there had been blood, warmth, pressure — and now, not even absence.
Nothing.
Even death had structure. This was below that.
"I can't hear them," Kett whispered, his voice cracking. "I can't feel anyone. Not even pain. Not even silence. Just…"
He started sobbing.
"I think I'm forgetting how to feel them."
His blood connection, once beautiful, once human, had been cut at the root.
They all looked at the man.
The black suit.
The white mask.
The cracked book.
He didn't move with arrogance.
He didn't gloat.
He simply existed with such casual certainty that the world rearranged itself around his beliefs.
That was the worst part.
He didn't need permission.
He didn't negotiate with Law.
He just decided.
And everything bent to match.
"This war died screaming, yesterday."
A second sentence.
And this one didn't erase people.
It erased meaning.
Laren felt it first in his memories. His training. His time in the Realizer barracks. The days spent learning flame runes in Qintara's academy, his mentor's voice, the last time someone told him they were proud of him—
Gone.
Not removed.
Just unimportant.
Like relics of a dream that no longer matched the world he was in.
His mind tried to recall the enemy's banner. What color was it?
Blue?
No — gold.
Wait. What were they even fighting for?
He looked at Deyne.
"You remember why we're here?"
Deyne opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
And shook his head, once, slowly.
"No."
Across the battlefield, soldiers dropped their weapons.
Some knelt. Some screamed.
Some laughed.
One man nearby shot himself in the head — not from fear, but desperation to feel something real.
Kett was clutching his own chest.
"I'm forgetting my sister," he whispered.
Laren turned, stricken.
"What?"
"I remembered her face this morning. The way she used to call me 'Netty.' And now I can't see it. I can't… hear her voice."
Tears ran down his cheeks.
"She's not gone. But the war is. The war's over. It ended yesterday. He said so."
Kett's voice dropped to a whisper.
"So why are we still alive?"
The man with the mask said nothing more.
But he looked up.
And they all felt it.
That there was one sentence left.
The three of them — Laren, Deyne, Kett — reached for each other without speaking.
Not out of courage.
Out of instinct.
Out of the last warmth they could still prove was real.
They sat together.
Eyes wide.
Breath tight.
Waiting to see if they would be allowed to remain.
"You are fiction."
And for a moment—
None of them were sure if they still existed.
Anothern3 millions Solider Disappear
Laren Valen felt his pulse stop — not in his chest, but in the fabric of the world around him. The trench, the mud, the distant flags, the shape of his hands — all of it fluttered. As if the reality he occupied had been loosely painted on glass, and someone had just breathed across the surface.
The silence after that third sentence was not silence. It was something deeper.
An accounting.
As if the universe was measuring every living thing against a truth it had not agreed to.
And most failed.
But not them.
Laren inhaled again. His lungs worked. He tasted ash. The book in the man's hand closed with a sound like a whisper cut short.
He blinked.
He was still here.
Deyne hadn't moved.
His knuckles were white against his knees. His heart thundered behind his ribs — proof of existence, or maybe defiance.
He turned slowly. Kett was still beside him. Laren too.
Not dead. Not erased.
He spoke, the words small in the raw air.
"…Why us?"
No one answered.
Kett Marrow felt pain again.
It was faint. A migraine blooming behind his eyes. A familiar ache. It grounded him.
"I think… he left us," he said, voice hoarse.
Laren turned. "You felt it too?"
Kett nodded. "He looked at me. Just before the third sentence. And he didn't see a target."
Deyne frowned. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means we weren't part of the lie," Kett said.
Across the battlefield, wind returned.
No cries. No marching. No structure.
Just broken air and scattered ash where three million souls had once stood.
No bodies. No remains.
Only three men in a trench who had no right to still be breathing.
They slowly climbed up from the trench.
There were no gunshots.
No cannons.
No flame.
Just an empty war zone, too large to process.
And there — across the scorched horizon — walked the man in the black suit, already growing small in the distance.
Laren watched him go, whispering, "What is he?"
No one responded.
Until Deyne muttered, "Not a savior."
"Something closer to a god" Kett said.
"Then why leave us?" Laren asked.
A pause.
Then Kett, voice steady despite the blood drying on his neck:
"…Because we like an ant to him"
They stood in silence.
Not victorious. Not alive in the traditional sense.
But spared.
And in that sparing, something deeper had settled into their bones:
They were no longer fighting for the Mandate.
They weren't even fighting for themselves.
They had been noticed.
Marked.
Kept.
They didn't know it yet — not fully — but something had shifted.
The book with the cracked-glass cover had weighed them and found them useful.
And in a war where sides blurred and Laws failed...
That meant one thing.
They weren't just survivors.
They were part of the Lie now.
and the Being Equal to Divine. Ren Ashvale smile in satisfaction