# Battle The sound of the drums beats louder now, the banners flap and snap above our heads— we march toward the enemy lines, our feet in rhythm with ten thousand others. The sky darkens though it's still morning. Dust rises where we haven't yet reached, and somewhere ahead, someone is already falling. I think of home—the small room, the woman who braided my hair, the dog that slept at the threshold. None of it will keep me safe now. The drums grow deafening. Around me, faces I've come to know become strangers again, hardened, their eyes fixed on what lies ahead. A horn sounds—a long, terrible note. The line surges forward. I am carried with it, a drop in a river of bodies, my sword raised (when did I raise it?) toward something I cannot see clearly. The noise—God, the noise— swallows every thought, every prayer. Someone screams my name or another name. It doesn't matter. We are all the same now, rushing toward the edge where everything ends, where meaning dissolves into blood and breath, into the ancient, senseless dance of men who never asked to stand here, yet here we stand, terrible and beautiful and broken, marching into the dark.