Bodies lay half-buried under the collapsed concrete. The air was so thick with smoke that it blurred the line between earth and sky.

Kim Hajun staggered through the debris, his uniform in tatters, one eye bloodshot from the concussion.

His left arm hung limp, half-numb.

He stepped over the body of a friend he no longer had the strength to name.

"Minho…" he whispered hoarsely, voice barely audible.

The radio crackled beside him, a ghost of life in the wasteland. The command frequency stuttered between static and fragmented orders:

"…Unit 3… casualties… hold position…"

"…No survivors from Delta…"

"…Pull back to…"

Then silence.

The kind that stretched and stretched until it became unbearable.

Hajun's hands shook as he raised the radio, pressing it to his ear. "This is Cadet Kim Hajun. 7th Recon Division. Does anyone copy?"

Static.

He tried again, voice breaking. "This is Kim Hajun. Anyone—?"

Nothing.

Only the wind moving through the corpses.

---

He found Minho hours later, half-crushed under a slab of steel. The man's chest still rose faintly each breath ragged, liquid.

"Hey…" Hajun dropped to his knees beside him, shaking him lightly. "Hey, it's me. It's—"

Minho's lips moved, barely forming words. "…How many left?"

Hajun hesitated. "…None."

The older man smiled faintly — a bitter curve of the lips that didn't reach his eyes. "Guess I lost the bet, huh…"

"Don't talk." Hajun pressed down on the bleeding wound, but his hands were trembling. "We'll get you out. We'll—"

Minho coughed, red spilling from his mouth. "We knew… it'd be like this."

"No. No, we didn't."

"Don't—" Another cough, weaker this time. "Don't lie to yourself, leader."

Hajun's throat tightened. "Stop talking like that."

"Listen," Minho said softly, voice almost drowned by the wind. "When you… when you make it out—"

"Stop."

"—don't let it end here."

"Minho."

"Live, Hajun." His friend's eyes dimmed. "Even if it hurts."

And then, the hand that had clutched Hajun's sleeve went still.

The world narrowed. The smell of smoke became unbearable. Hajun's vision swam, but no tears came — just a dull emptiness that spread through his chest like rot.

He sat there for what could've been minutes or hours. He couldn't tell anymore. Time had stopped meaning anything.

When the evacuation teams finally arrived the next morning, they found him sitting there — motionless, his eyes vacant, his friend's dog tag clutched so tightly that blood had dried between his fingers.

He didn't speak when they carried him away. He didn't speak for days.

---

The military inquiry room was bright — too bright. The walls were white, the air too clean. Hajun sat alone at the table, wearing a hospital gown, his head bandaged.

Across from him were three officers. None met his eyes for long.

"Cadet Kim Hajun," the colonel began, his tone detached. "You are the sole surviving member of Recon Unit Seven. Is that correct?"

Hajun didn't answer.

The colonel's assistant glanced at the file. "The mission logs show your squad moved outside the designated perimeter at 02:40 hours. Why?"

Hajun stared at the table.

"Cadet, you're being asked a question."

Silence.

The colonel sighed. "The higher-ups believe your unit may have disobeyed orders. That's why reinforcements didn't arrive on time. Do you understand the gravity of this situation?"

Still nothing.

Finally, the colonel's voice softened — not out of pity, but weariness. "Listen, son. You've seen hell. I get it. But you can't sit there and say nothing forever. If you want your comrades' names cleared, you need to talk."

Hajun lifted his gaze slowly, eyes glassy, unfocused. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat. "They're dead."

"Yes," the colonel said carefully. "But—"

"They're dead because you sent us there," Hajun said.

The room went still.

The colonel's jaw tightened. "Cadet, you are treading dangerous ground."

"Dangerous?" Hajun laughed bitterly — a dry, hollow sound. "We were bait. You knew the enemy artillery was ready. You sent us anyway."

"Enough."

"They called for help," Hajun said, his voice rising. "For six hours. You did nothing."

The colonel slammed the table. "Cadet Kim Hajun! That's enough!"

But Hajun didn't stop. He was shaking, the words spilling out faster, louder — all the rage and grief twisting into something raw. "You killed them! You killed them and now you want me to clean it up for you!"

The soldiers at the door moved, but the colonel raised a hand. Hajun was panting now, eyes wide...

The colonel looked at him for a long moment, then said quietly.

"Take him back to the ward."

Two orderlies entered, guiding Hajun out. He didn't resist. He didn't even blink.

As the door closed, one officer whispered to the colonel.

"What do we put in the report?"

The colonel exhaled. "Shell shock. Psychological trauma. File him under long-term care."

---

Days blurred into weeks.

Hajun spent them in silence, sitting by the window of the recovery ward, watching the rain fall outside. The nurses said he barely ate. Sometimes, they'd find him staring into space for hours, his reflection in the glass like that of a ghost.

The doctors said he'd lost fragments of memory. The trauma had eaten at his mind, blurring the edges of what he could remember and what he wanted to forget.

He forgot their voices first. Then their faces. Then their names.

And one day, when he looked into the mirror, he forgot his own.

All that remained was the hollow echo of a man who had once been Kim Hajun — soldier, leader, survivor.

The rest of him had burned away in that bunker.

---

The wind howled against the mountains when Noah opened his eyes again.

The tent was gone. The snowstorm of Frostveil had returned. Except now, he was standing before a thousand pyres.

The funeral field stretched across the coastline — an endless line of flames reaching into the twilight. The air shimmered with heat, the snow melting into mud around the burning logs. The smell of incense and blood mixed into something almost sacred.

Noah stood at the front, torch in hand.

Behind him, ranks of soldiers stood in silence — hundreds of them, their faces shadowed by hoods, their armor glinting faintly from the firelight. Chrome Hearts, knights, common soldiers — no ranks here. Only grief.

He moved to the first pyre. The body atop it was covered with a Northern banner. The face was gone — burned too badly — but Noah remembered the man's laughter, the way he'd saluted awkwardly on his first day.

He lowered the torch.

The fire caught.

He moved to the next. And the next.

One by one, he lit them all.

By the time he reached the last pyre, his hands were trembling. The heat stung his eyes, but he didn't blink.

The torch burned low. He threw it into the flames and whispered, barely audible:

"I'll carry it for you."

The soldiers behind him lowered their heads. None spoke.

For a long time, there was only the crackle of fire and the howl of the sea.

---

Later that night, Iris approached him. Her armor was streaked with soot, her hair damp from snow.

"You've been standing here for hours," she said.

He didn't respond.

"Go rest, Noah."

"I can't."

"You did what had to be done."

"Did I?" His voice was low. "I led them here. I led them to die. And now I'm lighting them like candles."

Iris looked at him — the exhaustion carved deep into his face, the faint twitch in his jaw as he tried to keep his voice steady.

"They followed you because they believed in something," she said softly. "You can't take that away from them now."

Noah's hand tightened around his glove. "Belief doesn't bring them back."

"No," she admitted. "But it's the only thing that makes the rest of us stay."

For a while, they said nothing more. The snow fell again, quiet this time, landing softly on the pyres as the flames began to dim.

---

By dawn, the smoke hung low over the camp. The survivors gathered in silence as the ashes were collected. Noah watched them carry urns and boxes, each marked with a name or a number.

A courier approached him then — a young woman wrapped in a Northern officer's coat, her breath visible in the cold.

"General," she said, saluting. "Message from the capital."

He took the sealed envelope. The wax bore the emblem of the Church of St. Eldred — the symbol of the Southern faith.

When he opened it, his eyes narrowed.

"By decree of the Holy Synod, the conflict between the South and the North shall henceforth be recognized as a Holy War — blessed by divine sanction in the name of Saint Eldred."

He folded the letter slowly, then looked out over the burned horizon.

A Holy War.

The words tasted bitter.

Iris approached again, her expression grim. "So it's true."

He nodded once. "They've made it sacred now. Every death from here on out will be called divine justice."

"And the South will have the Church's armies behind them."

He stared at the horizon, where the faint light of dawn met the black smoke. "That's what they wanted."

"What do you mean?"

He turned to her, eyes sharp. "They wanted this war to burn the world clean. To make monsters of us so they can call themselves saints."

Iris frowned. "And what will you do?"

He looked down at his hands — the same hands that had held the torch hours ago, the same hands that had once held a rifle in another life.

"…What I've always done..."