Terrified whispers had already begun to twist into anguished wails and despairing screams — sounds that would shred even the most resilient soul, like blades slicing through the stillness before a storm. The air was thick with the stench of burning flesh and blood, and smoke coiled upwards into the heavens, as if the very sky mourned those who had never stood a chance.
General Bortus Vispanius Scipio stood in the centre of the death-field, his steely gaze sweeping mercilessly across the ruin. The shadows that flickered at the edges of Diva’s vision coalesced into grotesque shapes, more nightmare than reality. She could feel the blood slick on her hands — warm, viscous, unmistakably human. Somewhere in the distance, a child’s cry pierced the haze — a thin, desperate sound that was suddenly silenced, replaced by a stillness far more harrowing than the scream itself.
Diva tried to move, but her body defied her. It was as though the very earth held her down, forcing her to kneel, compelling her to witness. Bortus was approaching — slowly, deliberately — and his face, once sharply defined, now began to blur and contort into a monstrous grin. She could feel his gaze upon her, cold and gloating, the satisfaction of a predator who had never doubted the outcome.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream.
The world around her spun wildly…
And then, suddenly, everything dissolved into black.

Diva tore herself from sleep with a violent gasp, lungs straining for breath as though surfacing from beneath black waters. Her body was drenched in sweat, and her heart thundered against her ribs with a frenzied rhythm. For several disoriented seconds, she could not tell where she was — whether the nightmare still held her captive or if she had, in fact, awoken. Shadows clung to the walls like living things, and the distant echoes of screams still rang in her ears.
Her pulse drummed furiously, and her trembling hands curled instinctively, as though ready to seize a weapon not present. The scent of burning still clung to her nostrils, and she could almost feel the sticky warmth of blood smeared across her skin. She swallowed hard, forcing herself to examine her surroundings.
The cell was small, stiflingly narrow, and steeped in the stench of damp, sweat, and decay. Cold stone walls, caked with grime, pressed in on all sides. In the corners, insects crept undisturbed — unbothered by human presence. The only light came from a narrow, barred window set high near the ceiling, through which a pale glimmer of dawn filtered in with feeble persistence.
The air was dense and stagnant, as if each breath were a whispered plea trapped behind iron bars.

In truth, over the plains of Corso, dawn was only just beginning to stir. A narrow shaft of light slipped through the small window near the ceiling, sketching a faint, illusory symbol of hope across the stone floor. Diva wiped her brow with a trembling hand, attempting to banish the lingering remnants of the nightmare. They are only dreams, she told herself. Only memories, long stripped of power. And yet, the blood she saw in those dreams still felt terribly real.

Years had passed, and still the images did not fade. Night after night, they returned with cruel precision. Night after night, she relived the same torment—and mourned, in silence, that she had not perished in those blood-soaked days. Each night she grieved anew for the senseless lives taken when, on that terrible evening, General Bortus had arrived at the gates of their village with his procession of steel and fire.

It had not been the first raid ordered by the iron hand of Marcas Gnaeus Imperius, chieftain of the mightiest tribus on the planet. They shared the same soil, but little else. Diva, daughter of a warrior and leader of her people, had been trained from childhood in the art of combat and command. Her hands were no strangers to the weight of a blade, and her mind had been sharpened for the grim necessity of battle. Yet she had never embraced violence for its own sake; she loathed it—loathed the cruelty, the excess, the bloodlust that men like Bortus revered. To them, more blood meant a clearer victory. To her, it meant only the thoughtless spectacle of domination.