Page 28 of Fated in A Time of War

KRALL

T he sky’s lit up like a burning star’s collapsed just beyond the ridge.

Orange flares streak across the dark, their afterglow catching on the shattered remnants of our makeshift defenses.

My boots slide in the mud and blood as I charge the gap, lungs full of ash, heartbeat pounding so hard it echoes in my ears.

Every second is a new scream, every step a choice between kill or be killed.

They’re pouring through faster than we can stop them.

The frontline’s a mess—more crater than ground now.

Someone shouts behind me, but I can’t make out words.

A mech blasts overhead, the searing heat of its plasma cannon scalding the skin on my arm as it hammers into the barricade we spent all night reinforcing.

That wall’s gone now—nothing left but twisted rebar and the stink of melted sandbags.

A merc comes at me from the smoke, axe high, visor flashing red.

I don’t think—I move. My claws catch his wrist mid-swing.

Bone cracks beneath my grip. He grunts, stumbles, and I drive my knee into his gut hard enough to lift him off the ground.

He folds. I shove him aside and keep going.

Another shape emerges—gun raised. I drop, roll through muck, slam into his legs, and drag him down.

My knife finds his neck before his breath finds a scream.

I don’t register faces. I don’t bother with names. They’re all threats. All obstacles between me and her.

Alice.

Somewhere past this chaos, past the fire and smoke and splintered steel, she’s still fighting.

I saw her last near the infirmary, patching up the broken like her hands are enough to hold the world together.

Every part of me is screaming to get back there, to get to her, but the mercs keep coming—relentless, coordinated, trained.

They’re not looters this time. They’re soldiers. Kru soldiers. Bonesnapper’s people.

The bastards didn’t come for conquest. They came for blood.

I rip a gun from a dead man’s arms and fire into the cluster near the trench line.

The kick’s sharp, the barrel jerks up with each shot, but I don't stop until the mag’s dry.

I toss it and grab another weapon from a half-blown crate, this one a battered repeater that jams on the third shot.

I curse, hurl it at an oncoming merc, and dive for a blade instead.

My shoulder’s screaming from a hit earlier—I can’t even tell when I got it. Blood slicks my scales, sticky and hot under the armor. Doesn’t matter. I press forward. I have to.

The ground shakes—again, stronger than before. Not the way a blast shakes the dirt. This is deeper. Heavier. A rhythm like a giant’s heartbeat.

And then I hear the roar.

The war engine.

It rolls into view like the nightmare it is, treads grinding up earth, smoke pouring from its rear vents.

The front cannon swivels, targets our flank, and fires.

The shockwave slams into me before the heat does.

I’m thrown off my feet, crash hard into a collapsed barricade, and the wind blasts from my lungs.

I scramble upright, blinking through soot and pain, and catch sight of the north wall folding like wet paper.

They’re in.

The Kru breach the camp in force, screaming war cries, weapons raised. The ground’s a flood of red and black. Behind them, the engine crawls forward, each impact from its treads a death sentence for anything beneath.

And through the smoke, I see her.

Alice.

She’s still standing near the infirmary, dragging a wounded kid toward shelter, hands slick with blood, eyes locked on the wreckage. She’s not panicking. She’s not frozen. She’s still fighting.

My body moves before I can think.

I shove past a pair of defenders falling back, leap over a broken turret mount, and sprint toward her. My feet barely touch ground—I can’t hear anything but the rush of blood in my ears and the pounding thunder behind me. She looks up just as I break through the last line of smoke.

“Alice!”

Her head snaps toward me, and there comes a flash.

Pain explodes behind my eyes as something metal cracks against my skull. My legs buckle. The world tilts sideways. For a second, I think I’m floating, like the ground’s been pulled out from under me. Then darkness curls around my vision like smoke.

I hit the dirt hard, cheek scraping gravel, the roar of the engine growing distant and close all at once. Voices swirl around me—gunfire, screams, static. The copper taste of blood fills my mouth. I try to move, but my limbs are heavy, sluggish. My mind screams for Alice, but my body’s giving out.

She’s still out there.

And I’m down.

I come back to the world gasping through smoke.

Ash rides the air so thick it clings to my throat like mud, clogs my nose, grits between my teeth.

My lungs burn with each shallow draw, ribs bruised or cracked—I can’t tell which.

The side of my face is slick with blood, vision blurred on one side.

My head throbs with every heartbeat, and there’s a high whine ringing in my ears that won’t go away, like a tuning fork jammed into my skull.

It takes a second to remember where I am. What happened.

Then I see the wall. Or what’s left of it. Twisted steel bones reaching skyward like a carcass. The trench line’s collapsed. The mech’s path is cut clear through the camp. There’s blood in the mud. Limbs half-buried in rubble. Nothing’s moving right. Nothing’s where it should be.

I push up with a grunt, arms trembling under my weight. Every joint feels unhinged, like I’ve been torn apart and put back wrong. My claws scrape against shattered concrete as I force myself to my feet.

The infirmary is gone.

Charred canvas flaps in the breeze, edges glowing with dying embers.

Medical crates are scattered like kicked-in teeth.

One of the cots is on fire. I limp forward, scanning—desperate, frantic—but there's no sign of her.

No flash of red hair, no sound of her voice over the chaos.

My stomach twists into a knot of ice and fire.

“Alice!” I bark, but it comes out hoarse. Broken.

There’s no answer.

I stumble through the remains, shoulder brushing against melted frame bars, boots crunching glass.

The stink of burned cloth, scorched flesh, and sterilizer chokes me.

But there’s something else—faint, lingering.

Crushed herbs. The scent she always carried after hours in triage.

It cuts through everything, anchors me. She was here. Recently.

Then I see it—half-buried under a cracked piece of flooring, scorched at the edges.

Her satchel.

I drop to one knee and drag it free, fingers trembling. The strap’s frayed. The flap hangs open. It’s empty. The med case she carried’s gone. That bag never left her side unless someone ripped it from her.

My claws dig into the earth beneath me, carving trenches through blood-muddied dirt.

I bow my head, breath ragged, rage boiling in my gut so hot it almost chokes me.

Everything inside me wants to scream, wants to tear through whatever’s left of the Kru and rip answers from their throats. But I can’t afford that. Not now.

She’s not here.

But she’s not dead.

Not yet.

“Commander!”

The voice cuts through the fog. A boy—barely more than a teenager—scrambling over debris, eyes wide and wild. His face is soot-streaked, his chest heaving. “Commander, they’re regrouping on the west side—we’ve got maybe twenty minutes before they sweep again!”

I blink at him, the title barely registering. Then I glance past him and see the others gathering—those who made it out alive. Dozens, maybe. Not more. They’re huddled in cover, bleeding, limping, clutching weapons that barely function. Some are kids. Some are too old to run, too stubborn to die.

They’re looking at me.

Waiting.

I shove the satchel under my arm and stand fully. Pain lances down my spine, but I don’t let it show. The part of me that wants to rage has to shut the hell up. There’s no time for fury now. Just action.

“We’re pulling out,” I say, voice sharp, cutting through the rising panic. “Anderson?—”

“I’m here,” he calls back, emerging from behind a half-crushed turret, face streaked with grime and blood. He’s got one arm in a sling, his other hand gripping a rifle like he actually plans to use it.

“You remember the old sewer system?”

He nods grimly. “Runs all the way to the canal. South exit’s behind the collapsed grain silo.”

“Take everyone who can move and get them there. Now. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not going with you.”

His brow furrows, but he doesn’t argue. Just gives a stiff nod and starts barking orders of his own.

I stalk back toward the edge of the field, past fallen friends, shattered barricades, and craters deep enough to bury a mech.

The war engine’s long gone, its trail marked by flattened debris and deep tread marks like scars across the ground.

Wherever it took her, they didn’t kill her. They wanted her alive.

And I know why.

Alice is leverage. A bargaining chip. A weakness they think they can exploit.

They’re wrong.

She’s not my weakness.

She’s the only thing keeping me from giving in to the part of me that wants to burn this whole planet to glass.

I shoulder a scavenged rifle, tighten the strap on the satchel, and set my eyes to the trail ahead.

I’m going to find her.

And gods help the bastard that tries to stand in my way.

The armory’s a half-collapsed lean-to, half-swallowed by ash and rubble, but what’s still intact is just enough. I rip through shattered crates and overturned lockers, fingers raw and bleeding, vision tunneling on one goal—get armed, get moving.

I sling a heavy rifle across my back. The grip’s worn smooth, the magazine half-loaded, but it fires true.

Good enough. I grab a plasma blade next, test its hum—clean, steady, lethal.

Straps of frags go across my chest, the weight comforting in its promise of destruction.

Every clip, every charge, every inch of sharpened metal I load onto myself feels like a vow written in blood.

I’m not coming back without her.

One of the Kru corpses lies slumped near the remains of the eastern defense gun.

His armor’s melted along one side, his mask cracked open to show a face still frozen in that final gasp.

Doesn’t stop me from crouching beside him and yanking his wrist toward me.

There’s tech embedded under the bracer—Kru-issued, likely still transmitting.

I twist until the display flickers back to life.

Static dances over the glass, but with a bit of fiddling, it coughs up its last received coordinates, pulsed in bursts of encrypted war-code.

I scan the logs, fingers clumsy from the tremors in my hands.

Pain keeps rhythm in my bones, every breath dragging through a cracked rib, but I push through it.

A name pops up again and again in the log stream—tied to orders, to movement commands, to tactical dispersals: Misha.

I feel my jaw clench. The datapad creaks in my grip.

Misha. I remember the name from the war board back in the old field base. High-value Kru asset. Not a merc. A hunter. The kind they sent when they didn’t just want you dead—they wanted you dismantled. Piece by piece. Psychological warfare wrapped in skin and venom. Of course it’s her.

She took Alice.

I close the pad and rise, pocketing the device. Anderson’s already moving the last of the survivors toward the sewer routes. I catch his eye across the ruins, and he gives me a curt nod. No words. He knows I’m not following.

The moon’s risen by the time I step out past the broken perimeter. It hangs like a burned coin in the sky—black around the edges, washed-out silver in the middle. Not warm. Not comforting. Just watching. Silent and cruel.

My boots crunch over shattered bone and scorched earth.

The wind hisses low across the dunes of rubble, carrying with it the scent of fuel, smoke, and the iron tang of spilled blood.

My breath leaves me in fogged puffs, each one catching the faintest glint from my armor.

My wounds throb with every step. My shoulder's stiff, half-dead from nerve shock.

The side of my head pulses in time with the drumbeat of a migraine that won't quit. But none of that matters.

What matters is the trail Misha left. The datapad pings a direction—north by northeast, out into the urban sprawl where the ruins run deep, where comms die and maps warp and the only law is survival by tooth and claw.

She’s out there. And she has Alice.

Every step feels like dragging myself uphill through fire, but the fire’s good. It keeps me moving. Keeps me sharp. I replay Alice’s last look before the blast—blood on her cheek, that stubborn spark in her eyes. She wouldn’t give up, even now. And I won’t either.

A scavenger pops out from a collapsed overpass up ahead, rifle raised. He sees the expression on my face, sees the blood-slick blade in my hand, and turns without a word. Smart.

I stalk deeper into the bones of the city, past husks of vehicles and hollowed-out buildings, through alleys soaked with forgotten wars.

Every shadow’s a trap, every corner a place for a gunman to wait—but they don’t matter.

If Misha thinks she can vanish into the dark with what’s mine, she doesn’t understand what I’ve become.

Alice isn’t just someone I care about. She isn’t just another name I failed to protect. She’s my Jalshagar—the word we Vakutans never use lightly. Bonded. In fire and fight and soul. There’s no undoing it. No replacement. And no surrender.

My claws tighten around the hilt of the blade, my chest rising and falling with something sharper than grief. It’s focus. Steel-sharp purpose. I will tear through their ranks if I have to. I will burn this city down to the last ember if it means getting her back.

The datapad buzzes again—one last coordinate pulse before it dies in my hand.

A warehouse district. Industrial zone on the fringe. Old tech storage. Underground chambers that predate the war. Probably crawling with Kru.

I’m not afraid.

I’m ready .

I whisper her name once into the wind, low and fierce, and start walking.