The western frontier burned behind them.
Damien marched beside General Maru and General Riki, boots crunching over scorched earth and broken armor, the three of them leaving a trail of smoking craters and blood-slicked roads in their wake.
What was left of Europe's western campaign was no longer an army, it was a scattered, terrified mob. Columns of soldiers that had once stormed Chinese soil with polished steel and perfect formation were now running for their lives, abandoning tanks and mechas, hurling weapons aside in desperate bids to escape.
But there was no outrunning them.
A vast army could not outpace a small squad of murderous generals hellbent on wiping every last European soldier from the battlefield.
The western push was no longer a counteroffensive, it was a purge. Damien fought at the center of it, a silent reaper wrapped in black mana, his every step matched by thunder from the skies or rupturing earth beneath.
