Thirty paces away, thirty surviving junior officers pushed themselves up from the smoking rubble, their scorched sabers rattling in their trembling hands.
They had crawled from the collapsed weapon pits and broken trenches, their silver armor blackened by the redirected orbital fire.
Blood ran down their visors, staining their gorgets dark crimson. Their knees wobbled, barely supporting the weight of their iron greaves, yet their eyes burned with frantic desperation.
“Protect the Commander,” the lead lieutenant croaked, raising a notched broadsword with both hands. “Form the crescent formation. Die for the Pill-Moon.”
The thirty soldiers staggered into a ragged line, dragging their dented scabbards through the hot ash.
They were the elite veterans of the First Pill-Moon garrison. For three hundred years, they had guarded the custom platforms, enforced the celestial tithes, and executed delinquent lower-realm ascenders without mercy.
They knew only the brutal discipline of the Harvest Court.
To retreat without orders meant death by the soul-furnace. To surrender meant the execution of their entire mortal bloodlines.
