Page 77 of Fated in A Time of War
Not from the blasts. This is different. Rhythmic. Heavier.
I freeze, one knee on the ground beside a man coughing blood, my hand gripping a roll of gauze. The tremors build until the gravel dances across the floor. Something massive is coming. I know it before I see it. My gut twists. My fingers tighten.
The dust clears—and I see it.
A war engine.
It strides into view above the broken wall, towering over the trench like a god come to end things. Kru colors paint its armor in blood-red and charcoal. Plates the size of freight doors lock into place as it walks, each footfall cracking pavement. Its head turns slowly, mechanical eyes glowing white, as if surveying the ants it’s about to crush.
Turrets bristle from its shoulders. Rocket bays open with a hiss. On its back, some kind of railgun or maybe an artillery cannon—too big to name—swivels into position.
I stumble backward, breath caught in my throat. This thing isn’t built to win a fight.
It’s built to erase us.
And then I hear laughter. Deep. Mocking. Familiar.
My heart stutters.
A shape emerges behind the war engine—silhouetted in the firelight. Hulking, armored, massive. Bonesnapper.
He doesn’t need a loudspeaker. His voice carries anyway, ragged and raw with amusement. “Thought you could hide forever?”
I stand, frozen. My hands still sticky with blood, my chest heaving.
His helmet turns toward me. I know he can see me.
He points, one massive claw arcing out through the smoke. “Found you.”
It clicks into place then, colder than the winter winds back home, harder than any truth I’ve ever swallowed.
This wasn’t about tech. Or tactics. Or some scavenger war over buried circuits.
This is personal.
They wantme.
CHAPTER 23
KRALL
The 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, anddrag 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.
