Chapter 101 - 101: The Price of Firepower

Snow fell in thin, indecisive flakes—too light to blanket the firing range, just heavy enough to make everything look colder than it already was. It drifted through the lingering haze of cordite and churned earth, settling on torn barbed wire and the broken rims of shell craters like ash that had forgotten how to be warm.

Below the viewing platform, the Eternal Guard were already cleaning the field with the same discipline they used to clear trenches: methodical, silent, efficient. Straw bodies were dragged by the legs. Steel helmets were collected in neat piles. Spent belts were rolled and boxed. A few men tamped down the worst of the mud where the trucks had chewed through the wire, as if the range itself had to be reset like a machine between tests.

Oskar watched them for a moment and felt that familiar, private tension in his ribs—half pride, half unease.

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