Chapter Content
A minute ago, the ten battalions—ten thousand men on the imperial road—had been singing.
Not the quiet kind that fills the miles. This was the kind of sound an army makes when it believes history can be forced to kneel. They had crossed the border less than an hour earlier, and the lack of resistance had gone to their heads like wine. The first battalion threw the verse forward, raw voices scraping through dust and heat—Edirne struck again and again like a hammer on iron. God. Sultan. Vengeance. Old wounds turned into promises.
The men behind caught the chorus. Then the next. Then the next—never perfectly together, never clean, but enough that the song ran the length of the column like a rope you could grab when your lungs burned and your shoulders ached under straps.
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