Chapter Content
Across Thrace the rains had finally loosened their grip. They did not stop so much as thin—enough for the world to breathe again, and for the red sun to climb out of the horizon like a reopening wound.
Fog rose from the ground in slow sheets. It seeped out of shell-holes, out of trenches, out of the soaked earth itself, carrying the stink of wet ash and rotting flesh. In the mud, men went down on their knees without orders, facing east. Foreheads pressed into filth. Lips moved with prayers that sounded less like hope than habit.
Ash still lay over the fields in a thin gray skin—soft enough to take footprints, thick enough to cling to cloth and skin. Ahmet knelt with his cavalry company, his breath steady, his hands placed right, his mouth forming words he had repeated since childhood. Around him the horses stamped and snorted and shifted their weight, sensing what men tried not to name.
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