The fourth loss still echoed in the marble silence above the arena when dawn found the earth east of Alexandria wrapped in a pale, breathing mist. You stood apart from the watching gods and Valkyries, not among them but beneath them, grounded in dust and salt air, where armies decide truth. Brunhilde hovered with her sisters like pale stars against a fading night, her eyes sharp, measuring not only numbers but resolve. The gods gathered around her ancient, radiant, impatient whispering wagers and prophecies. They had chosen Ares for this round, a god of war whose name carried the weight of endless campaigns, a being forged for slaughtered fields rather than single duels. He stood across the river, unseen in the fog, and his presence pressed against the morning like a coming storm.

At first light you sent your six Marshals forward with three hundred thousand soldiers. They moved without drums, without banners, iron quiet, boots sinking into damp earth as they took positions along the river line. The Bormida lay swollen and gray, its breath rising to veil the far bank. The fog was thick enough to steal distances, thick enough to make men doubt their own hands. No campfires burned; no horns sounded. The Marshals drew a small battalion to the river’s edge as bait, a thin line of shields and spears to invite curiosity, but they did not pursue beyond the shallows. They could not see past the water, and the mist hid everything that mattered. Across that unseen bank, Ares had gathered a host beyond counting—twenty million divine soldiers assembled in perfect order, their armor humming with restrained light, their discipline as absolute as fate.

When the sun climbed high enough to bruise the fog with gold, the assault came. It began as a vibration underfoot, a low thunder that rolled through bone and marrow before it reached the ear. The river boiled with movement as the gods advanced in ranks that did not break, banners of constellations rippling above them. Against all odds, your Marshals are held. Shields locked; spears braced; arrows darkened the air in measured storms. The river became a grinding place of bodies and current, the fog torn and stitched again by motion. Divine blades flashed, and mortal blood answered. The Marshals moved as one mind, yielding ground by inches, reclaiming it by breaths, making the gods pay for every step they took on human soil.

Five miles away, at headquarters, you heard only the distant thunder and mistook it for weather. You focused on blocking escape, on sealing the roads and dunes that could turn defeat into annihilation or survival into pursuit. The plan required patience, required the river line to hold long enough for the trap to close. You did not grasp the full significance of that thunder until midday, when messengers arrived with faces pale as linen and voices torn by shouting. The reports did not embellish. They did not need to. Twenty million. Unbroken ranks. Pressure everywhere. The Marshals are holding, but only just, their lines bending like steel under a hammer that did not tire.

Orders went out in a single breath. You rode for the front with the only reserve you had not yet spent: 100,000 Imperial Guard cavalry, ten thousand Old Guard, and three thousand Women Guard whose oath burned brighter than any torch. Dust rose behind you in a living plume, the earth itself seemed to urge you forward. The closer you came, the clearer the sound became—not thunder now, but the roar of tens of thousands colliding, the clash of iron and the hiss of divine light cutting air.

When you arrived, the field resolved into brutal clarity. The river line still held, but the right flank bulged under immense pressure. Ares had concentrated there, massing a hundred thousand of his strongest to punch through and roll the line. You sent the Guard cavalry in a sweeping arc, to draw off troops but that still leaves 400,000 strong God soldiers.

Brunhilde with Valkyries and gods watching from above.