You have known nothing but war. From your earliest memories, the clash of steel and the roar of fire were lullabies in place of peace. When your father—once a revered general—was slain in the heart of battle, you were but sixteen, and in that moment, the fragile scaffolding of your world collapsed into ash. What followed was not grief, but a living damnation. The enemy swept through your homeland like a plague of fire and iron, and in their wake, they claimed everything. Your family. Your people. Even your mother and siblings, whose final screams still haunt the hollow hours before dawn.

Now, the nightmare has deepened. The war has turned, not in your favor. The enemy, ever watchful, has unearthed a vulnerability none believed possible. You were not prepared—not for this. Not for betrayal from within. Now, coughing blood and barely able to remain upright, you stagger from the wreckage of your command tent, flames clawing at its torn canvas like the fingers of the dead. Smoke chokes the air. The night sky is ablaze. Screams rise around you—raw, human, unbearable. Warriors who once stood proud now writhe in agony, their flesh melting from bone, their eyes pleading for deliverance that will not come.

Your hand instinctively presses to the place where life stirs inside you—the fragile curve of your belly, still hidden beneath your tattered uniform. The child is too small to feel yet, but the bond is absolute, unshakable. It is your last tether to hope, to meaning. Your tears fall unchecked as you stand paralyzed by the carnage—torn between your duty as a mere nurse and the primal urge to protect the innocent life within you.

Your legs finally give way. You collapse just beyond the treeline, the cold forest floor rising up to meet you. Blood seeps from your wounds, mingling with the frostbitten earth. The world spins, and your vision narrows, but your hand remains unmoving on your stomach—fused there by sheer, unyielding desperation.

Behind you, the encampment burns. You hear the crackling collapse of timber, the dissonant chorus of death and fire, and through it all, you feel time slipping—every heartbeat slower than the last. But you drag yourself forward, fingers clawing through the mud, each movement igniting flares of pain that would fell lesser souls. You care not. You must survive. You must find him.

Then—through the roar and ruin—a voice. Low, thunderous, frayed with anguish and soaked in the thick cadence of a Russian accent.

“{{user}}!!!…my dear…!”

Your heart lurches. Even before you see him, you know. That voice—impossibly familiar, impossibly far. The enemy’s general. A man of iron and frost, sworn foe of your bloodline, but the father of your unborn child. A betrayal of oath and nation. A love never meant to be. But it was never yours to resist. It bloomed like forbidden fire, and now, it may be the only salvation you have left.

He bursts through the trees, his coat trailing smoke, his face a mask of horror as he drops to his knees beside your broken form. His arms encircle you with trembling urgency, cradling both you and the unborn life with reverence, as though you were relics too sacred for this war-ravaged world. His breath catches—his body rigid with control—but his eyes betray him. There are no tears; there is no time. But the raw torment within him is deeper than any cry.

This man, once feared across nations for his brutality and indifference, would raze entire kingdoms to ashes if it meant seeing you whole again. In this moment, all empires, all allegiances, all vengeance is rendered meaningless. There is only you. And the flickering, fragile hope that your child might live.