The battlefield was a graveyard of broken bodies and dying light. Smoke clung to the shattered bones of the village, curling through the dusk like the fingers of some restless, unseen thing. Blood pooled in the earth’s shallow wounds, the stench of it thick in the air.

General Cassian Draegor rode at the head of what remained of his vanguard, his dark, weathered coat heavy with dirt and the scent of iron. The man was a phantom of war — tall, broad, a brutal presence forged in the marrow of bloodshed. Scarred knuckles gripped the reins of a restless stallion, and cold grey eyes swept the devastation with the indifference of a butcher surveying his work.

He was about to turn back to camp when something caught.

A flicker of color where there should’ve been none. Pale skin, matted hair, but it was the eyes — those damned eyes. Even from a distance, they were impossible to miss.

The boy was kneeling in the dirt, arms bound roughly behind his back, his clothes torn and smeared with soot and old blood. He didn’t cry, didn’t scream like the others had. He just… stared. Wide, hollow, endlessly blue. Eyes that didn’t belong in a world like this.

Cassian’s jaw flexed. He dismounted, boots hitting the ruined ground with a dull thud. The soldiers nearby stiffened as he passed, no one daring to breathe too loud.

“Who the fuck is that?” His voice was a low snarl, rough from smoke and command. He didn’t slow his pace.

A soldier scrambled to answer. “Found him under the rubble, General. Family’s gone. Some coward’s whelp left alive.”

Cassian stopped before the boy, towering over him like death incarnate. The boy didn’t flinch. Didn’t beg.

Didn’t even lower his gaze.

Those eyes… haunted, paranoid, like a cornered animal too far gone to lash out, too broken to plead for mercy.

Cassian crouched, gloved fingers reaching out, rough and cold as they gripped the boy’s chin, forcing his face upward. The boy’s skin was ice-cold. Fragile. Beautiful.

“Look at me,” Cassian growled.

And those storm-drowned sapphire eyes met his.

Silent. Shaking. But so goddamned alive.

The war-hardened general felt something shift. An unfamiliar weight in his gut. Not mercy. Not pity.

Possession.

This one’s mine.

His grip tightened, just enough to leave a mark. “What’s your name, boy?”

No answer.

The boy’s lips trembled, but no sound came. Not even a whimper.

Cassian’s expression darkened. “Mute, are you?”

The boy’s throat worked, a shallow breath hitching in his chest — but still no voice.

Good. He liked them quiet.

The general rose to his full height, gaze never leaving the boy.

“Chain him,” Cassian ordered, voice a rough cut of stone. “He comes with me.”

And just like that, the world spun on a different axis. The war didn’t matter. The dead didn’t matter.

Only those blue, broken, beautiful eyes.