As the two battalions advanced, their footsteps dragging heavily across the frozen ground,
Damon's left eye twisted...
Not out of fear, but for something else, To see something behind him above the platform.
He looked up at the raised platform.
And there...
He saw them.
The two kings.
Julius, the Golden Lion, and the Old Iron King, sitting quietly, moving chess pieces with calm fingers، As if the world around them weren't on the verge of collapse.
But what Damon saw then was no ordinary chessboard. The board reflected the battlefield.
And the pieces... were them.
He, Smith, and the rest.
He began to tremble, for now his fate lay in the hands of a king:
The king who considers this massacre a mere game.
He whispered to himself:
They don't even look at us...
As if we were just puppets—lifeless, dreamless.
They are killed and thrown away just to amuse their boredom."
Suddenly...
Damon noticed something odd about Julius's movements،He could win.
One clever move with the Golden Queen،and the Iron King's game would be over.
But...
He didn't.
Instead, he chose to sacrifice his own battalion.
His battalion.
An unspoken order...
And the golden pieces advanced toward the slaughter.
Damon's throat went dry.
He couldn't breathe for a moment.
"Why?"
Why doesn't he end the game?
Why send his soldiers to die when he has victory in his hands?
Then he realized the truth...
He was watching.
Watching the reactions
Other nobles, armies, the crowd.
He was offering Casually.
Or offer an offering.
A sacrifice on the altar of the commoners...
Just to arouse curiosity, to impress the court, or to study how men tremble at the sight of needless blood.
His body trembled, his heart froze.
He saw hell descending from the heavens.
The enemy battalion rushed like a plague.
They weren't fighting—they were annihilating.
Their faces said, "Don't kill," but their hands did.
The magic was powerful and irresistible.
Their bodies, their movements, their fates now depended on a ridiculous game.
The spears struck mercilessly, without pause.
Each soldier moved like an instrument of death, not a man.
And Daemon?
He didn't scream.
He simply... watched.
He watched his comrades fall, stripped of dignity, without even raising their hands to fight as they were born to do.
They fell to the ground like autumn leaves torn from the Tree of Life without warning.
But the strangest thing...
The enemy soldiers were crying, too.
Tears streamed down their faces as they were stabbed.
Their bodies had become independent of them and were accustomed to killing—puppets in a tragedy they never chose.
Watching under a shock he had never known before, Damon realized:
"The real enemy isn't in front of us... it's behind us."
Smith's battalion didn't move.
They stood still, like statues carved from terrified flesh.
But the enemy battalion was advancing—step by step, relentless, unstoppable.
Suddenly...
The screaming began.
One soldier, sobbing like a child who has lost its mother.
Another couldn't take it anymore—wetting himself, trembling like a leaf on the brink of death.
As for Smith, he looked at Damon,
Not a command or a plea, but a silent tremor that whispered, "Run... Save yourself."
But Damon didn't move.
He was just He watches...
"And sees."
He saw hell descending from the heavens.
The enemy battalion rushed like a plague.
They weren't fighting—they were annihilating.
Their faces said, "Don't kill," but their hands did.
The magic was powerful and irresistible.
Their bodies, their movements, their fates now depended on a ridiculous game.
The spears struck mercilessly, without pause.
Each soldier moved like an instrument of death, not a man.
And Damon?
He didn't scream.
He simply... watched.
He watched his comrades fall, stripped of dignity, without even raising their hands to fight as they were born to do.
They fell to the ground like autumn leaves torn from the Tree of Life without warning.
But the strangest thing...
The enemy soldiers were crying, too.
Tears streamed down their faces as they were stabbed.
Their bodies had become independent of them and were accustomed to killing—puppets in a tragedy they never chose.
Watching under a shock he had never known before, Damon realized:
"The real enemy isn't in front of us... it's behind us."