The clock kept moving.
---
Slow for some.", "Fast for others.", "Depending on where you were standing.", "Depending on what you were about to do.",
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Inside the tent.", "The suits.", "Eyes on screens.", "Hands near communication devices.", "Waiting for the information the drones were sending back.", "Watching the mountain.", "Watching the movement on it.", "Watching the numbers change.",
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Inside tanks.", "Soldiers.", "The specific silence of enclosed metal and people who have run out of things to say.",
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Drones above.", "Their cameras reading everything.", "Feeding it back to screens that had people watching who would never walk up that mountain.",
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Kang Byung-chul.", "His timid eyes fixed.", "His hands near the communication console.", "His face doing the best it could with what it had been given to feel.",
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Then a buzz.", "In every earpiece.", "Across every guild.", "Across every leader.", "Across everyone who had been given the frequency.",
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The same buzz.", "At the same moment.", "Finding all of them.",
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Then the voice.
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Gun-woo.
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"Today we stand at the end.", "And the beginning.", "Today we declare a new world.", "We accept the hellish reality that has been unleashed upon us.", "If we do not accept the harsh grim dark of it.", "We cannot move through it.",
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A pause.", "The earpiece carrying the silence between his words the same as the words themselves.",
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"To the soldiers who fight on for their families.", "To the soldiers who fight on for a better tomorrow.", "To the soldiers who fight on.", "I say.", "Godspeed.",
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"Many of us will not see tomorrow.", "But when those who come after look back upon this day.", "They will say.", "It was today.", "Right here.", "Where humanity lifted itself up.", "We did not start this.", "But we will finish it.",
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A breath.
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"I pray we all make it out alive.", "Godspeed.", "To all of you.",
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The earpieces went quiet.
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Eyes across the mountain.", "Wide.", "Something in them that hadn't been there before.", "Not courage exactly.", "Something more honest than courage.", "Something that comes when words find the exact thing that needed to be found.",
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Heartbeats slowing to something more useful.", "Breathing finding its purpose.", "Hands finding their weapons with a different kind of grip.",
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Then Kim Tae-soo.", "Standing in front of the Endless Storm.", "Black and white armor.", "Dark blue at the joints.", "The symbol of a tornado on his chest.", "Dark.", "Same color.", "Moving even in print.",
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He looked at his soldiers.
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"Some of you are going to die.", he said.", "There is no god.", "There is no promise of safety.", "There is death.", "And there is how you approach it.",
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He let that sit.", "Just for a moment.",
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"If you've done the math.", "If you know how this ends for you.", "Make sure you take as many as you can with you.",
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His voice finding its ceiling.", "Then breaking through it.", "Screaming the last of it.", "His body turning toward the mountain as his voice finished.", "His sword finding the air above him.",
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The Endless Storm screaming with him.", "The sound of it rising.", "Finding the sky.", "Finding the mountain.", "Finding whatever was on it that could hear.",
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He turned.", "To what was coming.",
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The black sea.", "Already moving.", "Already descending.", "The mountain's surface shifting.", "The ants.", "Coming down.", "Their numbers enormous.", "Their movement like water that had decided on a direction and committed to it.",
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Then wings.", "From within the mass.", "Some of them lifting.", "Taking to the air.", "The black sea becoming something else.", "Something that moved on the ground and in the sky simultaneously.", "The screaming of them rising.", "The tearing sound of wings finding air.", "Unholy.", "Layered.", "Building on itself until it was one enormous sound.",
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The smoke of them.", "Dark.", "Rising.",
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The mountain disappearing behind it.