Time lost all meaning after the first kill.
The grey light of the northern dawn did not change, the clouds pressing down on the frozen plain like a lid on a pot. There was no sun to mark the passage of hours, no shadow to measure the day's slow crawl toward evening. There was only the battle, endless and grinding, and the rhythm that carried us through it.
I learned that rhythm in the hours after my first kill. It was not the practiced cadence of training, not the steady beat of the drum that had guided our drills. It was something older, deeper, written in the blood and bone of every warrior who had ever stood on this ridgeline.
