New Routine

(Rodova Military Academy, Leo's Dorm Room)

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

The alarms blared loudly, as Leo woke up with a jolt, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his body unusually drenched in cold sweat.

'What the hell did I just witness?' Leo wondered, as his pulse pounded like war drums in his ears, his chest rising and falling rapidly as if he had just surfaced from drowning.

'It felt like I was the one being executed… It felt like I was the one who was betrayed,' Leo realized, as he glanced down at his hands, watching them tremble violently.

For a split second, the world around him still felt unreal.

His dorm room—his bed, his desk, the faint glow of the academy's night lights filtering through the window—it all seemed distant, almost wrong.

The battlefield still clung to his vision.

The screams. The lightning. The sickening crunch of bone and flesh being torn apart.

The gods tearing into their own.

The betrayal.