Chapter 19: Unyielding War (2)

Shoji sat on the damp, uneven ground of the forward encampment, rolling a canteen between his hands. His uniform was torn, stained with dirt, soot, and the blood of men he couldn't remember. The red fabric barely held its original colour, faded from too many days under the brutal sun and too many nights pressed into the mud.

His muscles ached from exhaustion, his bones felt like they had been set on fire and left to smoulder, and yet, here he was.

Alive.

It was a miracle… a curse.

He should have died a long time ago. Shoji had been demoted for his failures, a punishment by the Fire Lord himself; cast down from a commander to a foot soldier, thrown into the worst battles, sent to die in the dirt.

And yet, battle after battle, he survived. He clawed his way back up, slowly, painfully, until now; now, he was a corporal. A pathetic excuse for a promotion, but better than nothing. The weight of responsibility pressed against his skull like an iron vice.

He had a team now. Young, inexperienced boys who still flinched at the sound of falling rocks, whose firebending was raw and unrefined, their discipline shaky. He was expected to lead them, to keep them alive.

He knew better… they were just bodies on a board, names soon to be forgotten, a part of the great Fire Nation war machine meant to be spent without hesitation. And now, they had been sent to die.

Lieutenant Azolin, that smug bastard, had handed Shoji the orders with a condescending glance, barely a word. A forward push into enemy territory, no reinforcements, no clear escape. The plan was suicidal; advance into a ravine where Earth Kingdom forces were entrenched, their walls carved from the very stone beneath their feet.

Shoji knew how this ended. The boulders would come crashing down, the tunnels would collapse, and they would be crushed like insects.

 "Your team leaves at dawn," Azolin had said.

And that was it. Shoji stared at his hands, flexing his fingers. His palms were rough, scarred. Hands of a soldier, a killer. Hands of a man who had nothing left.

He stood up, stepping outside his tent into the cold, stale air of the camp. Fires flickered low, barely illuminating the grim faces of his men.

They were huddled together, speaking in hushed tones, some sharpening their blades, others running through bending forms in the dirt. He could see it in their eyes; they knew.

They weren't stupid. The war had long since beaten the naivety out of them. Shoji inhaled deeply, feeling the dry heat of the night air fill his lungs.

The battlefield never changed.

The smell of ash, of burnt flesh, of sweat and fear; it clung to everything, staining the soul as much as the skin. Tomorrow, they would march. Tomorrow, they would fall.

…

The Fire Lord's palace stood as an unshaken monolith of power, its towering spires reaching into the smog-ridden sky, the molten glow of its ever-burning braziers casting long, writhing shadows across the polished obsidian floors.

The air was thick with the scent of fire and incense, a suffocating mix that clung to the walls, to the very bones of the structure itself. Deep within the heart of the palace, past grand halls and layers of crimson-draped corridors, sat Fire Lord Sozin, alone within the sacred halls of the Fire Temple.

The flickering torches cast his shadow in jagged, unnatural shapes against the golden murals of past Fire Lords. Their unblinking eyes bore witness to the scene, silent and unmoving, as if watching their successor with something close to wariness.

A single slip of parchment lay in his hands, its surface marred with bold, decisive ink strokes. The message was simple, 'Shoji was dead.'

Or at least, that's what had been reported. Sozin did not react, did not so much as blink as he let the paper fall from his fingers. It drifted toward the brazier beside him, caught in the hungry embers, and was devoured in an instant. The flames crackled and spat as if in approval, reducing the message to nothing but curling wisps of blackened ash.

Sozin's gaze drifted upward, toward the great war map before him. A sprawling testament to conquest, a reflection of the world as it should be; as he would make it.

The Fire Nation gleamed in brilliant red, its borders expanding like veins across the land. The Earth Kingdom, though vast, was riddled with marks where cities had fallen, where his forces had sunk their teeth deep into its flesh. The Water Tribes remained distant, untouched for now, but he knew their time would come. And then there was the Air Nomads. Or what was left of them.

His hand, steady at first, hovered over the charred remains of the Air Temples on the map, the red ink bleeding into black where his forces had laid waste to them. His fingers trembled, curling slightly, then clenched into a fist.

It wasn't enough.

His breath hitched slightly, his lips parting in a slow, shuddering exhale. The war was progressing, his armies sweeping across the land with calculated precision, yet something itching, nagging, festering refused to settle in his mind.

Shoji. A roach. A worm.

A failure cast into the fire, yet somehow, somehow, he had refused to burn. That man should have been ash. Sozin had expected his exile to the battlefield to be a death sentence. The fool should have been buried beneath the rubble of the Earth Kingdom long ago.

And yet, report after report had come; still alive, still fighting, still crawling through the mud, refusing to simply die. It was insulting. An affront to the very will of the Fire Lord himself. And so, he had ensured the cockroach would be stamped out. A direct order to his superior. A mission with no escape.

A final, absolute end. This time, he was dead.

And yet… Sozin stared at the map, his breathing slowing, deepening. He tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable, lips twitching before finally curling into a grin. A slow, creeping thing, stretching across his face with an unnatural ease.

His golden eyes, sharp and fevered, gleamed in the firelight, reflecting the ever-burning embers of his ambition.

"Soon… very soon…" his whisper slithered through the empty chamber, swallowed only by the crackling of the flames.

…

The air in the cell was damp, thick with the scent of mould and stagnant water. Shoji lay slumped against the rough, unyielding stone, his body aching from the countless bruises and wounds that adorned his flesh.

He could barely feel his limbs, restrained as they were; iron shackles biting into his wrists and ankles, the cold, merciless grip of earth encasing his entire body. His mouth was sealed shut, his eyes buried beneath a layer of solid rock, leaving him in a world of darkness and silence.

'Is this it?' The thought drifted through his mind, detached and weightless, as if it had been spoken by someone else entirely.

He had known, of course. From the moment Azolin had handed him that sealed order, he had known. It hadn't mattered what was inside; just the way his superior had smirked, the way he had waved Shoji away as if swatting a fly, had been enough to tell him.

A suicide mission. And yet, he had followed orders. Because that's what he had always done.

They had been ambushed. Cut down in the dead of night, the earth shifting and cracking beneath them, swallowing his men whole. He remembered the screams, the panic, the way the ground had devoured his comrades as if the very kingdom itself sought vengeance.

Shoji had fought. He had burned through the night, his fire casting fleeting bursts of light against the oppressive darkness.

He had tried.

But in the end, it hadn't mattered. The earth had risen against him, had wrapped around his limbs and torn him from the battlefield like a child having its toy being snatched by an adult.

And now, here he was. Alive. But not for long.

'All alone…'

His parents had died years ago. No siblings, no children, no wife. His whole life had been the military. His youth spent training, his adulthood spent fighting, his entire existence consumed by the ever-expanding war machine of the Fire Nation.

For what? To rot in a damp cell, nameless, forgotten?

No. He didn't want to die. Not like this.

Shoji gritted his teeth, though no one could see it, the earth pressing against his mouth preventing even that small defiance from being noticed.

He wanted to scream.

To curse.

To fight.

But there was nothing left to fight. No one would come for him. No rescue. No reinforcements. Not even a mention of his name in the annals of history. The cockroach had finally been stomped out.

For the first time in his life, Shoji had no orders to follow, no mission to carry out, no superior officer looming over his shoulder.

He had nothing. Nothing but the damp, the cold, and the slow, creeping realization that he would never see the sky again.

'No…' something deep within him ignited.

He still had something… something that did not let go even now. Something more powerful than anything he had felt before. It was not anger. Nor determination.

No, it was regret. The regret of following the orders as a commander to leads the fire nation in the air nomad genocide. Regret at having been nothing more than a soldier following orders.

Regret.