This story was no longer hers to tell.
The morning came up. Sloane didn't know if she had any rest. Every answer seemed to be there.
But the question was absurd. What is all this?
The fact that she won against the Mughal Empire felt...unconvincing. To her.
Felt like someone, no, not 'someone', more like something from all around. Air, water, soil and trees, what not. Did this. Planned this.
Even these thoughts feels like they were put into her. And the book was there staring at her without eyes. It held the solutions to the problems she never wanted to discover.
She caught up with Dannyal and they were going outside the palace. It was still dawn. Light getting reflected on the marble floors. She asked him,"Do you also feel it?" "Feel what?" He replied absent-mindedly.
"This metaphor...words can't describe it." She said looking at her hands.
He patted on her shoulder,"It's probably overthinking. Happens to me all the time before wars."
"Maybe I shouldn't worry that much?" She asked looking at his careless eyes. Later after a thought, she concluded, maybe not careless, more like unburdened.
"Yeah, I guess so." Dannyal answered. He felt, what if her sudden restlessness causes them the war. But he was confident she wouldn't.
They reached outside the palace. Chen was standing there. Behind her an army of rebel. They were pretty far from the palace, away from the observance of palace soldiers.
After preparing themselves with arms and weapons, they rode up on our horse. Sloane's tired mind noticed, the horses seemed as the most innocent being out of all of them. Maybe the stupidest one as well.
They reached in front of the Palace. The soldiers were astonished by the rebels. They rushed in forward. Trying to warn the officials.
Chen screamed, "Destroy!" A group of rebels with a huge log ran into it. They broke the gate.
Even before they could enter in to the courtyard. The first arrow was shot, it didn't come with a shout. It came with a sound like cloth tearing, passing so close to Sloane's ear that she felt the air split.
She ducked on instinct, heart pounding not from fear but recognition. Qing archers, disciplined ones.
They didn't waste arrows. She noticed how none of them aimed for the rebels' legs but clean kills only. This wasn't a skirmish. It was an execution dressed as order.
Dannyal noticed something else.
The arrows weren't meant encourages panic. They were timed. Every volley landed just as the rebels tried to scatter around, forcing them to regroup again. Against the plan.
Dannyal's mind ran ahead of the chaos, threading patterns through screams and steel. They're herding us, he realized.
Toward the exit. Toward the start.
"Chen," Dannyal said sharply, already moving, "they don't want us dead yet."
Chen laughed as she deflected a blade, the sound sharp and ugly. "Then they're idiots."
She fought like someone who didn't believe in tomorrow. Her strikes were reckless, powerful, almost angry at the air itself. She didn't even guard her back. Never had.
Chen didn't fear death; she feared stagnation.
Every soldier she cut down felt like proof that movement still existed. Blood splattered her sleeve and she didn't wipe it off. Cold. But to Sloane, effective and focused.
Sloane moved differently.
She didn't just charge. She watched. Between clashes, between breaths, she tracked the Qing formations. The way officers never fought first, the way banners shifted subtly before cavalry advanced.
She noticed how the rebels' confidence spiked whenever they gained ground, only to be crushed immediately after. Hope is being used as bait, she thought, throat tight.
The system loved that kind of irony. That's what she named her anxiety... for now.
A rebel screamed her name. She turned just in time to see him fall.
That scream stuck. It lodged somewhere behind her thoughts, where numbers stopped working.
Dannyal heard it too. He flinched, just for a fraction of a second. Enough to remind him that strategy was still built on bodies.
He grabbed Sloane's wrist and pulled her behind a collapsed pillar, her breath fast but steady.
"They're controlling our formation," he said. "Numbers are our tragedy. But If we break their rhythm—"
A cannon fired. Close to them.
Stone exploded. The pillar cracked, dust choking the air. Sloane coughed, eyes burning, and noticed something absurd even then. The cannon wasn't aimed at them. It was aimed at the ground behind them. Cutting retreat.
"They're sealing exits," she said hoarsely. But she thought at first, the reason of accumulation, was to get us out of the gates.
Then why are they destroying the gates now?
Dannyal smiled. Not happy. Focused. That relieved Sloane.
"Good," he said. "That means they're afraid we'll run."
Chen heard that and barked a laugh. "We won't."
The rebels surged again, anger overtaking coordination. Some charged screaming, others froze, weapons shaking. They weren't soldiers.
They were people who had already lost something. Sloane concluded.
The Qing army absorbed them like a tide hitting rock. Shields interlocking, spears rising together.
Efficient. Cold. Trained to erase.
Sloane watched a young Qing soldier hesitate.
Just one.
His hands trembled as he raised his spear. His eyes flicked to a fallen rebel, someone barely older than him. Sloane locked onto that hesitation like a fracture in glass.
"Dannyal," she said urgently, "left flank. Third row. They're not all convinced."
Dannyal followed her gaze, brain already calculating. He saw it then, the slight delay in that unit's response, the way their captain barked orders twice.
Morale weakness, he thought. Not enough to win. Enough to disrupt.
"Chen," Dannyal shouted, "push left. Loud. Make it ugly."
Chen didn't ask why. She never did. She charged with a roar, reckless and brutal, turning the fight personal. Rebels followed her instinctively, chaos blooming exactly where discipline was thinnest.
For a moment, just a moment, the Qing line bent.
Sloane felt hope claw at her chest. Even though her glasses were all foggy by now.
She pushed her glasses to make them steadier and immediately knew it was wrong.
The banners changed.
The ground shook as cavalry thundered in from behind the smoke, hooves crushing bodies without pause. The hesitation vanished. The system corrected itself.
Dannyal saw it too late.
"This was always the plan," he whispered. "They let us feel close."
An officer raised his blade. The remaining exits were gone. Fire spread along the courtyard edges, fed by oil-soaked stone. Rebels screamed, trapped between flames and steel.
Sloane finally understood, but too late, they regrouped us, so fire burns hard. Closed the doors, so we couldn't run.
Our existence wouldn't reach out of the gate. Not now. Not ever.
Chen stumbled for the first time, a spear lodged deep in her side. She grinned through blood, still standing. "Guess… I pushed too far."
Her heavy presence being lost was seen before she screamed.
Sloane ran to her, hands shaking, mind screaming numbers she couldn't solve. Chen's warm blood soaked her hands making being able to think harder.
But she noticed how the Qing soldiers slowed now, not rushing, savoring inevitability.
Dannyal stood still.
Too still.
His mind raced through alternatives, probabilities collapsing one by one. No retreat. No reinforcement. No miracle. Only choices left were who buys time and how much.
He met Sloane's eyes across the smoke.
She understood. Nodded. Smiled.
Sloane just looked at the sky. Thought of the questions left unanswered. Thought of the fun she had.
Dannyal's eyes almost teared up. So this was the end? Before it even started.
But a sense of relieve played in him as a rhythm. He thought of it as the music of the Angel of Death. For the first time, there were no moves left to calculate.
But Sloane and Dannyal, they didn't say goodbye.
They had already done that in every plan that they failed. Together.
The flames closed in.
And somewhere, far above the battlefield, the system watched, silent, precise, already recording outcomes.
The last banner fell.
The fight did not end.
But the outcome had already been recorded.
But only then Chen screamed. Her words bought a spark of hope.