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The Last Banner

Kapitel 1: Chapter 1: Hadrian's capture

The world isn't built for mercy. Not really. It doesn't care how tall you build your towers or how many fields you tame. You can pour sweat and blood into a kingdom, carve it from the wild with your bare hands, but the world? It'll still tear it all down eventually. That's what men learned the hard way after the Others came.

There's talk of a golden age, long before all this. A time when humanity's empires stretched across continents, when rivers bent to their will and forests fell to the march of armies. They say the banners flew high back then, bold and unyielding, as if they'd last forever. Maybe they believed it too.

Hard to imagine now, isn't it? Hard to picture spires that scraped the sky when all that's left are ruins choking on ash and vines. The only things rising these days are the bones of burned-out cities.

And then there were the Other races. No one agrees where they came from. Some say they were vengeance, the gods finally getting tired of men's arrogance and setting the score right. Others whisper about ancient mistakes, doors opened that should've stayed locked. Maybe it doesn't matter. All that matters is what happened after—the old world broke, and no one's managed to piece it back together.

The elves came first. Beautiful, they said. Deadly too. Their mana cores lit up like stars when they rained fire down on everything that stood tall. Then came the orcs, smashing through walls and people like they were made of paper. The dwarves? They didn't bother with brute force. They turned mountains into fortresses, using seige engines to rain destruction from high above. And in the shadows, the vampires waited. They didn't march; they didn't have to. They waited for the weak to fall, like wolves circling the herd, and picked them off one by one.

Rome burned. Constantinople fell. And Greece? It didn't even get its heroic last stand. No Thermopylae this time, just a slow, ugly collapse. The proud warriors of Macedonia, descendants of Alexander himself, now fight with bronze shields and spears against iron weapons and magic. They fight to hold onto scraps of a world that doesn't even care about them anymore.

Then there was mana. That changed everything, didn't it? When the wells opened, the world shifted. Suddenly, it wasn't about skill or courage. It was about power. The Others, with their mana cores, soaked it up like sponges. They grew stronger, faster, invincible. Humans? Well, they just watched. Born without magic, they stuck crawling while everyone else ran ahead. Oh sure, you can train. You can sharpen your sword, plan your battles. But without a core? You're nothing but a shadow in the other races light.

Still, people cling to whispers. Stories of hope, tales of a human chosen by the gods to defy the rules, to fight back. Most laugh at the idea. A few pray it's true. Either way, it's something to hold onto when the night gets too dark, and you're afraid you won't see morning.

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Hadrian's head was a mess—muddy thoughts, a pounding ache that blurred the edges of the world around him. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed wasn't the noise. It was the smell. Blood. Thick and metallic, clinging to the air like a stain.

He tried to sit up, but his body didn't want to cooperate. His hands scrabbled in the dirt, his breathing shallow. Around him, the battlefield roared—men screamed, weapons clashed, and orcs bellowed in that guttural way that made your stomach drop.

The ground was a mess of mud and bodies, the blood pooling so thick in places it looked like someone had tried to paint the earth red. Not far off, the remnants of the Macedonian phalanx held their ground—or tried to. Their shields were locked, spears jabbing out in shaky bursts, but it wasn't enough. The orcs smashed into them like waves, relentless, merciless.

"Hold the line!" someone shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos.

Hadrian turned his head. A grizzled warrior stood at the center of the formation, his shield cracked and his helmet missing. Blood streaked his face, but he didn't waver. His spear darted forward, catching an orc in the throat. The creature gurgled and fell, but three more pushed forward to take its place.

Hadrian's hands brushed against something cold and solid—a sword. It was chipped, the blade stained with someone else's blood, but it was better than nothing. He wrapped his fingers around the hilt, though it felt too big, too heavy for his small hands.

He was just a boy. Eleven years old, too young for this. He wasn't supposed to be here, wasn't supposed to see this.

The orcs were monsters, hulking and snarling, their tusks gleaming in the weak sunlight. One of them swung an axe, its blade splitting a shield—and the arm behind it—in one brutal sweep. Another grabbed a man by the throat, lifting him off the ground before crushing him like he was made of paper.

Hadrian's heart pounded. He couldn't breathe. His chest felt tight, his legs trembling with the urge to run. He looked to the edge of the battlefield. There. A gap. A way out. He could slip through, vanish into the hills.

The thought burned in his mind. Run. Just run. No one would notice. No one would care.

But then he saw the warrior again. His spear was gone now, replaced by a jagged length of wood. He fought like a man who'd forgotten how to do anything else. He rammed the wood into an orc's gut, but another blade found his side. The warrior staggered, blood pouring from the wound, but he didn't fall.

"Hold the—!" The words didn't finish. The axe came down, and the warrior fell.

Hadrian froze. His hands shook. His legs screamed at him to move, to run, but he couldn't. The sight of the warrior lying in the mud, his blood pooling around him, was like a stone in his chest.

"If I run, who will remember him?" even though Hadrian wanted to run, something about just leaving after all these men were sacrificing their lives just felt wrong.

The thought hit him like a punch, knocking the air out of his lungs.

His grip tightened on the sword. It was clumsy, awkward in his hands, but he raised it anyway. He moved forward, his legs heavy but unwilling to stop.

The blade struck the orc's leg, a shallow cut that did little more than make it angry. The creature turned, its yellow eyes narrowing. It raised its axe.

"Run, boy!" A voice shouted. The old man with the scythe—his voice cracked, but his swing was steady as he brought the rusted blade into the orc's side. "Live!"

Hadrian stumbled back. His feet slipped in the mud, and he fell. The old man stood firm, swinging the scythe again. The last thing Hadrian saw before the tide of orcs swept over them was the man's face, grim and unyielding.

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When Hadrian woke again, it was quiet. Too quiet.

His wrists were bound with coarse rope, the fibers digging into his skin. He sat in a cart, the rough wood digging into his back, surrounded by other captives.

The fields around them were blackened, the trees little more than charred skeletons. Smoke hung in the air, a reminder of what was lost.

Hadrian didn't speak. He didn't look up. His thoughts churned, full of faces—men who had fought, who had fallen. The grizzled warrior. The old man.

he had given up up mentally, waiting for his fate.