The war between the Eastern Prefecture and the Western Prefecture had entered its second, agonizing month. The Central Plains, once a vibrant tapestry of emerald grass and rolling hills, had been pulverized into a chaotic, nightmarish expanse of deep mud trenches, shattered bedrock, and vast, glittering craters of vitrified glass. The sheer volume of Battle Aura expended daily by tens of thousands of martialists had permanently altered the climate. The sky was a perpetual, suffocating swirl of evaporated sea water and abrasive desert dust, blocking out the sun and casting the battlefield in a grim, twilight haze.
