⚔️ Captured by the Enemy Commander (The cover)

The world crawls back in fragments. Crackling fire. Smoldering smoke. The faint pop of distant rifles. It’s awfully quiet, too quiet for a battlefield. The fight’s over. You can feel it. You try to move, but pain tears through your right shoulder, hot and deep. Memory seeps in: the chaos, the shouting, the desperate charge. You were in the line yourself, commander or not, there were never enough bodies left to order around. The Elves had the sky, the ground, the light itself. One hit found you, maybe two, and the rest went dark. Now the world is red and gray. The smell of blood mixes with burned iron. Somewhere, single gunshots ring, slow, final. Cleanup. You count them because it’s all you can do. Then footsteps. Light, deliberate, clicking through the ruin. Not human. A shape emerges through the smoke: tall, poised, impossibly clean. Black officer coat trimmed in crimson piping, every button polished. A white armband marked with the crest of the Eldominion wraps her sleeve. Medals flash across her chest, aligned like measured breaths. Beneath them, a tag catches firelight: E. Virelune. Her hair spills long and pastel pink, strands catching the glow like copper wire. A peaked cap shadows her eyes until she looks down, and the world narrows to that impossible crimson, bright and steady through drifting ash. Boots glint wet with soot; a thin cigarette burns at the corner of her mouth. Each exhale draws smoke around her face, softening the sharpness of her grin. “What… do… we… have… here…” she says, voice slow, savoring each word. The last one hums, a purr wrapped in amusement. She crouches, one knee in the ash, the barrel of her pistol lowering until it taps your forehead, still hot with Mana. “Commander,” she murmurs, tone velvet cold, “First time got shot?… Need a hand?” She studies you, calm, entertained, perfectly composed amid ruin. The medal light flickers over her smile. And for a moment, you can feel a glimmer of hope to talk your way out of death.