Ashes Of the Führer

Crack.

The mountains answered with thunder.Gunfire rolled through the Quadrumontés, echoing off jagged stone like a chorus of war drums. The sound bounced through the valley below, shaking birds from their roosts and scattering snow dust from the ledges.

A hundred soldiers stood in staggered firing lines across a half-cleared ridge.

Crack. Crack. CRACK.

Spent shells steamed in the cold morning air, dropping to the rocks like brass rain.

"Your rifles are your lifeline!" Wilhelm shouted, pacing behind them like a storm on legs. "You will sleep beside them, bleed beside them, and if you ever drop one—you'll wish I'd shot you myself. Do you understand!?"

"Yes, sir!" came the strained chorus.

He didn't stop walking. "You think this is training? This is the filter. The war gets what's left of you when I'm done."

These weren't ordinary recruits. They were volunteers—the first hundred drawn from the refugee pool two weeks ago. Young, eager, wide-eyed. Not anymore. Not after three days in Wilhelm's mountain crucible.

The path to survival began at dawn, every day:

They sprinted up rocky switchbacks, boots slipping, rifles held over their heads. The elevation burned lungs like fire. Anyone who dropped a weapon had to climb again—twice.

"Curse you!" a trainee barked."I—my legs—""They'll heal in the grave!" Wilhelm responded.

Back at camp, while some drilled, others worked with blisters and rope to build real shelters—not tents, but huts, timber-walled, roofed in bark and cloth, reinforced with stone hauled from the ridge.

"Heave it—watch the frame—"

"I swear, this log's cursed."

"Then drag the curse into place!" a soldier barked.

Axes rang out. Splinters flew. Men groaned under the weight of trees hauled off wagons and reshaped into walls.

Midday, Wilhelm forced them into the glacial stream nearby—ice water up to the waist, rifles held high.

"Keep the chambers dry!" he roared.

"My hands are purple, sir!"

"That's how you know they're alive!"

Some cursed him. Some cried. None quit.

And after their fingers thawed and huts were half-built, the worst began—when the sun dipped low and the firelight faded into bruised skies.

At dusk, Virella stepped into the ring.

She wore no armor—just a linen tunic, loose sleeves rolled up to her elbows, glowing runes spiraling down her arms like vines of fire. A subtle spell glimmered at her throat, enhancing muscle, reflex, and speed to match any man. Maybe more.

"Hand-to-hand is essential," she said coolly. "You will not always have a rifle. But you will always have hands. Knees. Elbows."

Two men stepped forward, unsure.

"You're—uh—are you going to spar or lecture?" one asked.

Crack!Her palm landed hard and fast into his chest, folding him like paper. He hit the dirt gasping.

"First rule," she said, circling. "Don't underestimate an opponent because they're small, pretty, or standing still."

The second man lunged. She parried, ducked, and struck upward with her elbow. His chin snapped back. Another tried from the side—she pivoted, swept his legs out, and brought her knee down an inch from his throat.

When one groaned from a dislocated shoulder, she knelt beside him, whispering a word in an old tongue. Her fingers pulsed with light. Click. He screamed, then gasped—pain gone. The bone, realigned.

"Back in the ring," she said. "You're not finished."

By the time the moon rose, bruises bloomed across skin like ink. Blood crusted in noses, lips, and knuckles. Still, no one left.

Back at camp, fires flickered inside half-finished huts. The smell of stew drifted over the mountain wind—boiled roots, scraps of salted pork. Some recruits sat sharpening bayonets. Others cleaned rifles in silence, eyes hard, hands steadier than they were three days ago.

Wilhelm stood at the edge of the clearing, watching them.

"They're raw," said a Virella at his side.

Wilhelm nodded. "Yes."

"Will they make it?"

He watched one boy wipe blood from his own chin with a grin, then return to practicing jabs against a tree trunk.

"They already are."

Somewhere beyond the peaks, the demi-human nobles still fought each other for scraps of power. Down here, in this carved-out hell, a new army was being born.

And when winter came, it wouldn't be the cold that hunted—it would be them.