chapter 1 - on the Hamburger Hill

Edward Fujimoto watched as the nightmarish creatures before him slaughtered his squad members. 

This was the only way it could've ended, he knew. The last of the Field Command evacuated the area several days ago. His squad was thrown into a front where all was truly lost in vain hopes that their sacrifice might buy some time to salvage irreplaceable industrial infrastructure. 

They were meat shields, just like the millions of civilians stranded in the valley after the reality breach engulfed the entire area. 

The decorations on his uniform glimmered against the harsh sunlight, notwithstanding the carnage that was unfolding before his eyes. The scorching weather provided the embattled soldier with a moment of solace, his sweat covering any part of his body that wasn't buried in his enhanced combat gear.

However brief it might have been, the perceived iridescence of the decorations was a welcoming distraction from the revolting presence of the animated shadow-like beings that proved to be his squad's doom. 

They were a rebuff to the foundation of his reality, seeming to vanish into the ground as one of the still standing combatants unleashed rounds of bullets to delay their inevitable demise, only to sneak on him and somehow merge themselves into his shadow. 

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Shortly after, the unnamed soldier's head began to convulse violently at a pace that should have been impossible. His arms desperately reached for his rifle, but it was not long before his upper body joined his head in its deadly waltz. To Edward's eyes, it was almost as if three identical people were phasing in and out of existence in quick succession, with the afterimage of one overlapping with another to create a mere mockery of human motion. 

When his spasm gripped hold of his entire body, the man suddenly stilled, seemed to shrink into the ground, right where his shadow was standing. He collapsed just like a scarecrow would without its wooden poles, and the shadow came to life. 

It emerged from the dead man's body, and Edward could tell it fixed its gaze on Edward, even though all he could see was a black void. 

Edward Fujimoto saw the mountain of corpses before him. Despite himself, his mind drifted to a picture from his worn out his tory textbook. 

Hamburger Hill.

That was it, that was the name of the hill he would die on. 

Just as futilely, just as hopelessly.

As the shadow slowly approached, Edward thought of an anonymous flower hill from years prior, his eyes staring at the burning flags waving in the distance. 

His fear-ridden brain desperately searched for another flag, a flag his little hands clung onto on the trembling ship packed with distressed faces and the unnerving sounds of shuffling feet at an unspecified point in his fading memories. 

But it was not there. 

Corporal Edward Fujimoto was one of the 2,103,102 combatants serving under the banner of the United Nations Emergency Command killed in the Battle of the Rockies, one of the most devastating early defeats during the First Shattering.