6:20 AM.
The first ray of morning light struggled to cut through the heavy clouds in the East, casting an ominous dark golden hue over the Nasur Fortress.
The morning fog was not a gentle white veil, but a murky gray-yellow curtain, laced with smoke and dust, churning heavily in the valley.
Visibility was compressed to less than five hundred meters, as if the whole world was stuffed inside a frosted glass jar.
"Company A observation post report—"
The voice from the encrypted radio was tense like a steel wire, with the background of whistling mountain winds:
"Eastern highway! Smoke and dust! Large clouds of smoke and dust! Approximately eight kilometers away! Confirmed as a large armored convoy, tanks in front, infantry fighting vehicles and trucks behind... Number... Many! Calculating... At least company-level size, no, battalion-level! It's a complete armored battalion! No... more than one battalion!"
Inside the command post, the air instantly froze into ice.
