I was Drafted Into a War as the Only Human

Fenara's eyes locked onto Lucy and Tara with a feral intensity that pierced straight through them. Her stare was unwavering, pupils constricted to dangerous slits within pools of molten amber. Her bared fangs gleamed with a cold promise in the fractured moonlight: she was done playing.

But neither Lucy nor Tara flinched.

They met the beast's gaze head-on as she approached, each of her footsteps pounding like a war drum across the blood-soaked obsidian. The rhythmic impact sent tiny ripples through the pooled blood at their feet.

Lucy's grip tightened around the hilt of his sword, the leather wrapping creaking against his palm. The tremble in his fingers wasn't fear, it was adrenaline singing through his veins like liquid fire.

Beside him, Tara dropped into a low stance, claws outstretched and glinting with residual mana. Long brown hair whipped in the wind, carrying the metallic tang of battle. Her body was coiled like a spring, every muscle taut beneath her fur. Her eyes locked on Fenara with predatory focus.

The tigress general didn't slow. She advanced with the casual precision of a predator toying with its prey, unshaken by the resolve before her.

Her tail slashed the air behind her, cutting through the smoke that hung like a shroud over the battlefield.

Then she vanished.

Lucy blinked, and she was gone, with not even a blur of movement to track.

All he saw ahead was the shattered battlefield: obsidian glistening red with blood like some terrible mirror, the silhouettes of Ithriel's elves standing in formation as their commander loomed above, calm and commanding, as if the war was already won. Their spears glinted coldly in the distance.

'Death?'