Ignivara's gaze drifted back to the dark wood of the table, her eyes seemingly fixed on a point miles beneath the surface.
"The three children were not targets," she said, her voice dropping to a hollow, haunting whisper. "The Legion is efficient; they do not waste resources on collateral unless the mission dictates it."
"The children were not harmed... They were simply... there."
"They were standing in the wreckage of a life that had just been surgically removed. And as I moved along the extraction path, as the adrenaline began to fade and the cold reality of the mission set in, the silence of that village began to scream at me."
"I could not stop thinking about what that village would become in a month... A month of hollow eyes and empty chairs and a month of children wondering why the light had gone out of their world, all because a machine decided their mother was a 'variable.'"
