Chapter 68: The Last General of Earth

Rhaevia stared at her mother, the weight of the question settling between them like a physical barrier.

"What happened to you in your previous life?" her mother asked softly, her fingers resting gently over Rhaevia’s shoulder.

Behind them, the lively banter of her brothers gradually died down as they picked up on the sudden shift in the room’s atmosphere. Raevor remained standing near the back bulkhead, maintaining his watchful guard, giving Rhaevia the space she needed to decide whether to speak.

Rhaevia slowly lowered her gaze, staring down at the polished floor of the ancient vault as a long, weary breath escaped her lips.

"My previous life..." she began, her voice dropping an octave as her fingers tightened around the fabric of her sleeve. "It was on a world called Earth."

Duchess Rythundeir did not react with disbelief or shock, maintaining her warm, steady presence beside her daughter.

"Earth was different from this interstellar galaxy," Rhaevia continued, her tone measured. "There were no Guides, no Sentinels, no Zerg kingdoms, and no mental cores."

She paused briefly, a faint, melancholic shadow passing over her features. "There were just ordinary people living in ordinary cities, going to school, working jobs, and worrying about mundane things like traffic and bills."

The faint, bittersweet memory vanished as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by a cold, distant stillness.

"Then the world collapsed," she said softly.

Her mother’s hand remained steady on her shoulder, providing a silent anchor as Rhaevia swallowed past the sudden dryness in her throat.

"It started with an outbreak of the dead," Rhaevia whispered, her eyes fixing onto the dark alloy walls. "At first, everyone assumed it was an unknown disease, but the infected stopped behaving like humans, attacking anyone nearby without mercy."

She paused, her pulse quickening as memories of blood-stained streets surged through her mind. "And when those victims died... they stood back up."

Her mother’s eyes widened slightly, her breath catching as the sheer horror of the concept registered.

"The infection moved faster than any government could contain," Rhaevia continued, her voice steady. "Metropolitan cities fell in days, power grids failed, communications went dark, and hospitals became mass slaughterhouses."

She looked down at her delicate, unblemished hands, remembering the grime and dried blood that had once permanently stained her skin. "The remaining civilian population turned on itself, fighting over scraps of food, clean water, and medicine."

Her expression hardened into the severe mask of a veteran commander. "The military attempted to establish containment zones, but we failed to hold the lines."

The lack of emotion in her delivery only made the words sound far more tragic.

"Entire nations were wiped off the map," she stated flatly. "Casualty counts spiraled from millions into hundreds of millions until counting became meaningless."

She closed her eyes, the vivid image of burning horizons lingering behind her eyelids. "I sat in underground command centers, watching evacuation zones vanish from monitoring maps while signing off on supply drops I knew would never arrive."

A slight tremor betrayed her voice for a split second. "Yet, despite the hopelessness, someone had to give the orders."

Rhaevia opened her eyes, looking directly into her mother’s sorrowful gaze.

"I became a general," she revealed, the title sounding like a heavy curse rather than an honor. "Not because I sought rank or political power, but simply because everyone above me was already dead."

Across the vault, her three brothers had gone still, their usual boisterous energy extinguished. Even her youngest brother stood frozen, staring at his sister as if seeing her for the very first time.

"I became the final General of humanity," Rhaevia said, her voice echoing off the ancient metal walls. "I took command of what was left of our global military forces, soldiers from dozens of different countries and backgrounds who had lost everything."

Her fingers curled tightly into her palms. "And every single day, I ordered them to march into hell."

Silence stretched through the vast chamber, suffocating and heavy.

"I sent thousands of young men and women into battle, aware that most of them would never return," she murmured, her throat tightening. "I remembered every face, every letter they wrote to their families, and every promise they made before stepping onto the field."

She looked away, unable to maintain eye contact with her mother. "I sat at holotables, calculating acceptable loss ratios, trading twenty thousand soldiers to buy time for a hundred thousand civilians to evacuate."

Her breathing turned shallow as the old guilt bubbled to the surface. "And sometimes... my calculations were wrong."

Nobody dared to speak or interrupt her.

"I watched entire regiments get torn apart because of orders I issued." Her voice finally cracked, a single tear spilling over her lower lash line. "I carried every name, every face, and every voice that asked me if we were going to survive."

She pressed her palm firmly over her pounding heart, where her Guide core pulsed with a low, empathetic rhythm.

"And I lied to them every time," she whispered. "I looked them in the eye and told them we would win, even when I knew we were all going to die."

The tear tracked down her cheek, dripping off her jaw and splashing against the cold metal floor.

"The war dragged on for brutal years," she murmured, her gaze growing distant. "I became far too accustomed to death, so numb that I stopped celebrating victories because every victory was accompanied by an endless list of casualties."

She let out a bitter laugh that held no humor whatsoever. "I stopped sleeping, stopped eating properly, and stopped planning for my own future, because there was never supposed to be a tomorrow for me."

Her mother listened in heartbroken comprehension, finally understanding the profound disconnect she had always sensed in her daughter.

This was not merely a twenty-year-old noble girl who had suddenly awakened high-level mental powers. This was a war-weary commander who had carried the entire crushing weight of a dying species on her shoulders.

She was a soldier who had suppressed her grief for years because showing weakness meant the collapse of humanity’s last defense.

"Eventually, we tracked down the origin of the outbreak, the Zombie King," Rhaevia said, the temperature in the room seeming to plummet at the mention of the creature. "He was a monstrous entity, far more terrifying and intelligent than anything we had ever faced."

Her eyes locked onto the empty air, reviewing the bloody map of her final battle. "I gathered every surviving battalion, every piece of artillery, and every able-bodied person left alive for one final assault."

She remembered the blinding smoke, the deafening roars, and the mountains of corpses piling up around her command unit.

"We won," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I personally beheaded him."

She closed her eyes tightly as the phantom sensation of her final breath filled her lungs. "But I died right alongside him."

Duchess Rythundeir stared at her daughter, her heart breaking for the child who stood before her. Twenty years old in physical form, yet carrying centuries of blood, strategy, loss, and isolation behind her dark eyes.

How long has she been carrying this horrifying burden all by herself? Her mother thought, tears welling in her own eyes.

Rhaevia opened her eyes, looking up at her mother with a raw, vulnerable expression she had never allowed anyone on Earth to see.

"I thought dying on that battlefield would finally give me peace," she confessed, her lips trembling slightly. "I thought the noise would finally stop... but instead, I woke up in this body, in this strange interstellar world."

A long, suffocating silence settled over the ancestral vault.

Rhaevia stood still, bracing herself for whatever reaction would follow, fear, disgust, political calculation, or total disbelief.

Instead, her mother stepped forward without a second of hesitation.

Before Rhaevia could process the movement, her mother pulled her into a fierce, overwhelming embrace. Warm arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders, holding her close against her chest in a protective, unconditional hold.

Rhaevia froze, her muscles locking up in shock.

Her mind raced as she stood rigid in her mother’s arms, devoid of any protocol or combat training to handle the situation. No military manual on Earth had ever prepared humanity’s last general for what to do when someone simply held her and refused to let go.

Her mother’s voice trembled softly right beside her ear, choked with deep, maternal grief. "You should have never had to carry all of that alone, my sweet girl."

Rhaevia’s eyes widened in stunned silence.

And for the first time across two lifetimes, the legendary General of humanity stood at a loss, her rigid defenses crumbling into nothingness.