?Chapter 1446:


    Beneath the shrouded night sky, Harmony za’s banquet centery in ruins.


    The grand domed building that had once dazzled the city now stood as nothing more than a scorched framework — a proud monument reduced to the skeletal remains of a fallen beast, lying silent amid the devastation. Embers still glimmered weakly at the edges. Plumes of dense smoke curled upward, staining the night a gloomy gray. The air reeked of burned timber and the sickening tang of charred flesh.


    “Lift it!” A gravellymand split the air like thunder.


    Dominic stood near the wreckage, d in his battered military uniform. Once a symbol of honor and authority, it was now smeared with soot and ash. His face was ckened, but his eyes burned with fierce resolve. His blistered hands, caked with grime, gripped a b of broken concrete with the strength of a man who refused to yield. A survivor was trapped beneath it.


    “Up — now!” he barked, jaw clenched, the veins in his neck straining with effort. “Move! Get yourself out!”


    With a bone-jarring crack, he forced a gap wide enough for rescue. Several soldiers surged forward immediately, dragging out a young woman with a crushed leg.


    “Stretcher! Quickly!”


    Before they could carry her away, another faint voice drifted from inside the rubble. “Someone else is alive!”


    Gasps erupted, followed by cheers. Firefighters squeezed into the gap and pulled out a second young woman. Only once both survivors were clear did Dominic release the concrete. It crashed back into ce with a heavy thud, kicking up a cloud of dust.


    Dominic swayed, his legs trembling. His breath came in ragged bursts, like bellows wheezing on theirst gasp. But watching the two survivors being rushed toward the ambnces made every shred of pain worth it.


    He had fought on countless battlefields and watched too manyrades fall. He knew intimately the weight that followed loss. And for years, he had carried guilt — believing his stubborn pride had driven his daughter away and left her to die alone. When her medical records eventually surfaced, revealing that she had left children behind, Dominic made a vow: he would find his grandchildren.


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    He had searched the entire country without sess — until recently, when a private investigator brought him a name.


    Maia Watson. A name that felt like fate. One look at her photograph, and his breath had nearly stopped. She had his daughter’s eyes.


    He had wanted to seek her out immediately. But disaster had struck first, and he could never ignore a call for help.


    The world tilted around him without warning. His vision swam. His knees buckled.


    “General!” a guard shouted, dropping his tools and rushing over.


    “I don’t need help,” Dominic snapped, shoving the man away despite the tremor running through his limbs. His movements were slow, but his posture remained painfully upright — unyielding as forged steel. “Go save them. Don’t stand around.” He leveled the nearby soldiers with a bloodshot re. “That’s an order.”


    “Yes, sir!”


    The moment they were gone, Dominic lowered himself heavily onto the debris-strewn ground.


    “Damn it,” he muttered, patting his aching knees with dry humor. “Time really waits for no one. Once upon a time, I could march over a hundred miles without feeling winded.” He exhaled deeply. “I’m here to meet my granddaughter. I can’t fall apart now. I’ve never backed down in my life, and I won’t start today. What would she think if she saw her grandfather copsing like an old fool?”


    He forced himself upright and rejoined the rescue line.


    The destruction around him mirrored scenes he thought he had left behind on the battlefield. His steps were slow, his body weary — but his figure remained unwavering, a pir standing firm amid the chaos. His guards watched him with eyes that stung with emotion. Everyone knew the general was pushing himself past every limit.


    The emergency rescue,bined with a totalmunications breakdown, had given Dominic no opportunity to summon the main forces. Only a few dozen personal guards had managed to follow him into the chaos. The official engineering and rescue units were still racing to the site. Until they arrived, this once-formidable general stood alone as the backbone of the shatteredndscape — proving to everyone around him, and to himself, that the spirit of the Watson men had not died out.


    In the doctors’ lounge, at three in the morning, Maia shot upright with a sharp cry, her clothes clinging to her skin, drenched in cold sweat.


    “No!”


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