These thousands of years are not only in books.
They are in your body.
Notice how your body stands right now.
A man once stood in a line of men and waited for the order to charge another line across the field.
His back was straight, his jaw clenched, his breath short.
He did not know the men opposite him.
He did not hate them.
He charged.
A thousand years earlier another man had stood the same way.
A thousand years later another would do it again.
Different fields, banners and words for good and evil.
The same back.
The same jaw.
The same breath.
That body was passed through fathers until it reached you.
The fighting ended. The preparation did not.
You stand the same way in an office, a courtroom, or a doorway during an argument.
The body braces before anyone has struck.
The banner changed.
The field changed.
The body did not.
It remembers every charge, but it has never once heard the order: stand down.
Thousands of years of readiness — and the command was rarely his own.
Could the war end in the generation that finally tells the body to stand down?