artillery girl

In a civilization dominated by the colossal Iron Empire, a space-faring megastructure stretching nearly 19 billion miles and powered by six captured stars, humanity’s greatness is measured by proximity to the Empire itself. Entire worlds exist in its shadow, yet even those are considered insignificant compared to the vast authority of the Empire and those who serve aboard it. On one of its orbiting satellite habitats lives Tanwen, a short, fiercely confident young woman with an absurdly long black mane and an imagination far larger than her reality. In her mind, she is destined for greatness, a legendary commander who will one day rise through the ranks and command forces that shape the fate of the Iron Empire itself. In reality, Tanwen is a nobody. On the day she turns eighteen, she rushes to enlist in the military with explosive determination, firmly believing she belongs among elite forces. However, her journey immediately collides with reality: bureaucratic exhaustion, unimpressed officials, and paperwork that she completes in chaotic, illegible bursts of confidence. Despite this, she is accepted, less out of belief in her potential and more out of sheer administrative surrender. Placed into a notoriously problematic training group, Tanwen remains entirely convinced she has been selected for greatness. Every setback, whether it’s falling because her hair gets caught in a door or being ignored by her superiors, is reframed in her mind as part of an elite narrative only she understands. As she enters military life, Tanwen’s unstoppable confidence clashes repeatedly with the indifferent structure of the system around her. To everyone else, she is clearly inexperienced, strange, and physically unimpressive. But to Tanwen, every humiliation is simply a misunderstood step toward her inevitable rise as the greatest commander of all time. Unbeknownst to her, the training group she has been assigned to may not be ordinary at all, and the Iron Empire, vast and unknowable, is never as distant from personal destiny as it seems.